But in the nearly two weeks since he was taken into custody, Lemon has enjoyed a triumph of his own. A new audience galvanized by the arrest has flooded his online-media empire, earning him more than 300,000 new followers on Instagram and 140,000 new subscribers on YouTube.

His Substack business has soared 73 percent to more than 140,000 subscribers, many of whom pay $8 a month to be a part of “Lemon Nation.” His online store has even started offering a new line of merchandise: tees, stickers and $55 sweatshirts labeled “We Will Not Be Silenced.”

“I think they did not expect public sentiment to go the way it’s going,” Lemon told The Washington Post in an interview. “They elevated me when they tried to demean me and demote me.”

Lemon’s arrest cast a spotlight on the increasingly aggressive ways the Trump administration has attacked the press, from filing billion-dollar lawsuits to lobbing insults and presenting an official White House “Hall of Shame” for what it says are the worst “media offenders.”....

Lemon declined to talk about his income or company’s revenue but said he’s “very happy” with its growth. In August, he told Variety he was on pace to surpass what he was making at CNN.

Besides YouTube revenue, Lemon said the Lemon Media Network has been able to monetize through his online store, where fans, known as “Lemonheads,” are told they can support independent journalism by buying merchandise like a “Turn the TV Off” T-shirt. (The proceeds from the “We Will Not Be Silenced” collection will go to the Committee to Protect Journalists, a Lemon representative said.)