CNN's Don Lemon

CNN's Don Lemon responds to Dave Chappelle call-out in new special

Dave Chappelle just released an intimate new special, “8:46,” on Netflix, where he discusses George Floyd and other police brutality victims, America’s history of racism, and more. During the course of the special he mentions CNN anchor Don Lemon, who previously called out celebrities for “sitting in your mansions and doing nothing” as protests against Floyd’s killing raged across the country. “Where are you?” Lemon asked. “Why aren’t you fighting for these young people? If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it?…When the hell are you going to do it?”

In his special, Chappelle says, “I’m watching Don Lemon, that hotbed of reality. He says, where are all these celebrities? Why aren’t you all talking? Does it matter about celebrity? No. This is the streets talking for themselves. They don’t need me right now. I kept my mouth shut and I will still keep my mouth shut.”

As Deadline reports, Lemon responded to Chappelle this morning on CNN’s New Day. “I think that the young people who are out there in the streets don’t really care what we have to say,” Lemon said. “They think that part of the world that we created and what we did, maybe we didn’t move fast enough and maybe we weren’t strong enough. So they are out there fighting and said, ‘Listen, we are tired of what is happening. We tried to do it nicely and we tried to do it peacefully and we have tried to do all these things and you rejected it.’ They are not only speaking to white people in this country but all of us in the establishment. So I agree with him in that way.”

“But I do think that this is not a moment for modesty,” Lemon continued. “I think that this is a moment that we should all be using our platform to do whatever we can, and at least to show young people and those out there that we support them, and it doesn’t mean taking all of the credit for it or speaking out for them. I think they can do that on their own… But I think they need to know that people like Dave Chappelle or people like me or whoever supports them. And that’s all they need to know.”

“We should all be challenged,” Lemon said, noting the irony in Chappelle “using this platform to talk about this” with the special.