CNN Guest Mocks Don Lemon for His Awkward Comment About Women in Their ‘Prime’

CNN’s Don Lemon and the controversial remark he made about women in their “prime” went unmentioned on the network for almost all of Friday. Then Overtime with Bill Maher showed up at 11:30 p.m.

On Thursday, Lemon authored a few moments of cringe when he reacted to Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, who is 51, calling for “mandatory mental competency tests” for politicians over 75.

Haley’s proposal was a not-so-veiled shot at President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

“This whole talk about age makes me uncomfortable,” Lemon told his CNN This Morning co-hosts Kaitlan Collins and Poppy Harlow. I think it’s the wrong road to go down. She says people, you know, politicians are suddenly not in their prime. Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry. When a woman is considered to be in her prime in [her] 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”

“Prime for what?” Harlow asked.

“It depends,” he responded. It’s just like, prime. If you look it up, if you Google, “When is a woman in her prime,” it’ll say “20s, 30s, and 40s.”

Lemon told Harlow to “Google it.”

Not surprisingly, his remarks prompted outrage, which in turn elicited some contrition from Lemon on a conference call with CNN’s newsroom on Friday morning.

Later that evening, Overtime aired on CNN for the third time since it was announced last month the afterword to HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher would air exclusively on CNN going forward.

Bill Maher and his panel took questions from viewers, one of whom cited Haley’s idea of competency tests.

“I wonder who that’s aimed at,” Maher joked. “Both of them, right?”

“I think it’s both,” replied MSNBC’s Ari Melber. “I think she’s trolling. It allows her to draw attention to Biden. She’s in a Republican primary, but it’s a subtle hit on Trump.”

At one point, ABC News contributor Sarah Isgur took a shot at Lemon.

“And as Don Lemon told us on CNN, women actually can’t run for president because he said we’re past our prime once we get to our 40s,” Isgur said. “But since you have to be 35 to run, it’s like this really tight window between 35 and 40.”

Watch above via CNN.

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