On Friday’s CNN Tonight, Don Lemon did an emotional segment about Kevin Hart’s Ellen interview. In it, he criticized the comedian for not apologizing and for portraying himself as a victim and urged him to become an ally of the LGBTQ community. Tonight, Lemon revisited the topic with another Kevin Hart-themed segment.
The CNN anchor revealed that Hart had reached out to him over the weekend, and the two had a lengthy off-the-record phone conversation in which Hart declined Lemon’s repeated requests to come on his show. While Lemon would bot disclose details about the discussion beyond the general topics, he dissected some comments Hart made earlier today on his Sirius XM radio show, which included an apology to the LGBT community.
Lemon was generally pleased with the apology — while questioning Hart’s repeated use of expletives — but took issue with Hart’s direct response to his on-air appeal from Friday, which he played.
“I don ‘t like the forcing,” Hart said in it. “I don’t like, like Don Lemon goes on CNN, and he’s like, You can fix this, become an ally’. It’s not my dream.””
“He doesn’t want to be an ally of the LGBT community, that’s his right — whether I like it not not, whether you like it or not,” Lemon said. “There has been a lot of blowback, Kevin backed out from hosting the Oscars, and on some level you can understand for him that it feels like he is under attack. But I can tell you for me, as I relate to him, he’s not a victim.”
In all fairness, while Hart did say that being an ally of the LGBTQ community was not his lifetime dream, he made another statement on his radio show that painted him in a similar position; it was not used by Lemon. “If the fight from the LGBTQ community is equality, that’s the fight,” Hart said. “I’m riding with you guys. I understand you.”
Here is Lemon’s monologue:
d
Must Read Stories
Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.