Don Lemon Caught Dissing Jon Stewart While on Hot Mic During 'CNN This Morning'

By Michael Hein

CNN anchor Don Lemon insulted comedian Jon Stewart with his lapel mic on in what he thought was a private moment on Monday. Lemon was apparently talking about the current viral clips from Stewart's interview with U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks while they were playing on CNN This Morning. As the clip played, Lemon could be heard saying to his co-anchors: "He [Stewart] gets a lot of leeway with the comedian thing, though."

This awkward interruption was followed by a long moment of silence, and sources at CNN told Radar Online that producers were hurrying to inform Lemon that his mic was on at that moment. All three anchors tried to recover as the cameras returned to them, and Lemon said: "We were just discussing Jon Stewart is so much more than a comedian." Meanwhile, Poppy Harlow cut in to praise Stewart for standing up on behalf of military veterans.

"He truly needs no introduction and has stood up for so long for veterans' rights and fought so loud and so hard and uses his big platform to keep doing so," she said. Kaitlan Collins added that Hicks didn't seem to have "sufficient" answers to Stewart's question in that interview, and Lemon reiterated one more time: "When I said comedian and television host, he's so much more than that."

The discussion centered around a recent breakout clip from Stewart's Apple TV+ show The Problem with Jon Stewart. In a recent episode, he grilled Hicks about the huge discrepancy between the budget at the Department of Defense and the widespread financial issues for veterans and service members. He said: "We got out of 20 years of war and the Pentagon got a raise. I can't figure out how $850 billion to a department means that the rank and file still have to be on food stamps. To me, that's f-ing corruption."

Hicks gave hopeful but unspecific answers to these concerns, saying: "We definitely think we need to increase the spending that we are putting forward toward our service members and their families. We're putting our money where our mouth is in areas like child care... We do think we're getting better on that."

The clip got millions of views on social media over the weekend, with a boost from C-SPAN who shared it on Friday. It inspired commentary from all along the political spectrum and, in some cases, bipartisan agreement that the Department of Defense needs to show more accountability for its massive spending. Back in November, the department failed yet another audit, unable to account for about 61 percent of its assets, according to a report by The Hill. It was the fifth audit the department has ever gone through and the fifth time it has failed.

The Problem with Jon Stewart is in its second season at Apple TV+. There are 20 episodes streaming now.

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