Stephen Colbert Slams Don Lemon for Wearing a HOODIE on CNN’s Revamped Breakfast Show

Comedian Stephen Colbert criticized CNN host Don Lemon on Thursday for wearing a hoodie with sweatpants and a jacket on his new morning show.

During his show on Thursday night, the prankster snapped a photo of Lemon in the outfit he wore on air for his new CNN This Morning concert earlier in the day, saying: “As a wise man once said: ‘¿ What the hell is that?”

Colbert then continued to taunt Lemon, telling him that he has some explaining to do, which Lemon tried to do on his morning show the next day.

He revealed that his new bosses at CNN had asked him to be more casual when he took over the station’s morning show, which was billed as a “different morning show” in a promo featuring Lemon in a turtleneck.

On his Thursday night Late Show, Colbert decided to mock Lemon’s outfit choice, despite calling him “dear friend.”

“I was looking this morning and I was kind of surprised because I wasn’t expecting this,” Colbert said, before directing his team to show a photo of Lemon in very casual attire.

“I know they want to add some comedy to CNN,” the comedian continued, referring to a proposal to add a late-night show on the network, “and this is hilarious.”

‘But how do you report the news with that team? How do you talk about tragedy using that, because what could be more tragic than that look he had this morning? Colbert sneered.

He then went on to compare Lemon’s looks to “a high school track teacher who went for a run but then got a little hungry and stopped at a diner.”

‘But it was too nice a restaurant and they said, ‘Excuse me sir, you have to wear a jacket.’ So he stole a Guys and Dolls’ jacket, Colbert joked, referring to a musical set in the 1950s.

He concluded, ‘Don, you have a lot to answer for.’

To her credit, Lemon accepted the challenge on CNN This Morning the next day, describing her casual outfit as a Rorschach test where people see what they want to see.

“So look, I love Stephen Colbert,” the embattled CNN host began.

But, he said: ‘It was interesting, I didn’t expect that reaction.

“For me, it was like a Rorschach test to wear that outfit,” she said as she tried to defend the look.

“First of all, it’s not a sweatshirt or whatever,” Lemon stated. She is a sweater that has a hood.

At the time, Lemon revealed that when he took over the job as co-anchor of CNN This Morning, his bosses asked him to “chill out and get more comfortable and get on with what’s going on in the world.”

“Right now, people don’t wear suits as much,” he said, after showing a montage of him in different colored suits over the years. A lot has changed since the pandemic, right?

“So I found it interesting that there was such a reaction, because online I got a lot of backlash.”

Lemon then turned to her co-host, Kaitlinn Collins, saying she now understands what it’s like to be a woman when they get “comments about her skirt, her hair, you name it.”

“Men are never that vetted,” she said, before directing her comments directly at Colbert, saying, “I think [you should] have fun with comedy.

“I think if Barack Obama can be criticized for wearing a tan suit, if Volodomyr Zelensky can fight a war in a hoodie, if Trayvon Martin can start a revolution in a hoodie, then Don Lemon could tell the news with a hooded sweater,” he said. reclaimed.

“So Stephen, I love you, I’m glad you started this conversation, but it’s like a Rorschach test.”

Lemon had previously promised to show viewers of the new morning show a “younger, funnier” version of himself, a stark contrast to the hard-line Americans they were used to.

But in an announcement for the new show, Collins tells Lemon, 56, and co-anchor Poppy Harlow, 40, that she was “a freshman” when they started at CNN in 2006 and 2008, respectively.

‘Institute of secondary education?’ Harlow asks.

“Actually, I think it was in eighth grade,” replies Collins, 30, to the surprise of his older co-hosts.

The exchange is then followed by a dialogue montage between the morning’s future hosts, outlining their philosophy for the show.

“A morning show is like when people walk into a restaurant,” says Lemon. “You go in and get as much news as you can, then you start your day.”

On-screen text continues throughout the promo, highlighting each part of the trio’s conversation, when, at one point, the ‘conversation’ overlaps the video.

“People’s time is so valuable that if they spend 15 minutes watching the news, that’s a lot of time,” says Collins.

“We need to cover more of what’s happening across America,” Harlow adds, then continues moments later with “People just want to be heard.”

“It’s really about the conversation,” Lemon concluded.

“We are the place for precision and we are the place for context.”

The move to replace ‘New Day’ and take Lemon out of prime time was one of new CEO Chris Licht’s most high-profile decisions as he seeks to steer the outlet away from ‘partisan, opinion-based news’ and hosts who criticize the conservatives and the Republican Party.

Lemon, a strong critic of former President Trump and the Republicans, has previously called Trump “the biggest snowflake of all” after the 2021 White House raid on January 6.

He also spoke extensively about voter fraud after the 2020 presidential election, claiming that Trump and the Republicans were feeding GOP supporters “bullshit.”

Lemon added to his criticism of networks that continue to cover Trump despite not being the active president.

“It was frustrating to say the least, not that I didn’t commit to doing it in prime time. But after Donald Trump was no longer president and we had a war in the Ukraine, that changed our focus from what we were doing in prime time, which was not starting every night with a monologue about Donald Trump and how bad he was and how terrible he was. . things were on the field,’ he said.

“So I was ready to move on and I think the audience is ready to move on as well,” Lemon continued.

He has worked at CNN for 16 of his 40 years in journalism and served as co-moderator of the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate.

But when CNN This Morning aired in November, the show debuted to fewer than 390,000 viewers.

Those numbers are dismal compared to the show’s competition, including “Morning Joe” on MSNBC, which drew 793,000 viewers. ‘FOX and Friends’ saw 1.5 million viewers.

“CNN This Morning” also debuted with 50,000 fewer viewers on average than “New Day,” with only 71,000 viewers considered the network’s demographic.

During its final show, ‘New Day’ drew just over 350,000. That number only saw 75,000 of the network’s core demographic of adults 25-54.

On November 1, “Morning Joe” had 114,000 in the same category and “FOX and Friends” saw 236,000.

Before it started losing viewers en masse, the show averaged 413,000 viewers in 2022.