New York Post

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- [Horoscopes are on Page 34, Don.]

HOUSTON, we have a problem.

After his reps adamantly denied that Don Lemon had a list of diva demands to join Elon Musk’s X, the ousted anchor said in a new interview, “People negotiate all the time.”

Lemon didn’t deny that he wanted to be the first podcaster in space — the most out-ofthis-world request among a heap of them that he made when hashing out his contract with X.

The Post reported this week that the former CNN anchor wanted SpaceX boss Musk to launch him into orbit so that he could be the first-ever outer-space podcaster.

Lemon put in the moonshot request to go to space — and also wanted a $5 million advance on top of an $8 million base salary, plus equity in the company, and veto power over the site’s news policies and its creative roster — when X brought him aboard to host a show on the platform as part of its push to offer original content. But after Musk was the first guest on “The Don Lemon Show,” he fired the anchor.

When Mediaite Editor-in-Chief Aidan McLaughlin asked Lemon, 58, about The Post’s reporting, he brushed it all off as “nonsense” — but then admitted that his asks were part of negotiatin­g a deal.

McLaughlin said, “The New York Post has been reporting . . . that you made a bunch of requests from X. That you asked for a [Tesla] Cybertruck, an $8 million annual salary” and other demands. Lemon replied, “Oh, come on. That is nonsense. People negotiate all the time, but that’s, come on. It’s obviously a deflection.”

Lemon deflected a bit himself, saying of our reports, “It has nothing to do with the interview, and I’m not going to fall into that.”

When asked if he reads The Post, Lemon scoffed, “No, I don’t read the New York Post. Oh, I do read the New York Post. I lied. I read the horoscopes in the New York Post.”

He elaborated: “I do love their horoscopes. It’s great. I’m a Pisces, by the way, so you can read my horoscope to know what’s going on in my life.”

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