About Don Lemon

Don Lemon anchors CNN Newsroom during weekend prime-time and serves as a correspondent across CNN/U.S. programming. Based in the network’s New York bureau, Lemon joined CNN in September 2006.

A news veteran of Chicago, Lemon reported from Chicago in the days leading up to the 2008 presidential election, including an interview with then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel on the day he accepted the position of Chief of Staff for President-elect Barack Obama. He also interviewed Anne Cooper, the 106-year old voter President-elect Obama highlighted in his election night acceptance speech after he had seen Lemon’s interview with Cooper on CNN.

Lemon has reported and anchored on-the-scene for CNN from many breaking news stories, including the George Zimmerman trial (2013), the Boston marathon bombing (2013), the Philadelphia building collapse (2013), the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting (2012), the Colorado Theater Shooting (2012), the death of Whitney Houston, the Inaugural of the 44th President in Washington, D.C., the death of Michael Jackson (2009), Hurricane Gustav in Louisiana (2008) and the Minneapolis bridge collapse (2007).

Lemon has also anchored the network\'s breaking news coverage of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan, the Arab Spring, the death of Osama Bin Laden and Joplin tornado. Lemon reported for CNN’s documentary Race and Rage: The Beating of Rodney King, which aired 20 years to the day of the beating. He is also known for holding politicians and public officials accountable in his \"No Talking Points\" segment.

Lemon joined CNN after serving as a co-anchor for the 5 p.m. newscast for NBC5 News in Chicago. He joined the station in August 2003 as an anchor and reporter after working in New York as a correspondent for NBC News, The Today Show and NBC Nightly News. In addition to his reporting in New York, Lemon worked as an anchor on Weekend Today and on MSNBC. While at NBC, Lemon covered the explosion of Space Shuttle Columbia, SARS in Canada and numerous other stories of national and global importance.

In addition to NBC5 and NBC News, Lemon has served as a weekend anchor and general assignment reporter for WCAU-TV, an NBC affiliate in Philadelphia, an anchor and investigative reporter for KTVI-TV in St. Louis and an anchor for WBRC-TV in Birmingham. He began his career at WNYW in New York City as a news assistant while still in college.

In 2009, Ebony named him as one of the Ebony Power 150: the most influential Blacks in America. He has won an Edward R. Murrow award for his coverage of the capture of the Washington, D.C. snipers. He won an Emmy for a special report on real estate in Chicagoland and various other awards for his reporting on the AIDS epidemic in Africa and Hurricane Katrina. In 2006, he won three more local Emmys for his reporting in Africa and a business feature about Craigslist, an online community.

Lemon serves as an adjunct professor at Brooklyn College, teaching and participating in curriculum designed around new media. He earned a degree in broadcast journalism from Brooklyn College and also attended Louisiana State University.

The Donald Trump campaign is finally facing reality and are saying, not publicly, that he didn’t do so well in the first debate. However, the only one who won’t admit it, publicly nor privately, is guess who? Donald Trump. Here he is in Council Bluffs, Iowa. “So we won every single online poll, hundreds and […]

So, the first presidential debate is behind us. What did you think? Who won? Well, not so fast. According to polls from conservative sites like Drudge and Breitbart Trump won. According to neutral polls like a CNN/ORC poll Clinton won 62 to 27 percent. And even some Fox News hosts are saying Hillary Clinton won […]

  I’m not sure you were up that late, but I was up until the wee hours covering the riots in Charlotte, North Carolina. It was the second night in a row of the protests that turned violent. Tuesday night 16 officers were injured. Wednesday night 1 officer was injured and taken to a hospital. […]

The attacks that took place in New York and New Jersey over the weekend should and are being taken seriously. They are certainly being debated out on the campaign trail between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. But I have a couple of questions for you. The first one is just to give context to what […]

The health issue that Hillary Clinton suffered over the weekend is bringing light to a very real discussion we need to have about our presidential candidates – How much do the American people need to know about the candidates and how much do they need to share and how transparent should the candidates be about […]

  Secretary Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump both took part in a presidential forum last night. My commentaries have focused so much on Donald Trump lately, I’ve decided to give you a break and discuss Secretary Clinton this time. The secretary took questions first. And what do you think was the first question? If you […]

For weeks now the focus of the election –which by the way is just two months away-, has been black voters. Donald Trump has been the more vociferous of the two major candidates. Over the weekend you may have seen Trump in Detroit making more appeals to the black community. He even spoke at a […]

  There are a couple of things to talk about this morning with this election. One of them is probably really important but NO ONE is talking about it. Why – because Donald Trump stole the thunder and once again shaped and controlled the media narrative. He completely overshadowed Hillary Clinton’s speech at the American […]

  In his quest to gain black voters, Donald Trump appears to have listened to many of his critics – that he needs to speak directly to the people he’s trying to reach instead of majority white audiences.   Trump’s campaign released a statement stating he’s starting his outreach in Detroit to speak to the […]

  Donald Trump is still out on the campaign trail saying he’s the candidate for black and Hispanic people. Last night he took his case to the people of Mississippi. “The Democratic Party has failed and betrayed the African-American community. Democratic crime policies, education policies, and economic policies have produced only more crime, more broken […]

For a week now I have been discussing with you on this program, Donald Trump’s outreach to black America. Well, he got a lot of criticism for the way he framed it, but that didn’t stop Trump for doubling down in Akron, Ohio on Monday night by saying some urban, black neighborhoods are more dangerous […]

Last time we talked about reports that Donald Trump’s campaign would encourage him to make a serious play for African Americans. Well that play is underway now. It started with a speech on Tuesday night in Wisconsin, the site of recent unrest after the shooting death of an armed black man by police. Trump told […]