Don Lemon’s been having a rough time lately, what with his controversial comment about GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley not being “in her prime.” Even Michelle Yeoh gave him crap for that one. This probably won’t help: On Monday, the CNN co-host was caught on a hot mic appearing to diss Jon Stewart.
As per The Daily Beast, CNN This Morning ran a segment on the Daily Show alum’s latest viral sensation, in which he called out the Defense department for having a ginormous budget that still somehow lets soldiers go cash-strapped, which he declared “f*cking corruption.”
After the clip aired, but before they cut back to Lemon and company, Lemon’s voice could be heard, saying something about how Stewart “gets a lot of leeway with the comedian thing, though.”
When they cut back, perhaps realizing his off-air discussion had made it onto the soundwaves, Lemon seemingly tried to reverse course, saying, “We were just discussing that Jon Stewart is so much more than a comedian. He is a thought leader.”
Not long after he kept trying to save face. “Yeah, when I was saying comedian and television host, he’s so much more than that,” Lemon told co-hosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins. “I don’t even know if you need to qualify Jon Stewart as that. But good interview there.”
Stewart laid low for the first handful of years after leaving The Daily Show in 2015, returning with Apple TV+’s The Problem with Jon Stewart, which finds him routinely taking the powerful to task with exchanges that go viral.
(Via The Daily Beast)