Scores of Twitter users defended ousted CNN host Don Lemon after it was speculated that the network released Lemon Monday (April 24) over his contentious interview with a conservative Republican presidential candidate.

In that April 19 interview, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy lectured Lemon on Black history, saying that “Black people secured their freedoms after the Civil War … only after their Second Amendment (gun rights) were secured.”

He repeated a debunked false claim that the National Rifle Association (NRA) played a “big role” in securing those freedoms.

Lemon fired back: “You are discounting a whole host of things that happened after the Civil War when it comes to African Americans, including the whole reason that the Civil Rights Movement happened is because Black people did not secure their freedoms after the Civil War.”

Lemon, 57, was already mired in controversy for months since his on-air comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley. He said Haley, 51, “isn’t in her prime, sorry,” adding, “A woman is considered to be in her prime in her 20s and 30s and maybe 40s.”

The New York Times reported that Lemon’s exchange with Ramaswamy “left several CNN leaders exasperated.”

A viral tweet Monday (April 24) from Aaron Rupar, an independent journalist who formerly worked for Vox, said, “According to the NYT this interview that Don Lemon conducted last week with Vivek Ramaswamy played a role in his firing. Note co-host Poppy Harlow sitting silently while Lemon goes after Vivek.”

By Wednesday (April 26), Rupar’s tweet received 40 million views and more than 9,000 retweets.

California Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna said he’s “profoundly embarrassed” as an Indian American that Ramaswamy, who is also of Indian descent, is lecturing a Black American about Black history.

“The truth is that the Black civil rights movement paved the way for the 1965 immigration act so that Vivek’s family or mine could come to America. We owe a huge debt,” Khanna tweeted.

A parade of other people also sided with Lemon on this issue.

Sports journalist Jemele Hill tweeted, “So Don Lemon got fired for … doing his job? A presidential candidate that says the NRA helped Black people secure their rights deserved to be called out for lying. Not to mention that asinine characterization of the Civil War.”

“Pretty sad if that is the case… part of the problem these days are tv folks who allow the disinformation and aren’t willing to push back with facts,” Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison, tweeted, commenting on the speculation that the interview led to Lemon’s termination.

“Don Lemon is guilty here of  being a journalist—getting tough on a guest who’s loose and/or lying about FACTS,” said former NAACP CEO and president Cornell Williams in a Twitter comment. “For centuries, the plain facts of Black History have been twisted into nooses of falsehood.  Why in 2023 Lemon is expected to accept being insulted and lied to?”