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.
@DonLemonCNN
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There are three big goals that scare the hell out of a lot of people that President Obama will discuss in his State Of The Union speech.
And, the same president who used technology and social media to help him get him elected is going old school in his State of The Union speech to get those goals accomplished.
He will say he is going to use a good old fashion “pen and a phone” to get things done in his remaining three years in office.
How do I know? – Because he said so in his first cabinet meeting in 2014- that he will use the power of his presidential pen to either veto unwanted legislation or sign executive orders and encourage nonprofits and corporations to try to get done what congress cannot.
In the same meeting President Obama said the overall message to his Cabinet – “and that will be amplified in our State of the Union — is that we need all hands on deck to build on the recovery that we’re already seeing.”
With that as a foundation he will go before lawmakers and the American people to sell his vision for the next three years.
-So, number one is the use of the power of the presidential pen and the bully pulpit.
-Number two, the President will no doubt double down on the importance on his key piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act.
It will be a tough sell considering the rocky start of the Obamacare website.
But the President will talk about the fact that so far 3-million people have enrolled.
He will tell you that if things continue on as they are, his administration may reach its initial goal of 7-million people signing up for coverage by the end of enrollment on March 31st.
-Number three will be the big theme the President has been hammering in Washington and across the country- INCOME INEQUALITY.
Speaking at Knox College in Galesburg, Illinois last summer, President Obama said, “The income of the top 1 percent nearly quadrupled from 1979 to 2007, while the typical family’s barely budged.”
While he touched on this in his last State Of The Union speech, saying the minimum wage needed to be raised, it didn’t happen.
He will ask again in order to narrow the divide between rich and poor.
These three themes scare conservatives and quite frankly the rich. Most see it as redistributing the wealth, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.
They also see The Affordable Care Act as wealth redistribution and another social program for which taxpayers will end up paying.
Remember, conservatives’ goal is to lower taxes.
And as far as the power of the “pen and the phone,” Kentucky Senator Rand Paul says that sounds quote, “vaguely like a threat.”
That is the conundrum President Obama faces and the tight rope he will walk in tonight’s speech.
In this State Of The Union which matters the most in his presidency— before the public’s attention turns to the 2014 mid-term elections—before Americans become consumed with who their next President will be— can President Obama finally convince Republicans and even some Democrats to work with him or will “pen and phone” be interpreted as a threat that pushes them even further into their perspective corners?
