“It’s been a really tough day, today, and a tough few days for us here at CNN. All week, really. I didn’t want to talk about until tonight,” Lemon told his viewers. “So the truth is that we’re all heartbroken because we lost our leader here. We lost a man who was the backbone, the glue and the spirit of this company, the man who I personally credit with change in my life, the man who believed in me when nobody else did. He is the reason that you have a gay Black man with two hours of primetime, a show with my name on it, the only anchor of color in primetime on cable news, think about that. You want to talk about diversity? Here it is.”…

Lemon credited Zucker for making CNN “relevant again” and “steadied it for the last decade,” insisting he left the network a “very good blueprint going forward.”

“So for all of you at home watching, you should know that I and my colleagues will continue to do exactly what he would want us to do. And that is to do what I’m going to do right now: deliver the news, no matter what it is, without fear or favor,” Lemon said.

“So, thank you, Jeff Zucker, for everything you did for everyone at this network and for what you did to the entire country — for the entire country.”