CNN morning host Don Lemon, facing backlash after saying 51-year-old presidential candidate Nikki Haley was “not in her prime,” will return to the network’s morning show Wednesday after a brief time off.
In a memo CNN Chairman and CEO Chris Licht sent to staff Monday, Licht said he “sat down with Don and had a frank and meaningful conversation. He has agreed to participate in formal training, as well as continuing to listen and learn. We take this situation very seriously.”
He added: “It is important to me that CNN balances accountability with a fostering a culture in which people can own, learn and grow from their mistakes.”
Lemon ignited a firestorm of controversy last Thursday in his remarks about Haley, a Republican former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina governor.
Lemon, 56, said women were really in their prime “in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.” When co-host Poppy Harlow, who is 40, objected, he said: “Don’t shoot the messenger, I’m just saying what the facts are.”
He later apologized to co-workers on a Friday call, but Licht during the same call said Lemon’s comments were “upsetting, unacceptable and unfair to his co-hosts and ultimately a huge distraction to the great work of this organization.”
Since the new CNN This Morning debuted in November with Lemon, Harlow and Kaitlan Collins, it has faced declining ratings and reported tensions between Lemon and his two co-hosts.
Former Fox News host Megyn Kelly didn’t find the “training” spin all that convincing. “What a joke,” she wrote on Twitter. “‘Formal training’ on what? How to be a decent human being? Good luck.”
Another Fox News alum Gretchen Carlson, who alleged she was fired in 2016 in retaliation for declining the sexual advances of former Fox News chairman Roger Ailes, noted on Twitter that “men make misogynistic comments and are offered ‘formal training’ and survive. Women who simply have the courage to come forward to report misogyny, harassment etc get the shaft and never work again.”
Lemon has been with CNN since 2006, working in Atlanta his first eight years before moving to New York under then-boss Jeff Zucker. Lemon eventually got his own prime-time show. Licht last fall moved Lemon to mornings in hopes of building that time slot, where CNN has regularly lagged behind MSNBC and Fox News.
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