The Chris Cuomo Project - Don Lemon & Tucker Carlson: Why Do You Care?

Episode Date: April 27, 2023

Chris Cuomo shares what the media is getting wrong about the firings of CNN’s Don Lemon and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson in a special episode of The Chris Cuomo Project. Follow and subscribe to The Chris Cuomo Project on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube for new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

check yourself before you wreck yourself. That is the takeaway that you have to put in your head and your heart. All these questions about what happened at CNN and what happened at Fox and what do you think about Tucker Carlson? And what do you think about D Lemon, your guy? What does this mean? Here's my question in response. Why do you want to know?

All these media reporters reaching out. Why? Because they want the truth of the situation. Then why are they getting so much stuff wrong? I know they're getting things wrong because I lived it and I'm in the middle of some of the situations they're reporting on and it's wrong. And I've told them the same. So why do you want to know? I'll tell you what you need to know about Don Lemon. He's very talented and he's going to have options for himself to reach audiences if he wants them. I don't know what he wants. That's up to him. And I know that what he's going through and even what Tucker Carlson is going

through to a different degree sucks. And I know that all these people are just so anxious to join the hate parade and to hear me, someone who knows Don Lemon, someone who knows of Tucker Carlson, share as the same lawyer. Wow, you must have some great dish. Why would you want to know? Because it feeds that need for negativity as a proxy for insight, the gotcha, the inside scoop, the gossip. That is all poison. All this reporting. And here's another bad thing that we learned about him. And here's another bad thing that they say about Tucker. And here's another reason that they got rid of him.

Because that's what we need, right? You really understand the situation now, right? I'll tell you what matters, right? Now, you really understand the situation now, right? I'll tell you what matters, okay? And I learned this the hard way. And I don't care if you agree with me or you like what I'm about to say. And I get why you may not, okay? I don't like most of what comes out of Tucker Carlson's face. And I continue to believe that I can't believe he believes it. But I know this, all of this just lust for as much bad that can happen to him as possible. I don't like it. I don't think it takes us to a good place. I don't think it's good personally. I don't think it's good culturally. And I see the same with Don in a different way.

And I can only imagine how that weighs on him. Now, of course, everything changed with me when I left CNN. You know that. You know, even in your own questions. Oh, but you used to have all these pictures, and I don't see them anymore. Yeah, I wonder what changed. But what really matters about it? I'll tell you what lesson I learned, okay? And I think it's helpful in how you're deciding to process this and a lot of other situations. This lust for hearing bad things about people and this kind of satisfaction that they're going down and wanting to know the drama behind, it's really, really unhealthy. it's really, really unhealthy. And when you go through something that is bad,

and we all do and we all will, don't make the first mistake, which is to judge somebody else's pain. All pain is personal. Oh, look at him just complaining. He stubbed his toe. I broke my leg. Does that make his toe feel better?

Because he knows he could feel worse? Or she could feel worse because her breakup is nothing compared to yours or she's still pretty so she's going to have other you think that matters to that person no but then why do we judge things that way i do the same thing and then i learned i learned what i had heard so many times what i had seen demonstrated so many times what i had heard so many times, what I had seen demonstrated so many times, what I had heard explained as cultural aphorisms and cliches, crystallized in truth when I had to live a lesson in life. And here's what it is. And here's what it is. You, like the way I used to be, probably process forgiveness as being all about some type of beneficence, divinely inspired.

Where one is going to choose to be better than the other. And it's like an absolution. It's like letting someone be exonerated, have all of their wrong undone and removed and washed away. Nope. I hear a mother whose child is killed by a horrible predator forgives the predator. What? That's got to be some kind of psychobabble mumbo jumbo Jesus talk. Nope. Well, but how do you forgive? How do you forgive somebody who does something that wrong?

Because we make the mistake that what's going on is about them. That's not how pain works. That's not how obsession works. That's not how depression works. That's not how grief works. obsession works. It's not how depression works. It's not how grief works. Forgiveness is as much about relieving the forgiver as anything to do with the forgiven. It doesn't matter. It doesn't even matter what the truth is about the circumstances. What he or she or they or it or whatever you want to call yourself did or didn't do, said or didn't say, whether they're to blame rightly or wrongly, none of it matters in terms of what it means to your power of perspective and how you move past into a better place. You can agree or disagree, think I was right or was wrong. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Here's why. It's not a fact analysis. You feel how you feel. You've never had an argument

with someone, a partner, a parent, a kid, or been the parent. And you're telling the kid, yeah, you're not going out tonight because you were supposed to do this and this and you didn't. And that's how it is. And you know, I'm right. So why are you upset? I told you this before. I told you it was going to happen. And now it's happening. Why are you angry? Because they still feel angry. Yeah, but I'm right. But they still feel that way. It's not about right and wrong. It's about how you feel and how people can get to a better place or cope. And that's what forgiveness can be about. It can be about many things, but this way that I'm discussing now has everything to do with how I feel about what you

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like it was intractable and manageable. It was unmoving. It was just there, solid, solid. And I was like worried, like, holy cow. And that's why, remember that quote that I had that everybody took out of context? You think, what am I going to do? Kill myself, kill everybody else? I never meant that. I've never had a homicidal thought. Never thought about doing anything like that.

Well, then why'd you say it? Because I was being figurative. You can't stay in that place emotionally. You don't think the people who wrote that and twisted it don't know what I really meant? Of course they do, unless they're idiots, which could also be true. So then why'd they twist it that way?

The same way you're so desperate to know how I feel about what happened at CNN with Don or anything else or Carlson or any of these situations. Just to feed negativity. But here's what I learned that actually matters and is really applicable to this situation about how I do feel about learning anything happening to Don or CNN or Tucker or whatever. Not that I really don't care about as much. I don't even know the guy, to be honest. I don't revel in him being gone because what does that do for me?

Well, it's good because he was bad. That's what you think. I don't know. I don't revel in him being gone because what does that do for me? Well, it's good because he was bad. That's what you think. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. All I do is control what I do and what I put out there and what I test and what I provide. I don't do better because he's there or not there. It doesn't work that way in my head.

And here's another. You forgive. The reason the mother says that about somebody who's a monster who deserves no mercy it's because it's not about him it's about what allows her to move forward and not be consumed by that moment and her feelings about it and i learned that that is really powerful and really true and incredibly healing and useful. And again, it doesn't matter if you can accept what somebody else decides to do in terms of forgiveness and how they cope. It really doesn't matter. Oh, come on.

You can't forgive that. She did the wrong thing. He did the wrong thing. You did the wrong thing. They did the wrong thing. We all did the wrong thing. Whatever it the wrong thing. You did the wrong thing. They did the wrong thing. We all did the wrong thing. Whatever it is, it's not about the facts. It's about how you process a situation

to your best advantage. And I don't mean advantage by getting over on somebody else. I'm saying on healing and helping and being how and who you want to be. That's what forgiveness can be about. So that I do not carry it forward with me. And it doesn't mean that everyone is, nobody did anything wrong.

Nobody said anything wrong. Nobody abandoned. Nobody lied. Nobody did anything. That's not what it means. It means that I choose to move past it. And, you know, it's like the eureka moment, the expression we've all heard our entire lives.

Forgive, never forget. Okay, I'm all right with that. I live that way. I don't forget anything that happened to the extent that I can remember. There are certain things that I try to forget. But why forgive then? They did the wrong thing.

Okay, first of all, says who? Maybe it's more complicated than you think. Maybe you should understand other people's motivations and context, but that's inconvenient when you just want to be angry or just feel right or righteous, even worse. But the power is in the ability to give yourself a chance to get to a better place. Otherwise, you just keep staying hurt, staying in the place hurt, and you can't control it. You can't change the past. Why would you let it haunt your present and change your future?

That's stupid. That's the power of forgiveness. That's what forgiveness can be about. It's not that you don't care anymore about what I did or he did or she did or didn't do or didn't say. It's that you are allowing yourself to be motivated past it, to get to a better place, a different place. That's what you should do. And that's what you can do. I'm not telling you what you should do because I'm about to make another point that I don't do myself and it is to my own detriment. And I know it, but it's a struggle. I'll explain. When you think about

a Tucker Carlson or a Don Lemon, let's say you like what they do and you're sad that they're gone. Okay. But you're going to have to move on anyway and you figure out what you're doing. I'm not saying that this is some traumatic event for everybody. I'm just saying that this interest in wanting to hear me bitch about people who were in my life and how and what happened or didn't happen

and that satisfaction misses two things. One, man, that is some really toxic stuff to want to consume and to find interesting. And two, it really fundamentally misunderstands what's good and right for me. Every moment that I spend revisiting, reviewing, reliving what happened when I can't change it is a lost, wasted moment that does nothing to help me be how I want to be right now

and how I hope to be going forward. And that's all you should care about, not vis-a-vis me, yourself. I get it. You want the dirt, you want the gossip. That's why all these stupid outlets are trying to feed you things that are at best half true about what happened or didn't happen, what motivated or didn't happen. Let me tell you one thing about corporations.

At the end of the day, even my situation, it becomes about the bottom line and what's going to help that brand and by the corporation extension, that brand make the money it needs to make to keep the people who get paid the most happy. That's what it is. No, it's about principle. It's about that. Listen, in most businesses, there's a direct relationship between how much money you make that place and how much shit they'll take from you. Okay. What makes you difficult? What makes you hard to manage or how needy you are, what kind of diva you are, whatever it is. Once you start to be costing them more than what you're making them, now you're vulnerable. That's what you see in all of these situations, mine included, okay?

And by the way, I'm not saying that cynically. That's what a corporation is. I know we believe they're people for the power of the First Amendment. But at the end of the line, what are they? They're a balance sheet. They're a P&L for investors, even if they're in the media business. Sure, they have principles and things. But at the end of the day, it's going to be about profit and what's best for that place.

And I'm not begrudging that. I understand it. I accept it. And I don't even know that it's a bad thing or a good thing. It depends on how it's applied. But, but, but, this is just as big a truth and much more meaningful in our own lives. The Chris Cuomo Project is supported by Cozy Earth. Why? Because I like their sheets. That's why. A lot of people don't get a good night's sleep for a lot of reasons. One of the ones that you can control is bedding. One out of three of us report being sleep deprived.

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Drinkag1.com slash ccp. Check it out. You have to learn how to deal with what has happened. And what I have learned is that the more you can do to either find something in a challenge that creates an opportunity to help you get to a better place, to make a meaningful change, the better. And you can't stay stuck. You can't

do it. Now, forgiveness of another is very powerful. More powerful, much more powerful, much more useful, much more necessary. Forgiveness of yourself. Can you forgive yourself for what you do? When you fall short, what you are not, how you are not, can you forgive yourself? Why would you need to forgive yourself? Because that's what keeps you trapped. Who's you? This guy. I suck at self-forgiveness. Why? Because I don't deserve it. I know what I did. I know what I repeatedly do. I know why I do it. I know when it's wrong. I know when it's not going to give me the outcome that I want, and I do it anyway. No forgiveness, no mercy. But guess what? If it were in anybody else, I likely would. Why? People are weak. People are flawed. People work to self-interest.

They're imperfect, annoyingly so. I'm certainly no different. I may be more of an example of it than you are. But here's what I also know. Every moment, every day that you stay locked in feeling a certain way about yourself that is counterproductive to who you want to be or how you want to be is a day or a moment lost in getting any better. You're wallowing and that is worthless. So why do I do it? Because I'm weak and it's hard and it's complicated and it's a struggle. And I often just believe like, no, no, no, I did what I did. I am how I am. I said what I said. I didn't act.

I did act. Whatever it is, whatever the circumstances are, the facts are almost meaningless. I keep saying that and people always kind of roll their eyes. What do you mean the facts are meaningless? Aren't they all that matters? No, we're talking about life. Of course, you need to know what's true and what's not true and what is, what isn't,

but that's not going to necessarily dictate how you feel. You can't give somebody a list of paper with all these distant boxes you check and that's why they must love you. I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this, I'm this. Love me, love me. No. Why? Because it's about feelings.

It's about subjective. It's about perspective. And you can help yourself in a way that I'm not. I'm trying. Is this my self-love? I'm trying, but it's just not easy. But it's powerful. So you want to know how I feel about these people, these situations.

Why? So much of that is just noise and useless to you. Well, CNN did you dirty. All right, you can feel that way. Well, how do I feel? I feel that if they wanted to fire me, that's their right. But for the reason they did, it was not right. And I'm litigating that, and I'll leave it at that.

Oh, so you hate CNN? No. I think it's a great organization. There are a lot of people there that I care about and I wish well. But yeah, but the people did you wrong. People didn't support you. Yeah, I know. I know. And that happens for a lot of different reasons. Maybe I didn't deserve their support. Maybe I did, but they had other exigencies and other pressures and other fears and other concerns. I don't know. I can't change any of it. I try to understand what I can. I forgive what I can. Whether they deserve or want my forgiveness or not has nothing to do with the facts or the merits or them.

It's about what helps me get to a better place. I take no pleasure in hearing about or learning anything that is bad for or about Don Lemon. I wish him all the best. That is the truth. Well, but are you guys going to do this? You're going to do that? To be honest, is it really your business, right? How we are, what happens next? You'll know when you know, if it matters to you enough that you find out about

it. But why would you care? Why would you traffic and that kind of stuff? Don't do it. It doesn't make your life any better. It doesn't. It doesn't help you. And the bigger lesson that actually matters about, you want to know what I learned about my CNN experience, my relationships there, the people, is you got to learn what you control and what you don't. And what you can forgive, you should. And if you can look within yourself and identify what's keeping you back and forgive it in yourself and try to get to a better place, you will be better for it. This, I know, doesn't mean that I'm getting it right, but I know it is right. That's what I think about the situation that I think matters most to you in your life. And I wish you the best. Take care of yourself.

Now, take care of me too. Subscribe. Follow. Check out what I'm doing on News Nation. I like it. I think it's a good thing that is doing well, but I think it's also doing some good. Check it out. 8 p.m., 11 p.m. Eastern.

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