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
By now you’ve heard that we have our first reported case of Ebola here in the United States.
It’s a man from Liberia who came to visit his family in Dallas.
But did you know that this is President Obama’s fault?
Well, according to at least one conservative, Laura Ingraham, it is.
Just a few days ago Ingraham also said that the President is willing to put American troops in harm’s way in Africa’s Ebola zone because he wants to atone for his father’s rage over colonialism.
Laura Ingraham has said some pretty controversial stuff.
But this is really just beyond; to say the least.
Also, President Obama’s fault, according to Politico, is the failure of the Secret Service to keep an armed intruder from jumping a fence, running across the White House lawn, entering the front door, overpowering an agent and making it past the entrance to the residence all the way to the East Room.
At least that’s how viewers took the article and especially the last paragraph to the story with read, “Agents tell me it’s a miracle an assassination has not already occurred. Sadly, given Obama’s colossal lack of management judgment, that calamity may be the only catalyst that will reform the Secret Service.”
To just about everyone who read the article it sounded like the writer was implying that the only way to fix the agency which protects the president is for the president to be killed.
Readers were so taken aback that Politico was forced to revise the last paragraph and have added a line which says it was taken out of context.
Since President Obama was elected, for many liberals and African Americans the phrases, “its Obama’s fault”, or “blame Obama” have been running jokes about how conservatives explain anything wrong or bad that happens in the world.
It’s long since time people stop joking about it because it’s dead serious and so are his enemies.
