Don Lemon continued his war of words with Megyn Kelly over the firing of MSNBC anchor Joy Reid, saying on his YouTube show that “someone had to stand up” to Kelly — “Especially for the women who she insults on an almost daily [or] weekly basis.”
The back-and-forth began when Kelly said she was “absolutely thrilled” that Reid’s show, “TheReidOut,” was being canceled at MSNBC as the network radically reshuffled its lineup. Lemon responded by telling Kelly on Tuesday: “Go f–k yourself.”
Kelly blasted back that Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, was simply “trying to get press.”
Watch Lemon’s “Hot Topics” segment, which begins at 1:06, in the video embedded below:
Defending his Tuesday statement on Wednesday, Lemon explained that it is “out of character” for him to respond to “trolls” like her.
“The entire time, I have known her and she has attacked me I have ignored her.” He went on to say that his comments Tuesday — including the diss that she was the worst news person to ever be fired by NBC — was a rarity for him.
“I don’t think about her. I am actually embarrassed for her,” he said. “I think that when people hold up a mirror, you just need to look in that mirror and go, ‘You know what? Maybe they’re right.’”
Lemon also rolled his eyes at the idea that Kelly is “supposed to be some big proponent of women’s rights,” recalling incidents such as when Kelly called CNN’s Kaitlan Collins “a cold-hearted bitch” and told her to “smile more.”
Lemon previously worked with Collins on “CNN This Morning,” the morning news program he was fired from in April 2023 after coming under fire for on-air comments in February that many interpreted as sexist. The host, at the time discussing Nikki Haley throwing her hat into the ring for the 2024 presidential race, said that the former South Carolina governor was past her prime at age 51.
