Don Lemon on Facts, Fear and the Future of Media

Don Lemon was one of the most recognizable figures in cable news. Since his high-profile exit from CNN in 2023, he's been building an independent media company, trading a traditional studio and production crew for a setup that fits inside a backpack. His YouTube channel, “The Don Lemon Show,” now has more than 1 million subscribers, who call themselves the “Lemonheads.” Kaya Yurieff and Jasmine Enberg sit down with Lemon in the South of France to discuss everything from his arrest in Minnesota while covering ICE protests earlier this year to why he thinks legacy media is “bending the knee” to the Trump administration and how he approaches clickbaity YouTube thumbnails. They also get into what he’s had to “unlearn” from traditional media, his biggest revenue streams, whether he’d ever return to cable news and where he thinks independent media is headed next.