CNN host Don Lemon said that an expert pinned the nation’s increasing number of traffic accidents on a “lack of civility.”
That statement “raises the question: Did Don Lemon get any oxygen at birth?” responded Fox News host Greg Gutfeld on Monday night’s episode of the highly rated “Gutfeld!”
Don Lemon offered no proof that concerned parents and other individuals who oppose Critical Race Theory, or mask mandates in schools “and on airplanes,” drove more recklessly than the “sophisticated, vaccinated crowd” more likely to watch CNN. Instead, Lemon merely claimed that unnamed “experts are saying” that a 2020 rise in car accidents “is due to an overall lack of civility in our society, a lack of civility that we have seen in school board meetings, over mask mandates, and on airplanes.” His “evidence” about 2020 car accidents came from CNN footage of events that took place in 2021.
On Monday, Gutfeld questioned who these “experts” are. “That evidence is harder to find than a CNN viewer,” he quipped.
Even Lemon’s guest undermined his argument on Thursday night’s episode of CNN’s “Don Lemon Tonight.” While Lemon focused on “civility,” his guest named another culprit: A stressed-out population that medicated itself with drugs and alcohol during the COVID-19 pandemic and associated, government-mandated lockdowns.
Lemon began the segment on the December 9 episode by saying there were “38,680 deaths on U.S. roads last year — the most fatalities since 2007 — and that’s even with pandemic precautions drastically reducing the number of drivers on the roads. So, what gives?”
Don Lemon then explained 2020 car accidents by showing b-roll footage of confrontations that took place in 2021.
CNN showed a montage of a fist fight that broke out at Lee County (Florida) School District on August 31; a stand-off in a Tennessee parking lot on August 10; and a confrontation between airline personnel and guests who did not properly wear a mask inside a JetBlue flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to San Diego, California, on September 10.
Lemon omitted footage of the most uncivil actions of 2020: The BLM riots that decimated cities nationwide, burned down inner-city stores and police precincts, and claimed the life of former St. Louis police captain David Dorn. CNN infamously described the arson-fueled unrest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, as “fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”
Although Lemon projected 2021’s controversies backwards onto 2020’s highways, guest Pam Shadel Fischer of the Governors Highway Safety Association said automobile wrecks increased due to the stress and addiction caused by last year’s COVID-19 pandemic:
I think there’s just been so much stress, so much, you know, just feeling like you’re losing control, and so people are getting out there on the road, and they saw open highways and they were saying, ‘Wow. I can really put pedal to the metal. I can push it. I can do things just to relieve some of that stress.’
A lot of people have been medicating, using alcohol, using drugs , because they are so stressed out. When you put that combination of alcohol and drugs and you get behind the wheel and you are literally a powder keg ready to explode. You could cause damage and really kill someone.
She said officers regularly report accident victims “driving impaired on alcohol, drugs, sometimes multiple substances at the same time.”
The global coronavirus outbreak triggered stress — with a Gallup poll finding that 2020 broke its record as the most stressful year in the 15 years for which it had records.
Addictions increased to soothe the stress, leading to a record-breaking number of overdose deaths. A total of 93,331 Americans died of overdoses in 2020, up from 72,151 deaths in 2019, according to The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Lemon quoted a public health expert, Shannon Frattaroli of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who told the Los Angeles Times, “We might decide: What does a seat belt or another beer matter anyway when we’re in the middle of a pandemic?”
Don Lemon did not address the role the media played in stoking fear during last year’s pandemic. He also ignored the 55,807 DUI offenses and 48,919 traffic offenses committed by illegal aliens in 2020.
Thanks to @donlemon for having GHSA's @njsafe on the show last night to talk about the rise in traffic deaths during the pandemic and why everyone needs to look out for one another on the roadways and everywhere. https://t.co/WoLMCRLVJQ @DonLemonTonight
— GHSA (@GHSAHQ) December 10, 2021
Gutfeld said the undeniable unraveling of society thanks to pandemic policies “forces Lemon to switch from lying to blaming something vague and unprovable.”
“But hey,” Gutfeld said, “it’s the closest to honest that he’s been in years.”
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.