Beautiful dreamer Don Lemon thinks America is ready to love Matt Lauer again

Never let it be said that Don Lemon (formerly of CNN, and then formerly of his own extremely short-lived show on Twitter, currently of not very much) is not a hopeless romantic. Lemon seems to really believe in love—and, specifically, the American people’s willingness to love completely disgraced former NBC news guy Matt Lauer all over again.

Per Variety, Lemon was talking on the Hollywood Raw podcast when he was asked about Lauer, who he apparently became friends with after “the whole situation happened”—i.e., the incident in which Lauer was fired from one of the most famous news jobs in the country in 2017 over allegations of a pattern of sexual misconduct, which later included accusations of outright sexual assault. Still, Lemon thinks we’re all ready to forgive and forget, noting that “Whenever I see Matt out and about—or you know, if we go out to dinner, my husband and I go out to dinner with him and his fiancée—and people love him. Women love him! They’re like, ‘Man, oh my God, can I get a picture? I love you. I miss you on television.’”

Lemon contends that the only thing blocking such a return would be “the people inside the business who are afraid.” (Presumably, “the people inside the business” includes most any women who would then have to work under Lauer, who said after his firing that, while he denied any criminal actions, “There is enough truth in these stories to make me feel embarrassed and ashamed.”) Lemon, who was fired from CNN in 2023, just a few weeks after making unprofessional statements on-air about former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, went on to suggest that “maybe in this whole Trump era,” where “canceled is over,” Lauer could return to TV. (Lauer has done no public work since his firing back in 2017; he was pulling down $20 million a year at NBC there at the end, so he’s presumably pretty set, money-wise.) Lemon clarifies that he has no information about the allegations against Lauer, or genuine info on the plans of the man himself, but is simply reporting what he sees, in so far as he apparently can’t get through a meal with the guy without the world screaming to Matt Lauer that it loves, forgives, and misses him: “I think the general public would accept Matt back. And I think people would watch him and I think the ratings would be great.”