CNN CEO was fired back in early June, as his attempt to revamp the network and make it watched by millions instead of a few hundred thousand crazy Trump-haters ended in dismal failure for the struggling network, though he did manage to get a few troublesome hosts, such as Don Lemon, out of the door before him.
At the time he was fired, Licht said, “This was an exciting but incredibly challenging assignment and I learned a lot over the past 13 months. I’ve been lucky enough to have had a successful, fulfilling career and I look forward to my next chapter. I wish the team at CNN the very best, always.”
Now, months after Licht was fired and still more months after he was fired, former CNN host Don Lemon is gloating over LIcht’s firing, claiming that it is a vindication. Ignored there is that maybe Licht was a bad CEO, but Lemon was an even worse news show host.
In any case, Lemon’s gloating came when he co-hosted Kara Swisher’s podcast Pivot and said that he was fired because he didn’t want to go in the same direction as the failed CEO, which he now claims was a good decision.
“I’ll tell you what I’ve come to know now that I didn’t know at the time, that more so than anything that the CNN, the strategy and their content and the direction they wanted to go in that I was not a part of that, that they did not want me to be a part of that. And I think that has, from what has played out publicly as it relates to CNN, as it relates to management and what they’re doing now, I think is it’s obvious that they didn’t want me to be a part of that. And I think that’s the real issue that happened,” Lemon said.
Swisher then asked him about what exactly it is that he disagreed with, as the network isn’t all that different now. “Did you, do you think you don’t fit into the new CNN or that they made the changes? Because it’s not that different from when you were there in terms of reporting and other things?” she asked.
Absurdly, Lemon claimed that he was offended by the network’s professed desire to move toward the center because “news is news,” telling Swisher, “When I was there, I was not a part of their strategy. And as you just said, they wanted to be centrist and they wanted to move the network in a certain direction, which was kind of a bit surprising because I think the news is the news. And you don’t choose the direction. It just is.”
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Then, later in the podcast, Swisher asked Lemon if he thinks Licht’s firing is a vindication of his refusal to go along with CNN’s attempted move from the far left to the center. Predictably, he said it does, telling her, “Yes, I do. Read the story and you speak to the people who are there and I think people get what happened. All you have to do is read The Atlantic story, read the subsequent stories that came out and you know how it played out. And. They’re gone now. So do I feel vindicated in that sense? Yes, I do.”