‘Shut the F* Up!’ Don Lemon Torches Media for Biden Hysteria
Don Lemon launched a furious broadside at colleagues in the press still covering former President Joe Biden‘s 2024 campaign while failing to hold the current president, Donald Trump, properly accountable.
In an extended monologue on The Don Lemon Show, broadcast on YouTube, the former CNN anchor lambasted ongoing media hand-wringing over its coverage of Biden’s age and cognitive decline, calling it a distraction.
“Stop criticizing yourself and stop defining yourself by your critics,” Lemon said. “Get out in front, tell them to shut the fuck up and focus on the guy who’s in office right now that they voted in, their guy who is not doing a great job.”
He continued: “There is a person in the White House now who is tweeting at three in the morning about Taylor Swift and Beyonce, who is crashing the economy, who is crushing the stock market, who is ruining people’s lives. And people who are not qualified to be in the positions that he nominated them for or he has picked them for. And yet we are concerned about Joe Biden, who’s not in the office.”
Pushing back on claims that reporters “fell down on the job” and failed to cover Biden’s age or health when it mattered, he defended those who did confront Biden during his presidency, including himself, but said the current media pile-on is disingenuous and opportunistic.
He said: “No, not all reporters fell done on the jobs because in the time where it was appropriate, even before people were discussing it or they were afraid to discuss it, there were some of us who were in the news media, who were in corporate media, who were not afraid to ask the question, as I did back even before the midterms, taking off on Joe Biden’s own take saying that he was going to be a transformational figure, that he may only run for one term. His age, according to him, was even a concern. And so there were some of us who asked the questions. Not all journalists fell down on the job.”
Lemon reserved praise for voices like MSNBC’s Symone Sanders and streamer Olivia Julianna, who he said cut through the noise when others wanted to “sell books.”
He said: “When the opportunity presented itself to question and criticize Joe Biden — that opportunity presented itself when Joe Biden was in office — and if you didn’t do it when you had the opportunity or when it mattered, then you fell down on the job. That’s not Joe Biden’s fault.”
“And if you allowed Joe Biden aides or people around him to diminish or question your own journalism, that’s your problem,” he quipped.
“Why are we focusing on this?” Lemon continued. “And why are we talking about an old man who has cancer, prostate cancer? Why are you kicking someone when they are down? It’s absolutely ridiculous. The history books will show if they believe that Joe Biden was selfish if they believe Joe Biden should have dropped out. Perhaps he should have but that is not the question right now. That is in the fucking rear view mirror. What are you doing? I don’t get it.”
“When you had the opportunity to do the big J capital of journalism, you didn’t,” he said. “Wasn’t even a small J. It was an S – for scared.”
Watch above via YouTube.
