Though Don Lemon has been the recipient of some pretty bad press (and deservedly so) over the last six months, he remains front and center as one of a trio of co-hosts for CNN’s low-rated weekday “This Morning” program alongside Poppy Harlow and Kaitlan Collins.

Lemon, as RedState readers will recall, landed himself in all kinds of hot water back in February when, during a segment on just-declared GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s call for mental competency tests for candidates over a certain age, Lemon told his fellow anchors that Haley “isn’t in her prime.”

Before we get into the latest revelations about Lemon, here’s the video of that moment for those who may have missed it:

Don Lemon: "Nikki Haley isn’t in her prime. Sorry, when a woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s, and 30s, and maybe 40s…"

Poppy Harlow: "Are you talking about prime for like child bearing?"

"Don’t shoot the messenger! I’m just saying what the facts are! Google it!" pic.twitter.com/n1HmtkWTpl

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) February 16, 2023

Lemon, I should point out, has previously lavished praise on female Democratic presidential candidates despite their ages.

Since he opened his mouth and inserted his foot with the Haley comments, Lemon has even been mocked by the Biden White House and an Oscar winner, and has supposedly undergone “formal training” according to his boss Chris Licht. Lemon has also fake-apologized, issued a meaningless mea-culpa to his co-workers (but not Haley), and has in general tried to put what he no doubt believes is his best face forward.

But unfortunately for Don Lemon, his controversial past – including allegations that he treats his colleagues, especially the female ones, like garbage, keeps catching up with him, as Variety reports:

But his antipathy [in 2008] toward [then-“Live From” co-anchor Kyra] Phillips was particularly concerning and had many members of the close-knit Atlanta news team on edge. While Phillips was on assignment in Iraq — a high-profile gig that Lemon coveted — he vented his disappointment at being passed over by tearing up pictures and notes on top of and inside Phillips’ desk in the news pod they shared, according to two sources who worked there at the time. When she returned from Iraq, things only got weirder. One night while dining with members of the news team, she received the first of two threatening text messages from an unknown number on her flip phone that warned, “Now you’ve crossed the line, and you’re going to pay for it.” Phillips was visibly rattled and quickly enlisted CNN’s higher ups to identify the sender.

Remarkably, the texts were traced back to Lemon, according to those same sources.

[…]

Variety spoke with more than a dozen former and current colleagues who painted a picture of a journalist who flouted rules and cozied up to power all while displaying open hostility to many female co-workers. Each and every time, he appeared to charm his way out of facing any meaningful consequences.

[…]

More troubling was his misogynistic behavior, multiple sources say. Lemon called one of his producers fat to her face. Not long before he was identified as sending threatening texts to Phillips, he mocked [Nancy] Grace on air by mimicking her, shocking fellow colleagues. Grace declined comment but a person close to her tells Variety that “she thinks he’s an ass” and that he was always “rude, dismissive and really unfamiliar with the [news] content being discussed.”

“That was the beginning of when you knew that Don was kind of volatile and didn’t say good things about women,” says a witness to the Grace incident.

I’m not one to call for anyone’s firing or resignation, but it appears Lemon has engaged in a pattern of jerk-like behavior over the years that would get a lot of other people fired the first time it happened. Seriously, anybody else who had done even half of what Lemon is alleged to have against female and male colleagues alike would have been dumped a long time ago.

But Lemon enjoys the type of privilege that his defenders in Media World and beyond don’t like to talk about out loud: the “I’m a leftist, gay, black man” privilege. For all the left’s talk of so-called “white privilege,” it’s hilarious to me that they think the can fool people into thinking they (Democrats) don’t enjoy their own privilege, the type that gets serial liars, con artists, and misogynists like Lemon off the hook every time, provided they have the right letters of the alphabet beside their name.

If Licht doesn’t take action in response to the fresh reporting about Lemon’s troubled past at the struggling network, then he, too, is choosing to be a part of some of the very types of serious problems he promised to tackle when he took over as CEO.

The opinions expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent the views of RedState.com.

Flashback –>> Watch: In Which Fox News’ Bret Baier Explains Journalism 101 to CNN’s Don Lemon