UPDATED: Don Lemon Pranked Us All

Update Sunday May 16, 2021 2:30 p.m.:

After PJ Media reported that the show CNN Tonight with Don Lemon would come to an end, Don Lemon let slip that he had punked us all. Lemon will not stop anchoring a show on CNN. Alas, the news is not so good as that.

Instead, the name of his show will change.

“Didn’t mean to set the internet on fire. What I said last night was true. CNN Tonight with Don Lemon is no more. I’ll be back on Monday with my newly named show Don Lemon Tonight. See you Monday at 10pE,” the CNN anchor tweeted.

Let’s see if this stunt improves his ratings. I suspect it won’t…

Original story Saturday May 15, 2021 9:32 a.m.:

On Friday night, CNN Tonight anchor Don Lemon announced that “this will be the last night” of the show he has hosted since 2014.

“It’s been really, really great. this is the last night that will be CNN Tonight with Don Lemon,” the anchor announced, The New York Post reported. “So, I appreciate all the years of CNN Tonight with Don Lemon, but changes are coming, and I will fill you in.”

Less than 15 minutes after the show ended, Lemon posted a 24-second video on Twitter clarifying his announcement.

“So I got back down to my office after the show — everybody calm down,” Lemon began. “I didn’t say I was leaving CNN. I just said it was the end of an era for CNN Tonight with Don Lemon.”

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“I am not leaving CNN,” Lemon repeated. He then teased the Monday show.

“You will have to tune in Monday at 10 o’clock to see. That’s it. So relax, I’m not leaving,” Lemon added. “I’m not leaving.”

Hey everyone. Not what you think. I’m not leaving CNN. Tune in for the handoff on Monday at 10pE and I’ll explain. pic.twitter.com/oOwDferY2i

— Don Lemon (@donlemon) May 15, 2021

It remains unclear why CNN would remove Lemon from the show and with whom the network will replace him.

CNN Tonight With Don Lemon lagged in the ratings in April 2021. The show, which airs from 10 p.m. to midnight on weeknights, had a nightly average of 734,000 viewers last month, well behind Fox News’ 10 p.m. show The Ingraham Angle (2.07 million), Fox News’s new 11 p.m. show Gutfeld! (1.52 million viewers) and MSNBC’s The 11th Hour with Brian Williams (1.38 million). It fell well behind the Fox News shows Tucker Carlson Tonight (3.02 million), The Five (2.73 million), and Hannity (2.73 million), along with MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show (2.71 million).

CNN Tonight With Don Lemon dropped down 16 percent from 2020 last month, but the ratings had gone up 5 percent from 2019.

Like many successful cable news figures, Lemon generates attention by making utterly outrageous statements and dividing Americans by race and leftist dogma. During the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots last summer, he interrupted black actor Terry Crews, claiming that dead black children are “not what Black Lives Matter is about.” Lemon has demonized a black pastor who refused to call Trump racist, and he suggested that white people cannot escape being racist if they grow up in America. After the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last year, Lemon said Democrats should “blow up the entire system” if Trump confirmed a replacement.

In March, he said that traditional marriage is “not what God is about.” Last year, he claimed that Christians admit that, just like America’s founders, Jesus Christ “was not perfect when he was here on this earth.” On the contrary, Christians believe Jesus Christ is sinless, and remained sinless throughout his life (Hebrews 4:15).

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Yet it seems Don Lemon’s outrageous statements have not resulted in a “canceling” from CNN. The network has not explained the rationale behind removing him from the show, so it may have been a personal decision.