An exasperated Don Lemon delayed a commercial break after CNN aired an interview with James Comer moments before.
Lemon, one of the network’s most recognisable anchors, was vexed by Mr Comer’s decision to favourably cite The New York Post in his interview with colleague Kaitlin Collins.
“That’s the time that we’re in, where facts are sort of flexible and you just throw things out there – citing uncredible sources (sic), like citing the New York Post as a credible source and saying that facts are – it’s just, I can’t believe that we’re here,” Lemon said.
Collins was asking Mr Comer, the chair of the House Oversight Committee, about upcoming hearings on the topic of Hunter Biden’s laptop.
“We don’t know what all is going on with Biden,” Mr Comer said. “Our investigation with Biden is over influence peddling. There’s a concern among a lot of Republicans that some of these classified documents may have been part of the business model with the president’s brother and the president’s son in some of their shady business dealings.”
Mr Comer did not produce any new evidence to back his claims. Lemon was seemingly unimpressed both with Mr Comer’s statements and the interview as a whole, targeting the Post even though much of its reporting on Mr Biden’s laptop was later confirmed by other outlets.
Lemon’s co-host Poppy Harlow responded by praising Collins’s reporting.
“That’s why we’ve got Kaitlin Collins on the Hill, fact-checking in real time,” Harlow said. “It was a great interview.”
Lemon did not join in the praise, nor did he allow the show’s producers to segue into a commercial break after they began playing outro music.
“Hold on please, with the music,” Mr Lemon said. “That’s a big issue when it comes to the American people. The American people are going to have to suffer through all of this stuff from election deniers to people who don’t believe in facts, we don’t have a shared reality. And now it has taken centre stage.”
Mediaite reported that Lemon circled back to the interview later in the show and praised Collins’s interviewing skills after conspicuously failing to do so alongside Harlow.
“As I was watching that very good interview by Kaitlin Collins with Comer, and I had to come out and say something because he is citing sources as credible that are not credible, he is talking about facts [as] something that’s kind of flexible, and maybe you believe one thing or maybe another, facts are facts,” Lemon said.
