CNN’s Acosta and Darcy Roast ‘Thin-Skinned’ Elon Musk: Complains About ‘Cancel Culture’ and Then Tries to Cancel Don Lemon

CNN’s Jim Acosta and Oliver Darcy stood by their former colleague Don Lemon after Elon Musk cancelled his contract, roasting the guy who once designated himself as the “Chief Twit” for complaining about “cancel culture” but then being so “thin-skinned” he cancelled the deal to promote Lemon’s new show.

On Wednesday, Lemon posted on Instagram that his new show would debut as planned on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter, YouTube, and podcast platforms, but without the previously-announced partnership with Musk’s company. According to Lemon, the fracturing of the business relationship came after he interviewed Musk he felt “were respectful and wide ranging, covering everything from SpaceX to the presidential election.”

“We had a good conversation,” wrote Lemon. “Clearly he felt differently. His commitment to a global town square where all questions can be asked and all ideas can be shared seems not to include questions of him from people like me.”

Shortly thereafter, Musk retorted that Lemon’s interview had “lacked authenticity,” accused the former CNN host of allowing his former boss Jeff Zucker to speak through him, and bashed Lemon’s interview style as “CNN, but on social media.”

Lemon has stuck to his guns, returning to CNN to chat with anchor Erin Burnett about his interview with Musk, reiterating “I never raised my voice” but Musk was still obviously “upset” and “uncomfortable” with some of his questions. “Freedom of speech does not mean, I guess, the same thing to him as it does to me,” said Lemon.

The full interview will be released on Monday, but in the meantime the excerpts that have been posted show Lemon grilling the SpaceX CEO about his recent meeting with former President Donald Trump and Musk getting testy after being questioned about hate speech on The Platform Formerly Known as Twitter.

Acosta brought on CNN senior media reporter Darcy to discuss the whole kerfuffle, and began by joking that Lemon should “thank” Musk “for one heckuva rollout,” with the controversy having “helped him promote the new show.” The CNN Newsroom anchor also commented that it was “nice to see Don back on CNN.”

Darcy didn’t pause before tearing into Musk as “a thin-skinned, unhinged, erratic ruler of this X platform,” saying that it was “not actually very surprising that this deal went down in flames, and that’s because Don, during this interview, he asked him some tough but fair questions,” including about the rise of hate speech on his platform.

“While Elon Musk might claim he believes in ‘free speech absolutism,’ and wants a free exchange and debate of ideas on his platform, that’s not really what he wants,” Darcy continued. “He’s taken a lot of steps over the past year-and-a-half since he’s taken over the platform to limit the speech of his critics, he’s banned journalists and allowed them back on, sort of, after they censor themselves and delete the posts he doesn’t like, he’s throttled The New York Times on the platform, he’s sued watchdog groups that have been critical of the way he’s run the platform. And so this is not someone who believes in free speech.”

“Yeah,” replied Acosta. “I mean, there were all these complaints about cancel culture, but I guess when you’re doing the canceling, that’s okay.”

Darcy said that he found it “notable” that Musk “doesn’t seem to elevate any of these left-of-center voices this he does spend a lot of time elevating right-wing extremist conspiracy theories, which Don Lemon asked about, and really dangerous stuff to the platform, which has driven away the advertisers.”

“It’s very clear again, that for Elon Musk, free speech is stuff that he agrees with and that tends to be some of this dangerous, swampy stuff on the internet,” Darcy concluded.

“Fascinating stuff,” said Acosta, and “kudos to Don, and Don kept his cool, just asked normal questions that any journalist would ask. Oliver, we could go on and on.”

Watch the clip above via CNN.