Former CNN host Don Lemon said his old network has only itself to blame after President Donald Trump barred CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House on Friday, Sept. 18, 2026.
“It’s their own fault,” Lemon said in other remarks. “They sort of ushered this in by bending the knee and putting on MAGA folks.”
In remarks reported alongside that comment, Lemon said of Trump: “He’s going to kick you out of the White House right along with everyone else who doesn’t write favorable things about him no matter how much you kiss his a**.”
A reaction to the ban also came from Jim Acosta, who likewise used to host a show on CNN. The two of them returned to the worries each had voiced over the network’s treatment of Trump, and both are treating the White House ban as proof of the warnings they say they gave.
Lemon and Acosta Respond
Lemon and Acosta discussed the ban together on the Monday, Sept. 21, episode of “The Don Lemon Show,” Lemon’s independent program. “I hate to tell them, but, we told you so!” Lemon said. Acosta replied, “We did. We told them.”
“I want to feel bad for them, but it’s kind of their own making,” Lemon said on the same episode. Recalling his warning to CNN, he said: “You’re next! If you allow this to happen, you are next.” Acosta said of the network’s approach to Trump, “Appeasement does not work. It does not work.”
Lemon said CNN management had wanted to move the network to the right and make it “more like Fox.” He recalled pressing executives with questions such as “What is our election denier policy? What is our insurrection denier policy?” He objected to airtime for Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, “who comes on and he just lies about it.”
Acosta pointed to CNN’s decision to put conservative commentator Scott Jennings on the payroll, calling him “basically a paid Trump spokesman,” and argued the courtship had bought the network nothing.
How the Ban Unfolded
Trump announced the ban on Truth Social, saying he was “banning Fake News CNN, MSNOW … and Politico … from the White House” over what he called their “FAKE NEWS.” No specific story was cited by the president. Reporters from the three outlets found themselves turned away a day later, and their White House hard passes revoked.
The three outlets sued on Sept. 21, arguing the ban violated the First and Fifth Amendments. Access was temporarily restored on Sept. 24 by U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee. Acosta’s own White House press pass had been ordered restored in 2018 by that same judge.
On Sept. 24, during Xi Jinping’s state visit and hours after the judge ordered access restored, Trump wrote on Truth Social that CNN and MS NOW “have refused today to cover one of the most important and beautiful events that have taken place in many years.” He said the reception was “made for television” and said the networks did not want to give him credit because they are “fake news.”
CNN said it had submitted a reporter, producer and camera crew, but was told about an hour before Xi’s arrival that it could send only a photojournalist and audio technician.
Following the revocation of access, other outlets mounted a press boycott on Monday, Sept. 21. There was no television press pool coverage of Trump after Fox News said it would halt all coverage of the president in solidarity with CNN, and outlets including HuffPost refused to run photos of Trump taken that day. There was no audio of Trump’s speech that day at a South Lawn ribbon-cutting ceremony.
That Monday evening, the administration launched “Trump TV,” a 24/7 video stream dedicated to the president. Critics compared it to state-run television in North Korea, Russia and China.
CNN was shut out of the press pool by the White House two days later, when Air Force One carried Trump on his trip to Knoxville, Tennessee.
In a later episode of his show, Lemon said of Trump: “I’m not against Donald Trump. I’m not against a person in general. I’m against lies. I don’t like his policies. I don’t like the way he treats people.” He added: “You think that I’m against him just because I’m liberal or you think that I’m liberal, because I’m not. I’m an independent.”
From Primetime to Exit
CNN hired Lemon in 2006, gave him a primetime slot in 2014 and moved him to mornings in late 2022, where he became a co-anchor of “CNN This Morning.” On Monday, April 24, 2023, he announced the end of that run, saying his agent had passed along the news that morning and that the announcement had left him stunned.
“After 17 years at CNN, I would have thought that someone in management would have had the decency to tell me directly,” Lemon said in a written statement. Chris Licht was running CNN at the time, and the network disputed his account that same day, saying a meeting with management had been offered to him and that he had put out a statement instead.
In February 2023, Lemon was criticized for saying on the air that Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley, then 51, was not “in her prime”; he apologized. In early April 2023, Variety reported workplace misconduct accusations against Lemon, which his representatives denied.
Fox News announced the ouster of Fox News host Tucker Carlson the same day as Lemon’s exit. On “The Daily Show,” Fox’s decision to cut loose its most popular anchor left guest host Desi Lydic marveling.
A history lesson took up roughly 20 minutes of MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s Monday program, with the host tracing a line from 1930s radio priest Father Charles Coughlin through Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly. “Whoever is dominant for their time gets smaller and smaller and smaller over time,” Maddow said on her program. That night, “Maddow” drew 2,734,000 total viewers, according to Nielsen, edging Fox News’ “Hannity” at 2,531,000. CNN was regularly finishing third among the cable news networks in 2023.
Paramount Skydance has agreed to buy CNN, a Warner Bros. Discovery property, as part of its pending acquisition of the company. His own show is what Lemon hosts now, and he is fighting federal charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty, stemming from his coverage of a January 2026 anti-ICE protest at a St. Paul, Minnesota, church. A move to a midnight time slot was what Acosta, who built his profile at the network sparring with Trump, declined to accept when he left in January 2025.
