Tucker Carlson And Don lemon operated on different channels that seemed like different realities at times, but each television host became a recurring character on the other man’s show.
On Fox News, Carlson deliberately mispronounced Lemon’s name for years, scoffed at Lemon’s comments about being a black man in America, and labeled Lemon as “a guy who makes millions of dollars a year doing a show.” sit that fails”. ago, Carlson called Lemon “stupid and a little crazy.”
On CNN, Lemon accused Carlson of poisoning Fox’s audience with hateful lies. He said Carlson “mainstreamed white supremacist propaganda for your neighbors and your relatives.” sadness.”
This cable news crossfire is relevant because, as you well know by now, both men were fired this week by their respective networks. It was a coincidence for the cable eras. 11:28 am On Monday, the Lemon drop already started to move. Lemon went public 12:14 p.m by tweeting a statement saying he had just been fired. So now these adversaries are linked forever. And I can’t help but marvel at how much they have in common right now.
No, this isn’t going to be one of those irresponsible false equivalence pieces that claim that Carlson and Lemon were equally polarizing. Fox and CNN are two different types producing two different types of products for two very different audiences. But the similarities between the two situations pile up. Carlson and Lemon know: They’ve been texting back and forth for the past few days, according to two sources with knowledge of the relationship.
By “relationship” I don’t mean friendship. On the contrary. The two men have never met, and they probably didn’t have much to discuss until recently. They live very different lives: Carlson, with his wife of almost 32 years , suzan, spends time in rural Maine and on Florida’s Gulf Coast, avoiding the Manhattan and Hamptons social scene that Lemon and his fiancé, Tim Malone, The first photos of Carlson after his firing showed him driving around Boca Grande in a golf cart while Lemon walked the red carpet at the Time100 Gala.
But there is an obvious kinship that comes from being pushed from such a high place at exactly the same time on the same day.
The first similarity between the two cases was speed: Carlson, 53, and Lemon, 57, were both notified by phone that their services were no longer needed, and both stories broke almost immediately. Fox management reportedly wanted issue a joint statement with Carlson, according to one of his friends, but Carlson rejected that. Similarly, CNN management wanted to roll out the Lemon news in coordination with him, perhaps issuing heartfelt time-synced statements, but Lemon countered that, announcing it himself. “Obviously there are bigger issues at play,” Lemon said in his statement, perhaps implying that he was fired for political reasons.
The next agreement came out within hours. When I learned that both men had chosen the same attorney, the LA-based entertainment litigator Brian Freeman, I called Freedman’s office and reached his assistant, who sounded surprised when I told her what I intended to report. I was surprised that both clients were so new, so recently fired, that word hadn’t gotten around yet. Freedman tends not to talk in public. about his clients, and has not spoken publicly about Lemon or Carlson, but he has a similar goal in both cases: to secure money and freedom for his clients.
