There’s nothing like a couple of washed up, former TV liberal pontificators bloviating about how conservative voices shouldn’t be allowed on TV news. That was one of the major topics disgraced former CNN host Don Lemon and former Washington Post columnist/MSNBC talking head Perry Bacon Jr. discussed on the former’s podcast on Thursday. According to them, having conservative voices reach the American people was “dangerous” and “not the moment we're in now” as a country.
Amid their gripe session targeting Fox News, Lemon suggested that the network was “dangerous.” Perry said he wasn’t generally opposed to “ideologically-based media” but insisted that Fox News was “problematic.”
Bacon went on the whine and say he rejected the comparison between his former employers at MSNBC and Fox News:
BACON: Like I always reject the analogy between Fox News and MSNBC.
MSNBC is a is a left-oriented network that has reporters, and you – You just put on a tweet from one of the MSNBC reporters a second ago, Ken Delaney, I think it's his last.
LEMON: Delanian. Yeah.
BACON: He's a very reliable person, like MSNB you know, whatever you think about the sort of ideology of MSNBC, they have fair – there's a fairly fact-based network, and that is not what Fox's project is.
“They've had lawsuits about that and so on. It's like a different – so it is bad to we have a network like Fox,” he proclaimed, obfuscating important facts.
Like Fox News did with Dominion Voting Systems, sortly before doing to trial earlier this year, MSNBC settled a defamation suit with a Dr. Mahendra Amin after the network erroneously claimed he was performing medically unnecessary hysterectomies on illegal immigrant women. Internal MSNBC messages showed they had strong suspicions the claims were false, but they ran with them anyway.
NewsBusters spoke with the legal team representing Dr. Amin. You can read about that here.
Further in the podcast, Lemon read from a recent op-ed Bacon wrote where he griped about conservative pundit Scott Jennings growing in popularity and becoming an important voice at CNN, particularly on CNN’s NewsNight with Abby Phillip (Click “expand”):
And then he said, “Eight years later, another talented journalist, Abby Phillip,” I agree, “helms, the 10 p.m. hour on CNN. But the program now nearly always includes some pro-Trump guests mouthing the president's talking points and downplaying his radicalism. In many ways, the star of the NewsNight with Abby Phillip is conservative pundit Scott Jennings, a regular on the show whose back and forth with liberal guests often go viral.”
Now, I haven't watched, so I don't know. Keep, keep scrolling. So, I'd have to watch to make an assessment about that.
“CNN's 10 p.m. program,” and this is what the meat of it, “is a microcosm of a broader monumental shift in America over the last eight years. Key institutions are accommodating and adapting to Trump rather than challenging him. Trump is more aggressive than eight years ago, but his authoritarian tendencies were fully on display then too. The Democratic Party today is, as in 2017, vacillates between aggressively confronting Trump and trying to appeal to pro-Trump swing voters. There is a strong grassroots anti-Trump movement led by groups such as Indivisible.” And then you go on.
After venting about President Trump calling the media the “enemy of the people,” Bacon added on to his op-ed by huffing about Phillip allowing conservatives to literally have a seat at her table:
I respect Abby's, and I know Abby and Abby's a friend. I think about that, but that program, the times I watch it is much more of an exchange where it's sort of like, it's a little bit both sides, you know, we're trying to give everybody a voice and I just think that's not the moment we're in now.
Of course, that wasn’t entirely accurate as Phillip usually allowed her far-left guests to attack and smear the conservatives with impunity while often interrupting the conservative target.
Earlier in the show, Bacon claimed that Trump was “acting like someone guilty” when it came to the Jeffrey Epstein story. He also admitted that the media was trying to will into existence ties between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin by pushing the Russia collusion hoax:
Let's be honest though, you know, you and I were covering the Russia thing a fair amount probably in 2017, 2018, we never really – we never really proved the thing we were sort of hinting at: that maybe Putin and Trump are cheating and so on. It was sort of obvious that Putin wanted Trump to win, but I'm not sure we got the sort of smoking gun.
Lemon also shared his pathetic fantasies about how he would act if he was allowed into the White House briefing room:
They bully the people who are in the briefing room, and it just – I mean, they would probably have kicked me out a million times or not let me back if I was in there because they just – it frustrates me to see the reporters just move on when – Like, if Karoline Leavitt is asked a question, and then she answers it, and then she just goes to the next person, there's no follow up.
Sure, Don. Sure.
The transcript is below. Click "expand" to read:
The Don Lemon Show
August 8, 2025
02:11(…)
DON LEMON: Okay, so here's the thing for me is that they treat – they bully the media. They bully the people who are in those rooms. They bully the people who are in the briefing room, and it just – I mean, they would probably have kicked me out a million times or not let me back if I was in there because they just – it frustrates me to see the reporters just move on when – Like, if Karoline Leavitt is asked a question, and then she answers it, and then she just goes to the next person, there's no follow up. And I was like, wait a minute, there was a great follow up there. And why don't – and I don't understand why they just don't continue to follow up and ask a question.
(…)
09:12
PERRY BACON JR.: I'll be honest, I'm a little bit worried. I don't wanna get into a Russia zone where the media suggests it's so far out there that unless we have definitive proof that Donald Trump did illegal things with 14-year-olds that there's no, there probably is a story here. He is acting – he's acting like someone guilty, but we never –
Let's be honest though, you know, you and I were covering the Russia thing a fair amount probably in 2017, 2018, we never really – we never really proved the thing we were sort of hinting at: that maybe Putin and Trump are cheating and so on. It was sort of obvious that Putin wanted Trump to win, but I'm not sure we got the sort of smoking gun.
So, I think people should cover this, cover this aggressively, but not, it shouldn't turn into like every hour on MSNBC is Epstein.
(…)
15:01
LEMON: How dangerous is that for us?
BACON: That we have a partisan network that— I mean, I'm not, I'm not totally sure that like ideologically based media is bad. Like a lot of countries have left-wing newspapers and right-wing newspapers and so on. I think what Fox News does, which is election denial and so on, is problematic, but I – Like I always reject the analogy between Fox News and MSNBC.
MSNBC is a is a left-oriented network that has reporters, and you – You just put on a tweet from one of the MSNBC reporters a second ago, Ken Delaney, I think it's his last.
LEMON: Delanian. Yeah.
BACON: He's a very reliable person, like MSNB you know, whatever you think about the sort of ideology of MSNBC, they have fair – there's a fairly fact-based network, and that is not what Fox's project is. They've had lawsuits about that and so on. It's like a different – so it is bad to we have a network like Fox.
(...)
17:24
LEMON (reading from a Bacon op-ed in The New Republic): And then he said, “Eight years later, another talented journalist, Abby Phillip,” I agree, “helms, the 10 p.m. hour on CNN. But the program now nearly always includes some pro-Trump guests mouthing the president's talking points and downplaying his radicalism. In many ways, the star of the NewsNight with Abby Phillip is conservative pundit Scott Jennings, a regular on the show whose back and forth with liberal guests often go viral.”
Now, I haven't watched, so I don't know. Keep, keep scrolling. So, I'd have to watch to make an assessment about that.
“CNN's 10 p.m. program,” and this is what the meat of it, “is a microcosm of a broader monumental shift in America over the last eight years. Key institutions are accommodating and adapting to Trump rather than challenging him. Trump is more aggressive than eight years ago, but his authoritarian tendencies were fully on display then too. The Democratic Party today is, as in 2017, vacillates between aggressively confronting Trump and trying to appeal to pro-Trump swing voters. There is a strong grassroots anti-Trump movement led by groups such as Indivisible.” And then you go on.
This is the most honest, and I believe, close to the bone take out of what is happening in media that I've read. And I not, I'm not being self-serving here, just so happens that I am the character that you start with, but I believe this to be true, and we see the voices of people who are strongly pushing back on the anti-democratic nature of this administration being purged from the media, and that is all on purpose. And I believe in many ways, that's how we got here, false equivalent, giving room, making room for people who spread misinformation. As a matter of fact, it is their jobs to do so.
BACON: I just remember there was a day in 2017 where Donald Trump said journalists were the enemies of the state, and I was just mad. I, you know, I'm a patriotic person. I've been a journalist my whole life. I think journalists are great people and do a great job. And then at 10 o'clock, I turned on CNN at night and you were just as angry as I were; and maybe didn't use the words I told my parents that night and about how what I thought of Donald Trump, but you really describe, here's why journalists are important. You went on for 10 or 15 minutes and here's why what Donald Trump is saying is bad for democracy.
And you often had on Carl Bernstein, John Dean, people who were not trying to be both sides. These are not, these are not liberal partisans, but they are people who are like, we are in a moment in America where we're dealing with an unusually authoritarian president and we are trying to capture that.
And, you know, I respect Abby's, and I know Abby and Abby's a friend. I think about that, but that program, the times I watch it is much more of an exchange where it's sort of like, it's a little bit both sides, you know, we're trying to give everybody a voice and I just think that's not the moment we're in now.
(…)
