SAN FRANCISCO — Elon Musk impulsively canceled “The Don Lemon Show” on his social media network X after the former CNN anchor recorded an interview with the billionaire for its as-yet unaired first episode.
Musk owns X, formerly known as Twitter, and frequently proclaims himself a “free speech absolutist.” In a put up on X, the San Francisco-based corporate mentioned handiest that then cautious attention, it “determined now not to go into right into a industrial partnership with the display.” It added that Lemon’s display “is welcome to publish its content on X, without censorship, as we believe in providing a platform for creators to scale their work and connect with new communities.”
In a video posted to X, Lemon declared that “ Elon Musk is mad at me ″ and said he will be airing his interview with the Tesla CEO on YouTube and via podcast on Monday.
Lemon didn’t go into specifics about the source of Musk’s alleged unhappiness, but wrote, “Throughout our conversation, I kept reiterating to him that although it was tense at times, I thought it was good for people to see and hear our exchange and that they would learn from our conversation.”
“But apparently free speech absolutism doesn’t apply when it comes to questions about him from people like me,” he added.
In a after CNN dialogue with Lemon on Monday, anchor Erin Burnett performed clips of his Musk interview through which the Tesla and SpaceX CEO grew testy when requested about content material moderation and the unfold of dislike pronunciation at the X platform.
Within the clip, Lemon requested Musk if he thought that he and his social platform held any accountability to reasonable dislike pronunciation on X. He singled out the unfold of the “ great replacement theory,” a racist trust that, in its maximum ultimate mode, falsely contends that Jews are in the back of a plot to decrease the affect of white crowd within the U.S.
Musk spoke back sharply that he doesn’t have to reply to questions from journalists. “The only reason I’m in this interview is because you’re on the X platform and you asked for it,” he said. “Otherwise I would not be doing this interview.” When Lemon adopted up with a query concerning the grievance Musk has confronted over the problem of dislike pronunciation, the CEO spoke back, “I’m criticized constantly. I could care less.”
X introduced in January a “new content partnership” with Lemon for the display, pronouncing it might put up 30 tiny episodes thrice a moment on disciplines together with politics, tradition, sports activities and leisure. That do business in used to be a part of the suffering platform’s efforts to reinforce its content material choices and draw in advertisers. X additionally introduced displays hosted by way of former member of Congress Tulsi Gabbard and sports activities radio host Jim Rome.
Lemon used to be fired by way of CNN latter yr then a 17-year run with the community. His ouster got here a modest over two months then he apologized for on-air feedback about then-Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley now not being in “her prime” that he made right through his scale down run as a morning display host.
