UNBIASED - SCOTUS Blocks Abortion Medication Ruling, Loan-Level Pricing Adjustments Explained, Lemon and Carlson Fired, and More.
Episode Date: April 25, 20231. Supreme Court Blocks Lower Court Ruling's on Mifepristone; FDA Approval Remains (2:53)2. What are Loan Level Pricing Adjustments?; Are High Credit Score Borrowers Paying More Than Low Credit Score ...Borrowers? (10:24)3. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear Cases Revolving Around Free Speech on Social Media When it Comes to Government Actors (21:24)4. Don Lemon "Fired" From CNN; Tucker Carlson and Fox News "Agree to Part Ways" (25:59)If you enjoyed this episode, please leave me a review and share it with those you know that also appreciate unbiased news! Follow Jordan on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. All sources for this episode can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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You are listening to the Jordan is My Law podcast. This is your host Jordan and I give
you the legal analysis you've been waiting for. Here's the deal. I don't care about your
political views, but I do ask that you listen to the facts, have an open mind and think
for yourselves. Deal? Oh, and one last thing. I'm not actually a lawyer. start doing more episodes during the week. And while I would, you know, that's ideal, I am a
one-man show, so I'm working with what I have. I obviously do all of the research, the recording,
the editing, the posting, the uploading, the promoting, all that stuff. So I am going to do
my best to consistently upload two episodes per week. So I'm thinking it'll be Tuesday and Friday,
but I get it. You know, when I'm releasing only on Fridays, some news is kind of irrelevant at the point when I release,
so it is ideal to upload twice a week. So that is what this week is going to look like. You're
going to have this episode today and then another episode on Friday. Today, I have four stories for
you. I have the Supreme Court ruling in the Mifepristone case.
I have the LLPA modifications, which a lot of people are talking about. That is loan level
pricing adjustments. And we're going to talk about what that means. I'm sure you've seen a
lot of headlines regarding people with higher credit scores paying more than people with lower
credit scores. So we're going to kind of clear that up a little bit. The third story is in regards to a Supreme Court case that the Supreme Court actually just
decided to hear. They're going to hear it in the fall, but it's in regards to free speech on social
media. And I thought that that was kind of interesting. And you guys had said you wanted
me to talk a little more about Supreme Court cases. So that's why I threw that one in there.
And the last story,
we're going to talk about why Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon were terminated within an hour of each other. So the news broke that Tucker Carlson was leaving Fox and an hour later, the news broke that
Don Lemon was leaving CNN. So we're going to cover those and what we know about those stories so far.
But before we get into it, please let me just
quickly remind you to leave me a review on whatever platform you listen. It really helps
support my show, lets other people know why you guys love my show so much, and really just helps
to get my name out there. So I would really appreciate it if you guys could just take a
few seconds to do that. Without further ado, let's get into today's stories. The Supreme Court blocked the lower court rulings in
the Mifepristone case. So last episode, we talked about the Mifepristone rulings out of not only
Texas, but also Washington and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals. And it was going up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court gave itself
a deadline of 1159 p.m. on, I believe it was Tuesday or Wednesday originally, and then they
pushed it back to Friday. So they came out with their ruling on Friday. We're going to talk about
it. We're going to talk about what that means for the future of this case. But first, let's briefly recap what the issue is. So the FDA approved mifepristone for use in abortions back in
2000. It's part of a two-drug regimen, so it's mifepristone and then mifeprostol. And the people
that brought this case are arguing that the FDA illegally approved mifepristone back in 2000.
They didn't take into account the safety risks
that they should have. And then later in 2016, the FDA removed critical safeguards, safeguards that
they say are critical on the drug. So not only did they not approve it the right way, but then they
also removed critical safeguards. The Texas District Court heard this case first. And what
that judge did is that judge
revoked FDA approval. So he said, no longer does Mifepristone have FDA approval. You guys didn't
approve it the right way. And until you do, FDA approval is withdrawn. But the judge gave seven
days for the government to appeal the case, which they did. So the government appealed it to the
Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who then said, okay, we're not going to revoke FDA approval, but we are going to revert back
to the rules surrounding mifepristone back in 2000 when it was originally approved.
So in 2016 is when the FDA said, okay, mifepristone can now be used up until 10 weeks gestation
before it was seven. And they said it doesn't necessarily have to be given out in person anymore.
It can be distributed by mail.
So what the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals said is we're not going to revoke FDA approval,
but we are going to go back to the original safeguards from 2000 where it had to be dispersed
in person and it's no longer allowed past seven weeks gestation.
From here, the Biden administration petitioned the Supreme Court for emergency relief, meaning
they asked the Supreme Court to step in immediately and block the lower court orders so that everything
could be kept the same, meaning there would, you know, nothing is being rolled back, FDA approval
still stays until the case is at least played out, whether that be at the appellate level or the
Supreme Court level. So if the Supreme Court didn't step in, what would have happened is that
the appellate court's ruling that seven weeks gestation and in-person distribution would have
been in place until this entire case played out. So now let's
briefly talk about what a stay is so we can kind of understand this whole procedural history
in its entirety. A stay is when you ask a court to put something on hold, basically. Stay the
lower court's order, meaning the lower court's order is not going to take effect.
The party seeking the stay will file a brief. That brief will summarize the facts, history,
outline the arguments of the case, why the lower court's ruling should be put on hold.
That application then goes to one justice first. The specific justice that it goes to is known as the circuit justice. And each circuit of federal
courts has one Supreme Court justice assigned to it. So as an example, in this case, the Fifth
Circuit Court of Appeals has Justice Alito as its circuit justice. So when the Biden administration
filed this application for stay, it went immediately to Justice Alito. When the circuit
justice receives this application, they can either
grant or deny it themselves, or they can refer it to the full court for all justices to vote on.
If the justice refers the application to the full court, which is what happened here, the justices
will typically consider three factors. And here are those three factors. So one, whether the Supreme Court is likely to take up the case on the merits by granting a petition. Two, whether after granting that
petition, there is a fair prospect that the justices will permanently overrule the lower court.
And the third factor is whether the lower court's ruling will cause permanent harm if it is allowed
to remain in effect while the case proceeds throughout the
normal appeals process. Now that last factor is going to be important when we talk about Justice
Alito's dissent, but just to round out that conversation, if at least five justices vote
to grant the stay, so majority of the justices, the stay will be granted. Unlike opinions, grants
or denials of stay are usually very short. So
there's no explanation as to how they came to the decision. There's no explicit indication of how
each justice voted. So it's a bit different. But the justices who disagree with the majority can
actually choose to publicly disagree, which means that their disagreement will be noted.
Of these justices that publicly disagree or choose
to publicly disagree, they can also choose to write a dissent and explain why they're dissenting from
the majority. So in this case, while we don't really know who voted for sure in favor of the
stay, we do know that Justice Alito and Justice Thomas publicly dissented from the majority. And Alito wrote a public
dissent and his argument was that there wouldn't be any irreparable harm if the stay wasn't granted,
which is that third factor that I talked about. And what he said is that one, the appellate court
ruling wouldn't remove Mifepristone from the market, it would just restore the circumstances
that existed from 2000 to 2016.
He also says that because this appeal has been put on kind of like this fast track with oral
arguments scheduled to take place in just 26 days, petitioners can't really show that they're likely
to suffer irreparable harm between now and then. And he says in part that contrary to the impression
that may be held by many, this denial does not express any view
on the merits of the question whether the FDA acted lawfully in any of its actions regarding
mifepristone. Rather, his decision simply refuses to take a step that has not been shown as necessary
to avoid the threat of any real harm during the presumably short period at issue. So what he's basically
saying is that he's following the law the way it's supposed to be followed. His dissent isn't
politically motivated. It's not motivated by any personal beliefs, contrary to what people may
think. And also contrary to what people may think, his opinion on denying the stay has nothing to do
with the actual issue in the case. So he's saying he's just following procedurally what he thinks the
justices should do given the circumstances. Now this case will return to the Fifth Circuit Court
of Appeals for oral arguments. So those are set to start on May 17th. And from there, the losing
party could then appeal the decision back to the Supreme Court, which I foresee happening just
because both sides are very passionate about this issue. So that's where we're at with that. Nothing changes. The Supreme Court blocking the
lower court's order means that FDA approval remains in effect. No restrictions are placed
on the drug, and that's it. The next update will likely be in May or June following arguments at
the appellate level, but again, that's where we're at with that. So let's move on to the second story, which is these loan level price adjustments. A lot of
people are talking about it. We're going to get into the headlines. We're going to kind of debunk
a few myths, if you will. But let's first talk about what LLPAs are. LLPAs are loan level price
adjustments. And these are things like your credit score, a down payment you put down on a property,
the property type.
So whether it's a condo, investment property, second home, primary residence, things like
that.
And the industry calls these hits to the rate.
So it's the cost of the rate.
So yes, these are kind of responsible for making the rate better or worse, but they're doing that because these factors are adjusting the cost of the rate, if that makes sense.
So think about it almost like car insurance, right?
Where if you get a car, your insurance premiums are going to be more if you get, let's say,
a sports car versus a minivan, or you have been in five accidents versus no accidents.
So there's certain factors that go into deciding what your monthly premium is going to be, right? Think of it like that. LLPAs were introduced in
2008. They were introduced in response to the economic turndown we saw. We know that that
economic turndown stemmed from the high rate of defaulted government-backed mortgages.
With LLPAs, riskier borrowers would receive higher pricing. So like I
said, kind of like car insurance premiums. Your premium's going to be higher if you buy a sports
car rather than a minivan if you've been in, you know, three, four, five accidents versus none.
So riskier borrowers would receive higher pricing per these LLPAs. But let's talk specifically about the credit score factor, because these
credit score changes are what's making the news. And then we'll talk about a new LLPA that was
introduced that isn't making the headlines as much, but it's a new fee that wasn't in place
before. So a lot of the headlines you're seeing are saying something along the lines of,
okay, here are a few examples. One, Biden raises costs for homebuyers with good credit to help
risky borrowers. Or something like mortgages for homebuyers with good credit to cost more
starting May 1st. These headlines make it seem like high credit score borrowers are paying more than lower credit score borrowers.
And that's not true.
What is true is that depending on your credit score and depending on how much money you're borrowing,
high credit score borrowers could see a slightly higher interest rate starting May 1st than they would have seen in years past.
What is also true is that lower credit score borrowers may see a slightly lower interest rate starting May 1st than they would have in years past. But in no scenario does someone with a
higher credit score pay more than someone with a lower credit score. Okay, so let's just let's clear that up.
What these changes are doing is bridging the gap between the differences paid by high credit score
borrowers and low credit score borrowers. So here's what happened. The Federal Housing Finance
Agency, FHFA, back in January, announced changes to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's single family pricing
framework. It's just now making headlines. I don't know why sometimes these things are kind of a
delayed reaction, but it's just now making headlines. When the framework was rewritten,
they essentially, let's run through an example because I think this is the easiest way to
illustrate it. We're going to take someone with a 740 credit score and a 640 credit score. Previously,
the person with the 740 credit score, let's say they borrowed 80% of the home value,
meaning they put down 20%, their loan level price adjustment was 0.5%. Now, that same borrower,
740 credit score, borrowed 80%, put 20% down.
Now their loan level price adjustment is 0.875.
So it went up 0.325 percentage points, okay?
Now let's look at the 640 credit score borrower under the same terms.
So you have a credit score of 640, you borrowed 80%, you put 20% down before your LLPA
was 3%. Now your LLPA is 2.25%. So you can see that the LLPA for the higher credit score borrower
increased, whereas the LLPA for the lower credit score borrower decreased. But still, clearly, the lower credit score borrower
is at the disadvantage, 0.875% compared to 2.25%, right? But if you look at this from the gap
perspective, it's a pretty big change. The difference between the two LLPAs now is 1.375%. So we're talking same terms, right? Borrowing 80%, putting 20% down. The difference
in the LLPA between the 740 credit score borrower and the 640 credit score borrower
is now 1.375%. Whereas before, the difference between the two was 2.5%. So see how they're
bridging that gap? They're making the difference between the two smaller.
Let's talk about these two examples in terms of money. So pretend we're taking out a $300,000
mortgage, okay? Keep in mind that number. Both people, 640 credit score borrower and 740 credit
score borrower, are taking out a $300,000 mortgage. Before, the LLPA for the 740 credit score borrower was equivalent
to $1,500 on that $300,000 mortgage. Now, it's equivalent to $2,625. So it went up about just
over $1,100. Now let's talk about the 640 credit score borrower. Before the LLPA for the 640 credit
score borrower on the $300,000 mortgage was $9,000. Now it's $6,750. So their fee went down,
the 640 credit score borrower, they had their fee go down. But the 740 credit score borrower
had their fee go up. Now it's still, the 740 credit score borrower had their fee go up. Now it's still, the 740 credit score
borrower is still at a much better place than the 640 credit score borrower, right? We're talking
$2,600 compared to $6,700. But before, the difference between the two borrowers in terms
of money was $7,500. And now the difference between the two borrowers is $4,125. Now keep in mind,
these numbers change depending on how much you're borrowing, how much you're putting down,
what your credit score is. There's a whole matrix. I have it on my website. It's linked
there under the story. So just go to the episode's description webpage, scroll down to the bottom,
you'll find the link. It's pretty hard to, you're going to have to study it for a little bit. I studied these matrices and charts
for hours and I did plenty of research on this. So I'm very confident in the way I'm relaying this
information, but just know that when you're looking at it, it does look pretty complicated.
And the way that they have like red and green,
it's kind of opposite of what we're used to. So it is a bit complicated, but just trust me what
I'm telling you. I just want to reiterate though, that there is no situation where the same amount
of money is being put down and or borrowed where someone with a higher credit score ends up paying
more than someone with a lower credit score. I just want to be clear on that.
So let's talk about what the FHFA said. So in a press release released in January,
the FHFA director said in part, quote, these changes to upfront fees will strengthen safety and soundness of Fannie Mac and Freddie Mac by enhancing their ability to improve their capital
position over time. By locking in these upfront fee eliminations,
FHFA is taking another step to ensure that these enterprises advance their mission of facilitating
equitable and sustainable access to homeownership, end quote. Another thing that I want to clear up
before we move on is that when you look at these matrices, you'll notice that from left to right,
so from the least
amount borrowed to the most amount borrowed, no matter what your credit score is, the color scale
goes from, let's say, green to yellow back to green, or green to red to orange back to orange.
And what this illustrates is that the LLPA is actually less at both ends of the spectrum, but more towards the middle.
In other words, the LLPA is less if you were to borrow 95% of the home value than if you were to
just borrow 80% of the home value. And this sounds odd and it looks odd, but let me just be clear
that this is because of mortgage insurance. So if you have to borrow more than 80% of the home
value, you almost always have
to get mortgage insurance, right? And this insures the bank so it's less risky for them. So that's
why the LLPA may be lower the more money you borrow because it's actually less risky for the
bank in some instances. But that doesn't necessarily mean your total out-of-pocket cost is lower because now you
also have to factor in your monthly insurance cost.
So that's just something to note and something that stood out to me as weird when you're
just looking at it initially, but when you actually study it and you actually look into
it, it makes sense.
So that's the deal with the color coding.
I just wanted to clear that up. And the last component
of the changes that I think is worth mentioning is the DTI ratio LLPA. And this takes effect
August 1st. It was delayed originally. I think it was supposed to take effect May 1st along with
the other changes, but they set it back to August 1st. So what that says is that if your debt to
income ratio is over 40%, there's going to
be a new DTI fee.
So now the lender wants to know how much of your monthly earnings is going towards debt
payments.
So before when I mentioned those different factors that factor into the LLPA, like the
down payment, the property type, your credit score, etc., DTI will now be one of those
factors.
So that's something that I wanted to
fill you guys in on because previously DTI was not factored into the equation. So I would love
to hear your thoughts on this. I want to know if I cleared things up for you, if there was anything
that maybe you understood differently before listening to this, if I helped you understand
anything, please let me know. You can always leave a comment on my website or on any of my social
media platforms, TikTok, Instagram, at Jordan is my lawyer. I love hearing when I'm able to help
you guys out with this kind of stuff. So let me know if this helped you. And that takes us into
story number three. On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case that will determine whether the first amendment
bars government officials from blocking their critics on social media it's a very interesting
question and the court was actually close to deciding this issue back in 2021 when trump was
sued for blocking critics on social media, but he left office
before the case was heard, and therefore the court declared it as moot, and so they never
got around to actually hearing the case and deciding it. But the question here is,
does a public official's social media activity amount to governmental action
bound by First Amendment limits on government regulation of
speech? It's a very interesting question. And the decision to take up this issue revolves around
two cases that are, they're similar, but they're different. So let's talk about them.
The first case is out of California. It involves two elected members of the Poway Unified School
District. And the two elected members of the schoolay Unified School District, and the two elected members of the
school district blocked a couple who also happens to be parents of three students in the school
district, but they blocked this couple on both Facebook and Twitter after the couple posted
hundreds of posts criticizing issues like race and the handling of school finances.
After they were blocked, the couple then sued
the two school board members in federal court, claiming that their free speech rights were
violated under the First Amendment. The district court ruled in favor of the parents back in 2021,
and the appellate court agreed. And what the appellate court found was that the school board
members had presented their social media accounts as, quote, channels of communication with the public. And therefore, the blocking of the couple
constituted government action and a violation of the First Amendment.
Now, the second case, which is out of Michigan, came to kind of a different conclusion. So the
second case, like I said, is out of Michigan, specifically Port Huron, and a city resident was blocked by a
city manager's public Facebook page after that resident had posted criticisms relating to the
pandemic, so the handling of the pandemic. That resident, also sued in federal court,
alleging the same thing, his First Amendment rights were violated. The district judge actually
ruled in favor of the city manager back in 2021, not the resident.
And the appellate court agreed. And what the appellate court found is that the city manager
wasn't operating his Facebook page as a part of his duties as the city manager, and therefore
blocking the resident did not violate the First Amendment. So now these plaintiffs say that,
look, hey, these two courts issued
different outcomes and the Supreme Court, you guys need to jump in and resolve this issue.
So while oral arguments probably won't happen until the fall, which means we won't have a
decision until probably 2024, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this. Legally, I think you can
end up in one of two buckets. I mean, this is like legally, also rationally.
I don't know.
You tell me.
The first bucket is that, you know, it's the thought that people and government officials,
they have their own social media pages.
They have the right to do what they want with them.
Almost like property, in a sense, you decide who comes on your land, who doesn't come on
your land.
Therefore, if you have a social media page, you can choose who to block and when you want to block them. The other
bucket is blocking anyone removes that person's voice, which they're allowed to have by way of
the First Amendment. And sure, a person can choose to block another person i could choose to block anyone on my
instagram or tiktok page but a government official is a little bit different because
now you're suppressing the voice of the people so i mean sure maybe arguably there's more than
two buckets you can fall in but i have a feeling that those two buckets are probably where the
majority stands like in either one of those. So let me know which bucket
you're more inclined to jump into. I wanted to cover that story because you guys had previously
told me, and I think I mentioned this in the beginning of the episode, that you want me to
start talking more about Supreme Court cases. And I thought this was an interesting issue to think
about with social media. And Justice Thomas said the same thing. Social media is a very interesting place. And how do you,
you know, how do you apply the First Amendment in terms of social media? Just because obviously,
when the First Amendment was written, social media didn't exist. So it gets to be a little
tricky. But nonetheless, let me know where you stand. I'm very interested to hear.
That takes us into our last story of the day, which is the news that all of the media outlets were talking about yesterday. Don Lemon was allegedly fired from CNN and Tucker Carlson
and Fox, quote unquote, mutually decided that they would part ways. What happened?
Let's talk about Tucker Carlson first. There were conflicting reports. Initially,
it was said that it was a mutual decision. But then outlets like the LA
Times reported that Tucker Carlson was actually fired, and the firing was ordered by Rupert Murdoch
directly, Fox's CEO. And according to that report, a former producer had filed a discrimination
lawsuit against Tucker Carlson and others last month alleging various things. What's interesting, though,
is that, you know, like the LA Times said, it's a result of the discrimination lawsuit, yada, yada.
Well, I read through the lawsuit and I have it on my website if you guys want to read it. It's 79
pages. But what's interesting is that there's nothing in those 79 pages that specifically
references Tucker Carlson harassing the producer in question. There's talk about her time on Tucker
Carlson tonight and her hearing other men make inappropriate comments about other women like
Gretchen Whitmer and Tudor Dixon, but never anything directly about her. And when things
were said to this producer specifically, it was never Tucker Carlson. That's not me saying this
woman, this producer has never experienced harassment herself and it was all comments made about other
women. No, this woman does say she experienced harassment. But from what I read in the complaint,
I didn't see anything that says Tucker Carlson said this or Tucker Carlson did this. He was
named as one of the plaintiffs, but there's multiple plaintiffs in the complaint, which
we'll get into. But in summary, the lawsuit alleges various things. One, it says that lawyers for
Fox News coached and intimidated her into giving misleading testimony in the lawsuit filed by
Dominion Voting Systems, the lawsuit that was just settled. Another thing it says is that she
was bullied and subjected to anti-Semitic comments while she was on the Tucker Carlson Tonight Show.
Again, not necessarily by Tucker, but just people she was working with.
She says that there was a culture of sexism and misogyny at Fox.
And then she also says that executives tried to partially blame her for the airing of 2020 election conspiracy theories.
And in part, what the complaint says is this. As head of booking on
TCT, which is Tucker Carlson Tonight, she continued to endure a work environment that
subjugates women based on vile sexist stereotypes, typecast religious minorities, and belittles their
traditions and demonstrates little to no regard to those suffering from mental illness. Fox News
retaliated against her after she complained about the unlawful harassment based on
her gender and Jewish religion, to which she was subjected to by producers on TCT. Then the network
sued her in an effort to silence her from telling her story in the Dominion lawsuit before placing
her on forced administrative leave. In total, there are 12 counts in that lawsuit, and like I
said, the complaint isn't only against Tucker Carlson, it's against Fox Corporation, Fox News Network, Jerry Andrews, Tucker Carlson, and six other
people. So a lot of these outlets that I was, you know, reading articles on, they make it seem like
the lawsuit is against Tucker Carlson specifically, but then when you actually read into it,
there's no explicit references to Tucker Carlson himself harassing her. Another thing that was reported by
media outlets was that Rupert Murdoch was allegedly concerned about Tucker's insistence
that undercover government agents were involved in January 6th. He referred to one of the
participants in the January 6th breach of the Capitol as an FBI plant, so he was insinuating,
and he has insinuated on multiple occasions that
the undercover government agents were involved in it. And allegedly Murdoch is not happy about it.
On Monday, Harris Faulkner was the one who made the announcement, basically reiterating Fox's
official statement, which said Fox News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways.
We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor.
Mr. Carlson's last program was Friday, April 21st.
Fox News Tonight will air live at 8 p.m. Eastern Time, starting this evening as an interim show
helmed by rotating Fox News personalities until a new host is named.
My guess is that it was a mix of, sure, this producer's lawsuit, but also the FBI plant
claims and also this recent settlement with Dominion that I discussed last episode. I would
imagine that after shelling out $787 million plus this other lawsuit that they have against them,
which is actually seeking double the damages that Dominion was seeking, I'd imagine the CEO is like, okay, we got to do something about this. We got to prevent
this from happening in the future. Let's maybe get rid of the hosts that, you know, we're concerned
about and that could potentially cause something like this in the future. I don't know. That's my
thought. Now, that's not to say that that his fight that tucker carlson's firing was
necessarily a direct result of the dominion settlement but there were reports that through
discovery there were some texts and conversations that were revealed where tucker was complaining
about management at fox and things like that so it's very possible that indirectly things came out
and you know rupert murdoch was like ich was like, I don't want this anymore.
Let's let him go.
But that's the deal with Tucker Carlson.
Let's move on to Don Lemon.
Interestingly enough, the termination of Don Lemon came within an hour of the announcement that Tucker Carlson was done at Fox.
And the termination of Don Lemon is said to be at least in part a result of the comments he made about Nikki Haley about two months ago.
So we'll talk about those statements.
But before we get into it, I just want to reiterate, again, these are all media outlet reports.
We don't know anything from Don Lemon, CNN, Fox News, Tucker Carlson.
Those are going to be our direct sources, right?
So I never want to give too much credibility to media outlets. So just take all of this with a grain of salt. But in case you missed it,
in February, Lemon was having a discussion with his co-hosts on CNN this morning,
and they were talking about the ages of politicians because Nikki Haley, who is 51,
had called for mandatory mental competency tests for politicians over 75 years old.
And Lemon said that Haley's talk about
age made him uncomfortable and that it was the wrong road for her to go down. And that's when
he said that Nikki Haley herself is, quote, not in her prime. And what he said was, quote,
she says people, politicians are not in their prime. Nikki Haley is not in her prime. Sorry,
a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, 30s, and maybe 40s. That's when his co-host
Poppy Harlow responded saying, I think we need to qualify. Are you talking about prime for child
bearing or are you talking about prime for being president? To which Don Lemon said, don't shoot
the messenger. I'm just saying what the facts are. That same day, he issued a statement saying he
regretted his quote inartful and irrelevant comments. He was then absent from the show for the following three days,
and the CNN CEO issued a memo to staffers that said Lemon was going to undergo formal training.
So that was in February.
Now, obviously, we're in April, and the news of his termination is just now happening.
So here's what we know for sure, because like I said,
everything I just said is not from the mouth of Don Lemon or CNN, so just take it with a grain of salt, but what is from the mouth
or Twitter account of CNN and Don Lemon is this. So CNN said in a memo to its employees,
CNN and Don have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his
contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors, end quote.
From there, Don Lemon took to Twitter, tweeting, quote,
I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated from CNN.
I am stunned.
After 17 years at CNN, I would have thought that someone in management
would have had the decency to tell me directly.
At no time was I ever given indication that I would not be able to do the work I have loved at the network. It is clear that there are some
larger issues at play. With that said, I want to thank my colleagues and the many teams I have
worked with for an incredible run. They are the most talented journalists in the business,
and I wish them all the best." And then CNN tweeted,
Don Lemon's statement about this morning's events
is inaccurate. He was offered an opportunity to meet with management, but instead released a
statement on Twitter, end quote. So that is what we do know. This episode is being recorded at 5
p.m. on Monday evening. So if anything comes out after this, then obviously, you know, I'm not
going to be able to cover it. But that's what we know as of 5pm on Monday. I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.
Please leave me a review on whatever platform you listen, and I will talk to you on Friday. Bye.