LEMON DROP | Don Lemon & Ahmed Baba - THIS IS NOT NORMAL!
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hello, everybody. My name is Ahmed Baba. I'm a journalist here on Substack, and I'm happy to be joined by the one and only Don Lemon. I mean, I don't know if he needs a big introduction, but you know him from Lemon Nation that he's been representing here. You know him from CNN and now as a thriving independent journalist. Don, thank you so much for joining me.
Ahmed, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And by the way, everybody who's watching, make sure you hit the heart so that more people become aware that Ahmed and I are having this great, great, great conversation that we're about to have.
Yes, thank you for hitting that logistics, man. Also, hit the subscribe button, all right? Like, if you are here, tap that subscribe button right at the top. Hit the hearts. Send comments in. We got Kristen in here. She said she's a Lemonhead already. You know, you got your squad coming in here. Great. So, Don, before we touch on the craziness of this week and the Trump agenda and... The big, beautiful bill, or I call it the reverse Robin Hood bill. We I want to talk about you for a little bit. I mean, you are your YouTube channel is rapidly growing hundreds of thousands of subscribers so far already this year. You've been on TikTok dropping some some hilarious videos, but also doing man on the street videos and content.
And you're just really killing it. I mean, you seem like you're having a genuinely good time. So I just want to start by asking, how are you liking independent journal life, man?
Yeah, I'm having a great time and I'm working my ass off. Yes. But it's fun. I mean, I was, you know, someone asked me that question and I said, basically, I just, it's fun. It's a lot of work and it's fun. But what I like about independent journalism is that, number one, the freedom of it and you can just tell the truth. It doesn't have to be filtered. Exactly. But also you're closer to the folks. You get to interact with the people. Like, you know, we can, Esther, Esther Rose is there. She says, I'm just meeting you both, Esther. We get to talk to people. And I get to go out and talk to people every single day. And so that interaction, that close interaction that you have with your, if you want to call it your customers, right, with the American people or with people from all over the world, that means the world to me.
So I really, really love it.
That's great. Yeah. I mean, you get this direct relationship. You get to build real community, right? It's like when you're in more legacy media, it's more like I'm just like I'm kind of doing the reverse trajectory where I'm starting to go on some of these more legacy media platforms. And it's not the same as doing it here where you just get to communicate directly. Like we're seeing comments from people in real time. And on that note of being able to just tell the truth blatantly, I saw on appearance of Bill Maher, you said now on your YouTube show, you don't have to pretend anymore. And you can really just speak the truth. You don't have to do false equivalency. You don't have to platform liars. Can you expand on that a little bit?
Like, what are you able to say now and do now that you don't think you were able to do before?
Well, I can, you know, talk about the cult, the MAGA cult. I can call them for what they are. You know, a lot of them, as I said on the Bill Maher show, there's a large faction of the MAGA folks that are racist. And then he said, well, they would take offense to that. And I said, the truth is often offensive.
How did Don Lemon describe his move to independent journalism and why does it matter?
Um, uh, uh, you know, cause everyone has to say, well, not all of them. Well, maybe not all of them, but in order to, I can say this now in order to, um, vote for him, you had to hold your nose or you had to overlook a whole lot of racism and bigotry and, and sexism and on and on and on. Um, so I don't have to worry about, I used to represent 45, 4,800 other people for a huge global brand. So I constantly, constantly, constantly self editing, um, And what can I say? What can I not? I just say it now. I don't have to worry about it.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–3:07
2
How did Don Lemon describe his move to independent journalism and why does it matter?
3:07–4:32
3
What freedoms does Don Lemon say independent media gives him compared to legacy outlets?
4:32–6:42
4
How is Lemon building community and monetizing with YouTube, TikTok and merch?
6:42–22:51
5
What is the 'Big Beautiful Bill' and what immediate impacts do the hosts highlight?
22:51–25:18
6
Why do Don and Ahmed argue the bill is a 'reverse Robin Hood' for middle America?
25:18–28:51
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from The Don Lemon Show
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