Don Lemon to be Paid $24.5 Million by CNN to Settle Firing

metroweekly.com:

TheWrap, the 57-year-old Lemon has agreed to a separation deal for approximately $24.5 million, the equivalent he would have earned for serving out the remainder of his final contract, which was set to expire three-and-a-half years after he was pulled from the airwaves.In April 2023, Lemon, who was featured on Metro Weekly’s coverin 2016, announced on X that he had learned from his agent — and not from the network, for which he had worked for 17 years — that he had been terminated.

He said he was never given any indication that the network was considering letting him go. He wrote that “[i]t is clear that there are some larger issues at play.”Lemon’s dismissal came after he made a controversial comment suggesting that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is 51, was past her prime, in response to her assertion that political candidates over the age of 75 should be subjected to mental competency exams.“Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime, sorry,” Lemon said, eliciting shock and surprise from his co-hosts Caitlin Collins and Poppy Harlow, who pushed back against his assertion. “When a woman is considered to be in her prime — in her 20s, 30s and maybe her 40s.”He brought up the subject an hour later, and was rebutted by commentator Audie Cornish.

He later tweeted that he regretted his “inartful and irrelevant” comments.Those comments also sparked accusations of sexism and misogyny from conservatives, who accused him of engaging in a partisan attack against a Republican, and from Haley herself. “Liberals can’t stand the idea of having competency tests for older politicians to make sure they can do the job,” Haley tweeted.