When Don Lemon was fired by CNN in the most public of ways, it was his faith that carried him through, he said in an exclusive interview with Baptist News Global.
“I’m a person of faith. I have very strong people around me,” he said. “My family, my husband, my mother, my sister and my nieces and people who love me and, and my dear friends who love me, who are my extended family, and they take care of me, and they make sure that I’m going to be OK. I don’t know if I had to recover from anything. I just had to figure it out. It was a transition.”
He continued: “I just put one foot in front of the other, you know, like my priest used to say. One foot in front of the other. I try to have good people around me who can help me. I try to plan for the future, and then I focus on what is in front of me. … I just try to focus on what’s next.”
What’s next for him right now is his own news show on the X platform at 5:00 p.m. weekdays. In a sign of the rapidly changing media landscape, the former CNN anchor is choosing to go directly to his audience.
Tim Malone and Don Lemon attend the 2024 Time100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 25, 2024, in New York City. (Photo by Taylor Hill/FilmMagic)
“I want to keep people informed,” he said. “I want to speak to people because I care about people. I really love what I do, and I think it’s important, especially in this time that I’m doing it. I thought about taking an entire year off. I took six months off and then I started working toward my own show.”
One big motivator, he said, is his love for democracy. “I wanted to have an informed electorate before the next election. I know you hear it all the time, that this is the most important and the most crucial election of our lifetime. I really do believe that, and I deeply care about our democracy. I’m not a political person. I know it’s hard for people to believe that because they think I am, because I’m so strong on my point of view when it comes to our political leaders, especially the former president.”
Growing up in rural Louisiana, Lemon not only had to overcome generational poverty but had to hide his sexuality until he was an adult. It was his Christian faith that guided him even through that season of his life and still guides him now, he said.
“To achieve what I’ve achieved, to move away from home at a young age and go out on my own into the big city, and to challenge myself to do things and, to accomplish things that many people have not. I didn’t have wealthy or rich parents. I just had faith in God, and I had faith in myself. I believed in myself. And so, my faith has informed me of everything.
“I got to a point when I was writing my first book, when I had to tell the truth regarding my sexuality. My faith teaches me not to lie and not to be a hypocrite. I left home because of my sexuality. In revealing my sexuality, I wanted the LGBTQ community to understand they are not an abomination.”
Lemon recently married his longtime partner, Tim Malone.
Their wedding was in a church on purpose, he said. “I wanted to do it in a church because of my faith. I want people to know that God accepts them. And so, I wanted to do it in a church for that reason. I also wanted to make sure that the legal part of it made a statement that same-sex marriage should be legal. So we got married in a church, which a lot of gay people don’t. They usually do it in some sort of banquet hall or in a hotel or wherever. We did it in a church because we wanted our faith to be on display. My husband is also a man of faith.
Throughout a turbulent year of transition, faith is a recurring theme in Lemon’s life. And he won’t hide that any more than he will hide his sexuality today, he said.
“My faith informs me on my job and in how I lead my life. It’s why I’ve been able to do what I do.”