Don Lemon made his first prolonged feedback since he was fired from CNN, telling podcast host Kara Swisher that he feels “vindicated” following the exit of CNN management after his departure.

Lemon was let go from the community’s morning present in April. However in June, CNN boss Chris Licht himself was proven the door, following the publication of an embarrassing profile in The Atlantic and a workers backlash over the way in which {that a} city corridor with former President Donald Trump was dealt with.

“Read the story, and you speak to the people who are there, and I think people get what happened,” Lemon advised Swisher. “All you have to do is read The Atlantic story. Read the subsequent stories that came out, and you know, how it played out, and they are gone now. So do I feel vindicated in that sense? yes, I do.”

Lemon additionally had phrases of reward for Licht’s predecessor, Jeff Zucker, who he stated was “the best news executive who I have ever worked for” in his profession.

In February, Lemon apologized to staffers and on Twitter amid an argument over feedback he made on the morning present, by which he recommended that presidential candidate Nikki Haley was not “in her prime,” earlier than speaking about when girls are thought of to be of their prime.

Lemon returned to the air after a number of days. However he advised Swisher that he was “never allowed to address the issue on the air. I wish that I could but I was never allowed to.” He additionally recommended that Zucker would have dealt with the state of affairs otherwise.

“He understood that when you are in those conversations, just as in your regular conversations that you have across the dinner table or in a restaurant, you don’t always say things perfectly. You’re not going to say that on television. He was very supportive of us, and he wanted us to, not necessarily to be provocative, but just be ourselves. And if we got something wrong, we apologized, we explained it and he supported us and we moved on. It doesn’t have to be the end of the world or a big issue, unless you are looking for a reason to get rid of someone.”

Lemon stated that “when I was there, I was not a part of their strategy.” He stated that Licht and his workforce “wanted to be centrist and they wanted to move the network in a certain direction, which was kind of a bit surprising because I think the news is the news and you don’t choose a direction. It just is.”

Lemon stated that he and Zucker have been on trip collectively earlier this summer time. CNN is now led by a four-person interim workforce, however there was hypothesis that father or mother Warner Bros. Discovery, dealing with an enormous debt load, would look to promote the community.

“I think the best person to run CNN was and would be Jeff Zucker,” Lemon stated. “Do I think he’s going to go back? No. Do I think he’s going to buy it? You’d have to ask him. I doubt it. I don’t talk to him about those things. But why would he, in this environment, and considering what’s happening now? I mean, why would he want to go back and why would he subject himself to that.”

Lemon stated that “especially over the next 14 months, I expect to have a voice so stay tuned for that.”

“I want to do something next that scares the s— out of me,” he stated. “I had a very successful career in cable news for a very long time. I got to do and say exactly what I wanted to. I have and had a very important voice that most people get to hear on that platform, and still don’t. But I am going to lean in to the future of this medium and do something that scares me.”

Pressed by Swisher on particulars, Lemon stated, “i would like to be able to reach a bigger and different audience. I don’t want to keep preaching to the choir. And I don’t want to keep preaching to a diminishing audience.”

Lemon stated that what he does might be “extra that one platform if I resolve to do it. As you already know, I don’t must rush again to work. It’s time for me to determine it out. I simply don’t need my voice to be misplaced over the subsequent 14 months.