Don Lemon joins Dave Rubin to dissect mainstream media dynamics, contrasting CNN's unscripted fact-checking with scripted broadcasts while defending his refusal to censor himself despite social media distortions. They analyze Lemon's "No Talking Points" policy with guests like Rand Paul, his balanced approach to Black Lives Matter controversies, and the double standards regarding the Oregon militia incident. Discussing his rapport-building interview style versus online critics' demands for confrontation, Lemon hints at a future show resembling Bill Maher before confirming his commitment to CNN for the next decade. Ultimately, the dialogue reveals the complex tension between journalistic authenticity, political pressure, and personal integrity in today's polarized landscape. [Automatically generated summary]
My goal this year with the show is to expand on even more topics we discuss, as well as the people that we're talking to.
Yes, we absolutely hit our stride by calling out regressive bullshit, and by addressing the regressives, the tide is actually turning.
People are finally standing up to their insincere attacks and realizing that liberalism is about the rights of individuals before that of the group.
So if you truly believe in equality for women, then you have to defend their individual rights, whether it's to wear what they want, drive a car, or marry who they choose, regardless of their religious or cultural background.
I said there was an awakening months ago, and it's pretty undeniable right now, right?
That doesn't mean we can rest, though.
If anything, it means we have to dig in deeper and keep calling out regressive nonsense when we see it.
But, as I've also said from day one, I want this show to be a place for big ideas of all kinds.
Over the course of the next few weeks, I'm going to talk to people from hugely different walks of life.
Conservative radio talk show host Larry Elder, science writer and skeptic Michael Shermer, and former leader of the English Defense League Tommy Robinson, just to name a few.
We're going to go big on topics ranging from the election, to science, to spirituality, and more.
We're kicking off the year with CNN's Don Lemon.
Love him or hate him, Don is one of the few people in mainstream media not afraid to say what he thinks, and he often pays for it via criticism from both sides of the aisle.
Not only does he host his own nightly show, but he also reports on location from natural disasters, co-hosts electoral debates, and has even forged an unlikely friendship with Glenn Beck along the way.
I know when we see these people on TV, we have a way of thinking that they aren't even human.
That they're just robots or something, but I can assure you from personal experience that with Don, what you see is what you get.
We can always mock mainstream media, and we absolutely should.
Trust me, I have made plenty of jokes at CNN's expense.
Just check my Twitter feed.
At the same time, we should acknowledge, though, that there are many journalists in the mainstream media trying to do good work.
While online media has changed the way we get the news, I think one of the big lessons from 2015 is how online media can also be full of crap.
Just because something isn't mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't push a narrative, distort facts, or outright lie.
As 2016 begins, let's all continue to shed light on issues we care about, talk about difficult topics in an honest way, and see if we can make the conversations in our lives a little more enlightened.
All right, my guest this week is the host of CNN Tonight, self-proclaimed king of Twitter, and one of the few guys in cable news not afraid to tell you what he really thinks.
You know, it's funny, even the way that you started saying hook up there, and then you immediately have to hedge your bets, because you're one of these people, and I want to talk about this a little later on, that everything that you say becomes like this sort of hot button thing.
But before we delve into all that stuff, how much news do you actually have to consume every day?
Because I know I do an interview show once a week, but I'm in the news constantly.
I'm always paying attention to this stuff and on Twitter and doing this whole thing.
And there's a certain amount of bandwidth, I think, that you only have in your brain to absorb all this stuff.
But you have to know sort of all the stuff that's going on all the time.
Then someone else reminded me that we did it before, and I'm like, oh yeah, that's right, we did do that before.
And then I looked up why he did it, so there's a, you know, he has a perfectly legitimate explanation in his head why he did it, but sometimes you just forget.
So what I try to do, quite honestly, is not to, I try to be informed without being inundated.
Because you don't have to know every single thing that's going on in the world, and my show doesn't cover every single thing that's going on in the world.
I don't do a traditional run-down news show, like stack, like now this, now this, now this.
It's pretty much a theme, and it is the biggest story of the day, or the hottest topic, or the talker of the day.
And usually we try not to do too many subjects, or we try to make them all relate.
And we don't do a lot of stars.
Traditionally, when Piers was here and when Larry was here, the hours that I'm in now were very star-heavy and focused.
And they didn't do very well.
And so we do water-cooler talk, provocative conversation, have conversations that people will have at home but not necessarily on television, and it's paid off.
And thank goodness.
Our ratings are great, we're doing great, and we're still going.
Because I remember when you did my show way back when, whatever that was, four or five years ago, I think that same week that we met, you had subbed in for Joy Behar over on HLN.
And I remember we were having a drink and you were saying how much you liked that because it gave you a chance to sort of be yourself and get out of the kind of traditional newsman thing.
So are all these decisions in terms of the format and all that, is that all coming directly from you?
A lot of it comes from me and a lot of it comes from the team, our staff, the producers, and our executive producer, Jonathan Wall, who's really great with ideas.
And then I'll have ideas as well.
It depends on the day.
Sometimes, like now, You know, it's a no-brainer.
The president is having this big town hall with Anderson this week.
He did this thing at the White House.
We're going to talk about guns, right?
We're going to talk about executive orders.
And so that's pretty easy.
We're going to talk about what's happening in Oregon.
So sometimes it's just pretty self-explanatory.
It's our show.
It's great to finally have a show And that I don't have to call a newscast, because it's not a newscast.
Although, when it needs to be, we can quickly become a newscast.
When we would go out and about, my parents, I write about this in my book, which is called Transparent, by the way, that I would just talk to everybody.
And, you know, my mom would like come and grab me in the restaurant.
My dad would always say, don't teach him to be afraid of people.
And my mom said after that conversation, she just let me go.
So I would just ask people like, what are you here?
Are you on vacation?
What are you doing?
I've just always been curious.
I don't necessarily think that I wanted to be on television, although I liked it.
Um, I always wanted to be a journalist.
And, you know, people remind me when I go home for holidays or just to visit my family that, you remember when you were in college, you used to bring the camera to school?
Remember we taped this fake show when you were a kid?
Do you remember we used to carry this camera around?
And then, uh, or do you remember we had you anchor our high school?
Listen, my whole thing, and I'm pretty sure you'll agree with me on this, is that we should just have the right, the same right that everybody else has.
It was funny because I was talking to a friend in Chicago, which was before I came to work at CNN, and he said, he goes, I know, people were saying Don Lemon came out.
And he's like, what do you mean Don Lemon came out?
Don Lemon has always been out.
Yeah.
So I've been out since my 20s, but it wasn't something that I talked about on the air or shared publicly.
But my bosses knew I would bring my boyfriends to the Christmas party.
I mean, it wasn't a big deal, but the public didn't know.
I would host events for, like, gay events in Chicago and have you, so I was basically out.
So when people say, you know, "It took you 45 years to come out,"
I'm like, "Well, not really."
I think I had to do it because there was so much confusion.
And when you're in the public eye, I think it's important that you say,
at least when I came out, that you sort of, you had to make a declaration
because it's important for young people who are at home, people who may be struggling, people who may have doubt,
and I want people to know, like, "Hey, you can be a gay person
Yeah, so that's the part that I wanted to talk about, because this is exactly what we talked about four years ago, that there was so much going on with gay rights, there was so much happening at the moment, and in a way, as a public person, it's sort of, you had like this extra pressure of, if I'm going to talk about this on air, I have to be authentic about it, right?
Like, how much of that did you actually really feel?
I started writing a book about, you know, sort of my exploits as a journalist and writing about my childhood and, you know, how I grew up and whatever.
And I just thought it would be disingenuous to write a book like that and not include it.
So it's like, you know, telling everything about your life except for that, you know, one important thing, that one thing that is really important.
It's not all of who I am.
But it is an important part of my life, and I think it's important, again, for other people to be able to see someone like me, or like a Dave Rubin, people who are successful and who just happen to be gay.
So yeah, there was a lot of pressure on me, and there was a lot of pressure, too, as a person of color, to come out.
Well, okay, so we'll delve into some of the racial stuff.
So my last thing on the gay thing is, do you think there is something about gay people in general that there are so many out gay people in news right now?
I mean, you take you and you take- Overachievers.
And Anderson and Rachel Maddow and Thomas Roberts and You know, there's a half-out guy on Fox even.
I don't think, Dave, that those numbers are any different than any other profession.
I think that there have been some people who are brave enough to step up in this profession because I feel that if you're a journalist, you take an oath, much like you do if you have a Juris Doctorate when you become an attorney or you have it when you, you know, you take the medical oath when you become a doctor.
I think that journalists really feel that, you know, you have an obligation to inform people.
You have an obligation to tell the truth.
You have an obligation to be as unbiased and objective as any human being can be.
So I think that when you're in this business, in order to get the truth from people,
in order to be truthful, you have to live who you are.
And you can't put different rules on other people that you put on yourself.
And so I think that maybe people are just more visible because it's a visible medium, obviously.
And I just think that, you know, we sort of take that oath.
But I think there are plenty of gay doctors, there are plenty of gay lawyers, there are plenty of gay politicians, as we have seen.
There are plenty of gay people in the clergy, and on and on and on.
Yeah, so to that point, how often, because I right now in this very second, I have an IFB in my ear just so that I can hear you because it's the nature of how we're doing Skype.
I don't think you have one in, right?
You're just doing Skype off the computer.
But one of the things, yeah, okay, we have proof.
But one of the things I hear all the time, and I think I probably thought this too, is that when you're on cable news or you're on television in general, There's someone in your ear always barking orders at you.
How often is that actually true for you?
That you're doing your broadcast and someone is actually telling you what to say?
And I'm not talking about the technical stuff, cut to commercial.
Well, it's something that we've been talking about here a lot, because one of the things that I'm seeing all the time now, and unfortunately I see this more on the left, is people being misquoted all the time.
And no matter what you say, and so that it's a good segue actually, because I think you in terms of the mainstream media people, you are the victim of this all the time.
I mean, every time I open up Mediite, Don Lemon says this, Don Lemon this, Don Lemon that.
Well, Don, I don't have that kind of time to listen for context.
I have things to do.
But that's exactly what your point is, that they get you on the one-liner, they know that nobody's going to go back and watch the two minutes before or the two minutes after.
So for you, how aware of that do you have to be?
And how much are you thinking the whole time, oh, I better not go there, even though it's what I really believe or it's what I want to say?
Right it's kind of funny because on the social media side you know like I could pick something like when you said the the black hole thing during the the plane thing and you know you're on air for hours you're talking about all of this stuff you're just throwing out you know oh somebody said it could be a black hole like you weren't saying it's in a black hole or what like whatever it is and then next thing you know Don Lemon is trending and all that so you really you really can just put it aside No, I mean, I can, because we, listen, we, I've talked about this ad nauseam.
Yeah, you know, at the top of the show, I did a little piece on how I was saying we need mainstream media, but we also need online media, because I do believe we need both for different reasons and different corporate interests and all that.
I think I think I think we look at the online guy and the mainstream guy.
Before I can say anything on the air as a fact, or, you know, present something, it's gotta go through our fact checkers, it has to go through standards and practices, you know, what our definition of, when we're talking about the guys in Oregon, what our definition of terrorism is, all of those things.
how we confirm things.
We had, the other night when Natalie Cole died, everyone was reporting Natalie Cole died,
but we couldn't get in touch with her publicist because the publicist was busy.
And every time we called, the phone was busy.
The email gets ran.
We could not report that.
CNN would not report that until we heard from an official person.
Online people don't have those, you know, they don't have to climb those hurdles.
And I think that's sad and missing because, listen, we don't have to be first.
We just want to be accurate.
And I wish, like, I wish the online people wanted to be more accurate than first or funny or opinionated.
I feel like I sort of exist in between those two worlds, and I'm just trying to do what you're saying, which is be honest and have honest conversations.
And even though I have one of these things in my ear, nobody's yelling.
What are they telling you now?
Nothing.
They're saying you're doing a hell of a job.
That's what they just said.
So the other thing that I think is interesting about you is that you get heat from both sides.
And I'm not talking about when they misquote you now.
I'm talking about if you say something, for example, about Black Lives Matter.
So if you take a Black Lives Matter, for example, there's a certain amount of racist people who will look at you as a black man and they're gonna just say racist shit that's just gonna come no matter what.
And then there'll be people, when you've said things that haven't been sort of in lockstep with the movement, that'll say you're an Uncle Tom.
And I'm only using that word because when I googled you, it was one of the first words that came up.
But to me, it seems like you're usually doing good stuff when people on both sides are attacking you, and that's what you're getting all the time, right?
And do you find that a lot of it, it's odd that like with the Uncle Tom stuff, that that comes from people on the left, that they would want you, right?
The people on the left, they should see you as an individual, except what they're seeing or what they're complaining about is that you should be this representative of black America or whatever it is.
So, you know, I find that, listen, I get it from all sides, but I find that the people who are most incredulous about things, and many times the most vocal, are liberals.
Right, and then that's exactly where they go, oh, it's because he's getting the information from his ear, which I think you've illustrated is actually not the case.
Okay, so a lot of people have been asking me this on Twitter and I thought you'd be the perfect person to pose this question to.
The way the media frames certain things, so the way the media frames Black Lives Matter versus how the media is now framing this Oregon militia thing.
And we don't have to get into the nitty gritty of every little instance that's happening.
But a lot of people were saying that the media is not calling these Oregon people, they're not calling them terrorists.
And if this was a group of black people, or especially if this was a group of Muslim people, we would be calling them terrorists.
And I was Googling the word terrorism, and it talks about intimidation or violence, not and violence.
And to me, it's a little hazy whether them taking this building, where they had to use no force per se and you know
apparently the building was just open and yes they had guns in its federal property and so on
whether it's actually terrorism and would the media be treating it differently if it was either
So I actually wrote an editorial saying that it was terrorism in my editorial for the Tom Joyner Morning Show.
And so, you know, it was read by someone here at CNN and they said, well, our definition of terrorism here at CNN is different, is that it has to be political.
And it's many of the people whose land was saved by the government helping them out years ago, and now they want to reclaim it and get the money back, more money than was already given to them.
They're just ignorant of the law.
If this was a building that mattered in the middle of a city that mattered, the reaction would be completely different.
So one thing that you've done that I really appreciate because it comes completely with the spirit of how I've done this show is you've really tried to build bridges with people that perhaps some might think you shouldn't get along with or you shouldn't talk with.
So I've seen you a couple times with Glenn Beck.
And I was tweeting up a storm the first time I saw it because I thought, this is exactly what the news is supposed to be.
This is what, not reporting, but this is what conversation is supposed to be.
You guys come from very different places.
He's a pure libertarian, I suppose.
Your politics are different.
And you're just trying to have the conversation.
And that's what I'm trying to do here.
And I thought it was pretty beautiful.
So I guess I don't even know what my question is as much as I want to see more of that.
So, you know, especially coming from an African-American background, African-Americans are pretty liberal in some things and also very conservative and many times conservative socially when it comes to the church.
So, you know, you know, for people to sit there and pretend like, oh, we're these big liberals and they're not, and then you don't accept gay people.
And then so.
It's not true.
So I'm not, I am not political.
So when you say my politics are different, it's not.
I will listen, I think the only way, especially if it's someone you don't agree with or if you consider them your enemy or not on your side, don't you want to know what they're thinking?
I don't understand when people say, I am never going to talk to them!
How would you dare sit down?
You know how much crap I got?
Because I sat down twice with Darren Wilson.
And I almost got the interview.
It was between me, George Stephanopoulos, and one other person.
I forget who it was.
And we almost, you know, George ended up getting the interview.
I got so much guff because I wanted to do an interview with him.
It's like, don't you want to hear from him?
Even if you don't agree with him, especially if you don't agree with him, you want to hear his rationale and his reasoning.
So it has never made sense to me to not talk to someone who you disagree with now.
That said, I think that people should be respectful and they should be in their right minds, you know, before you or when you're talking to them.
Yeah, well, interestingly, I wasn't even gonna bring this up, but a couple months ago, maybe two months ago or so, you had Sam Harris, who's been on my show, who's become a friend of mine, and Dean Obadala were on, and they were debating this Islam and sort of, you know, religion versus people thing.
And in the midst of it, Dean said something that I knew to be, you know, implying that Sam believed something about all Muslims.
And I knew it to be not true because I had sat there with Sam and rehashed it.
He's rehashed it a thousand times.
And while it was infuriating for me to watch, I thought, all right,
And when you have great minds like, you know, Fareed Zakaria or Sam Harris or whomever who say, yes, there is a problem that must be addressed in Islam and we have to figure out how to do it.
When you have great minds like that, those are the people that you should listen to.
When you have people who say there is no problem, And by you saying this, then you are Islamophobic.
That person is very dangerous because the evidence is there.
It doesn't mean that people in that religion are bad.
It doesn't mean that Islam is bad.
It doesn't mean that Muslims are bad.
It doesn't mean that because we talk about crime in Chicago that is committed mostly by African Americans.
It doesn't mean that African Americans are bad or that black people are bad.
It means that we're just having those conversations.
And so we have to stop that.
And, you know, that's I think that's why I can talk to someone like a Glenn Beck is because, you know, I want to I would rather have common ground with people or try to reach some sort of common ground or consensus rather than just having them an enemy, keeping them at arm's length and not being at the table.
So is that really, though, the secret sauce to what he's doing, that the rest of these guys, all of them, pretty much, I would argue that Bernie probably is not, because Bernie does seem like he's speaking from the heart, and he speaks in a way that doesn't sound like a politician, but pretty much the rest of them, they all just sound like politicians, and people are over that.
And because of that, even when Trump says crazy stuff, it makes people like him.
We have this thing that's eating itself constantly with him.
So, how much do you think... One of my major issues is when I watch something... Are we on live, by the way?
No, we're not live, we're not live.
When I watch something like the, you know, the Press Club, the yearly thing where the media gets together and roasts the politicians and all... What's it called?
Not the Press Club, the... White House Correspondents' Dinner.
The White House Correspondents' Dinner, thanks.
When I watch all of this stuff, and even I saw you a couple weeks ago in the spin room at the debate in Vegas, we were at the Democratic debate there, and I've been around it a little more lately, One of the things that I really do fear is that the media and the politicians are just in it too tightly.
That people are just too friendly with each other.
We have so many instances of people that are married to people on television, and they're the kids of this one, or the uncle of that one, on all of this stuff.
I'm pretty sure no one in your family is pulling strings in politics, right?
I don't know if I would call it a threat to democracy.
I do see it as...
It's a little fake and phony to me.
Like, you know, it was great going to, you know, being invited to the White House Correspondent Center, but it was a lot more fun when I was covering it and I can make fun of people.
First time I went to the White House Christmas party, right?
And because I knew the Obamas from Chicago and it was it's tough and I said this before like when you know someone people I didn't know them that well they weren't my best friends but I knew them from around the way right from I was a local news anchor, and they were there.
And I would introduce them at chicken dinners, like, you know, State Senator Barack Obama.
And then his wife would always say, oh, Don, stay out of trouble.
And I'm like, who, me?
Why?
So to have to sort of criticize him on policy and things, at first, it was uncomfortable.
And I'm like, well, he's the president.
And the buck stops with him.
So I've got to, you know, and he's black or whatever.
I've got to do it.
I'm a journalist.
I took an oath.
And so when I saw him sort of in an informal context and not like throwing questions at him
or seeing him at the NABJ and like yelling across the room, like, "How are you gonna handle this?"
And having him yell back.
When I had to go and like shake their hand and take a picture with them, I was like,
But it was a little weird, and I felt like, I don't know if I should be that close to, in this sort of situation, to be partying with the president, or for that matter, partying with some of the people, you know, when you go to the Oscars and all those things.
I don't know.
I just feel like, I kind of feel like Wendy Williams, right, who sits on her purple chair, and she, like, talks smack about everybody.
And then when they see her, or when she sees him, she's like, oh, girl.
Yeah, but don't you think that more of you guys need that sense?
Because I totally feel like everybody, you know, and it's not just, I don't mean just at the friendly level, but, you know, we don't have to, I'm not trying to, you know, name names or out people here, but there are plenty of anchors that literally used to work on campaigns for presidents.
So I should tell everybody that right before we started the recording here, you said to me, what are we going to talk about?
And I said to you that I knew with you, I wasn't going to have to, you know, a lot of times I'll tell my guests, oh, we're going to touch on these kind of things.
But I knew with you that you were going to be cool with that.
So I hope that that alone, I want my audience to know that, because I hope that alone will dispel some of this stuff about sort of how a lot of you guys have to operate, or at least how you have to operate.
Because the person that I know off the camera is the same guy that I know right this second.
Yeah, do you ever bite your tongue, though, related to the fact that you want these guys to come on again?
Because even when I was in the spin room talking to their representatives, not even the candidates, I did feel a little bit of, you know, I had Huckabee's campaign manager.
That sort of brings it back to where we started, this sort of online versus mainstream media thing, because I'll see a lot of times the online guys who aren't interviewing these people, who are just commentating on it.
They'll be like, ah, Lemon didn't attack him for this, or he didn't do this or that.
And it's like, well, guess what?
He's the one that actually has to stand there, do it, get another interview in the future, figure out how to get truth from people that aren't going to give you much truth.
And usually, you know, sometimes the first time I wake up is because an alarm goes off and it's time for my editorial call.
And the first thing that's on my mind every day is, well, what am I going to put on TV today?
That is pretty freaking awesome.
So I'm in a really great spot.
I live every moment in gratitude.
I am very happy.
I'm content.
I'm not complacent.
So I'm going to enjoy this for the moment.
And I would have to say that the next thing, if I could think about it, but best laid plans, right?
It's probably a show that is more Bill Maher or Chelsea Handler-ish or something like that, where I can actually Give a point of view and actually say, like, you said shit or whatever it is that you said.