Former CNN anchor Don Lemon is suing billionaire Elon Musk, alleging the tech billionaire canceled a deal between them following a tense interview.
Lemon filed the lawsuit Thursday against Musk and X, formerly Twitter, alleging Musk agreed to pay Lemon $1.5 million annually to produce exclusive videos on the platform before backing out, The New York Times reported.
After CNN fired him in 2023, Lemon struck a deal with Musk to host videos on the X platform. In March, Lemon interviewed Musk for his first video, where he challenged his racist posts, including when Musk retweeted a post about “great replacement theory.”
“Great replacement theory is a neo-Nazi trope,” Lemon told Musk in the interview. “It’s in the neo-Nazi manifesto... It’s referenced by the Buffalo mass shooter in his manifesto, where 10 Black people were murdered in Buffalo. It’s the actual title of the Christchurch shooter’s manifesto. Fifty-one people in the Muslim mosque were murdered.”
Musk responded, “If I quote something, that doesn’t mean I agree with everything in it. It’s just something that I want... I think... this is something people should consider.”
Musk is also currently being sued for defamation by a 22-year-old Jewish man after Musk falsely accused the recent college graduate of being a federal agent involved in a neo-Nazi brawl.
Following the interview, Musk canceled Lemon’s show.
Lemon didn’t sign a contract over the agreement, alleging Musk told him in a phone call there would be no need to “fill out paperwork,” according to the lawsuit.
“X executives used Don to prop up their advertising sales pitch,” Carney Shegerian, a lawyer for Lemon, said in a statement to the Times, “then canceled their partnership and dragged Don’s name through the mud,”