What a week for TV personality Don Lemon and also for X, the social media platform that Elon Musk acquired in October 2022, where he continues to make life, er, interesting for X CEO Linda Yaccarino. To recap, Musk invited Lemon to his X platform soon after Lemon was fired from CNN last year, following some boneheaded comments Lemon made about Nikki Haley. Muskâs pitch at the time was that X welcomes all voices and that its distribution is hard to beat. Ultimately, Lemon agreed to join forces with X and, according to the WSJ, he even attended a dinner organized by Yaccarino for marketers. Lemon also invited Musk to be the first guest for his talk show debut, but the recent sit-down was not to Muskâs liking. How do we know? For starters, the following day Musk sent a text to Lemonâs agent, saying simply: âContract is canceled.â He has since called Lemon âdullâ and âuninspiring.â You can catch that full interview for the first time tomorrow on YouTube and elsewhere. In the meantime, Lemon is appearing on as many shows as possible, portraying Musk as thin-skinned and anything but the free-speech advocate Musk claims to be. At the same time, the New York Post says it magically obtained a document that shows Lemon asked for the moon before bringing his show to X, including a $5 million upfront payment atop an $8 million salary; an equity stake in X; a free Tesla Cybertruck; and a private jet to Las Vegas. The Postâs sources say other demands, too, included a string of executive assistants and a marketing budget of up to $15 million. A spokesman for Lemon tells the Post there is âliterally nothingâ in that list of demands that is true. Lemonâs lawyers separately tell the WSJ of whatever deal he struck with X that Lemon âexpects to be paid for itâ and that âif we have to go to court we will.â Likely, it will come to that, judging by the growing number of people â including former employees of Musk and Xâs landlord â who are currently suing Musk over money they say they are owed. Of course, in the background of this back-and-forth â very, very far in the background â is Yaccarino. A former NBCUniversal executive, Yaccarino â whose primary job is to convince big advertisers to return to the platform â is coming up on one year in the hot seat in June. Thatâs already longer than most observers imagined sheâd survive in her role with a company thatâs routinely in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. If sheâs sticking around because of her equity package, that could be worth far less than it once was. (In January, Fidelity marked down its own stake in X by 72%.) If sheâs staying because of some kind of agreement, the obvious question is how much these really mean to Musk. â Connie Loizos |