Of all the mistakes and misstatements that fact-checkers have let President Joe Biden get away with during his six months in office, perhaps the biggest came during a televised town hall in Cincinnati on Wednesday night, when the president called CNN’s Don Lemon “one of the most informed journalists in the country.”
Joke Biden is a liar.
1) "I made a commitment, that when I made a mistake, I'd tell ya." Border Crisis, low unemployment, inflation. All his fault, no apologies.
2) Said with a straight face that Don Lemon is "one of the most informed journalists in the country." 🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/kYhttK5mWj
— Andrew @ Don't Walk, RUN! Productions (@DontWalkRUN) July 22, 2021
Ironically, his statement came while discussing the need for politicians to tell the truth. “We’ve got to restore faith in government. You’ve got to get people to the point where they trust government,” he said.
“I made a commitment that, when I made a mistake, I’d tell you. And I’ve made mistakes,” Biden said to roaring applause. Turning to the moderator, Don Lemon, he said, “You know — because you’re one of the most informed journalists in the country — you know the criticism I got when I said I want to unite the country.”
That complimentary view certainly reflects the way Lemon and his coterie of guests see themselves. Maybe the clearest view into their self-image came last January, when Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson and New York Times author Wajahat Ali belittled Trump voters as uneducated, backwoods imbeciles who don’t know anything about “yer geography, and yer spellin, and yer math, and yer readin.” Lemon laughed until he cried. The clique’s banter seemed so blatantly elitist that the Republican National Committee turned it into a campaign ad.
The arrogance, the dismissiveness, the smug cackling, the accents.
If Donald Trump wins re-election this year, I’ll remember this brief CNN segment late one Saturday night in January as the perfect encapsulation for why it happened. pic.twitter.com/8kQ6zN9AZV
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) January 28, 2020
Despite their positive self-esteem, Lemon and his clique have seemingly gone out of their way to undermine confidence in their reporting, their network, and broadcast media as a whole. Here are a few of the most egregious examples of Lemon’s errors and exaggerations:
1. Lemon insists there’s no urban “chaos” during the 2020 BLM/Antifa riots
Last July, Lemon mocked American citizens who “fall for” the “right-wing media machine” message that, after months of riots and looting, “Democratic cities are in chaos right now.” A month later, Lemon warned that Democrats had to tamp down on leftist lawlessness, because “it’s showing up in the polling.” But after the election, Lemon returned to morally excusing the summer’s spree of property damage that left more than a dozen people dead. “You can’t compare what happened this summer [BLM riots] to what happened at the Capitol,” he said in January, because BLM grounded its message in “facts.”
Ghoulish behavior from CNN's Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo laughing about and mocking the rising crime in major U.S. cities, defunding the police, taking down statues, and erasing the Founders from our history.
Dead kids like Secoriea Turner and Horace Lorenzo Anderson aren't funny. pic.twitter.com/BorIYoiC8t
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 8, 2020
2. The NFL’s “Take a Knee” protests had nothing to do with the flag or patriotism
In 2017, Lemon misinformed his audience about the reason sports figures refused to stand during the national anthem. “Taking a knee at an NFL game was never about the flag or the military,” he said. But then-quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who started the movement, explicitly stated, “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.”
3. President Trump has “early-onset dementia”
Don Lemon isn’t a doctor, but he played one on TV in August 2017. He told CNN viewers that there was a possibility that President Trump suffered from “early-onset dementia” — citing the medical expertise of CNN contributor Ana Navarro. Lemon generously added that “we don’t know that” the president suffered from irreversible mental decline (a concern he has not leveled against President Biden).
4. Critical Race Theory denialism
After the 2020 “racial reckoning,” leftists intensified their efforts to teach Critical Race Theory in schools and other public institutions. After parents learned about its teachings and fomented a public backlash, Don Lemon has taken the lead in denying that CRT is being taught in public schools. Ironically, a guest host on his show tried to prove that earlier this month … by featuring an interview with a woman who teaches CRT in the public schools. New York Times columnist Ross Douthat set Lemon straight on July 15, saying that “curricula are being developed that do reflect ideas that come out of Critical Race Theory.”
5. Only Republicans commit political terrorism
After a disturbed individual mailed bombs to multiple left-wing activists and politicians in October 2018, Lemon deemed political violence the exclusive domain of conservatives. “I don’t see Democrats killing people,” he said. That drew a dubious response from Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), who was nearly murdered by a supporter of Bernie Sanders at a congressional baseball game.
— Steve Scalise (@SteveScalise) October 30, 2018
Lemon has tried to pin violence on his political foes. After a 19-year-old allegedly called CNN with death threats in January 2018, Lemon said, “This is what happens when the President of the United States, Donald Trump, repeatedly attacks members of the press simply for reporting facts he does not like.” He proceeded to complain that Trump called Jim Acosta’s reporting “fake news … over and over.”
6. Questionable U.S. history lessons
One of the key arguments of CRT is that, because America’s founding was tainted by slavery, founding documents like the U.S. Constitution have to be revised. Leftists also justify reparations to black people and other minorities on those grounds. But in May, Lemon upended that argument in order to contradict then-CNN contributor Rick Santorum, who argued that American Indian tribes had little influence on most of America’s founding documents. “Europeans did not found this country,” Lemon said.
7. Antifa denialism
In 2018, Lemon defended the cause of Antifa, whitewashing its fascistic use of violence to achieve political ends. “It says it right in the name: Antifa, anti-fascism,” Lemon said. “Listen, no organization’s perfect. There was some violence. No one condones violence, but there were different reasons for Antifa and for these neo-Nazis to be” at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. “One — racists, fascists; the other group, fighting racist fascists. There is a distinction there.” That’s more chilling since, in January, Lemon equated the 74 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump with Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan, presumably making them worthy of an Antifa thrashing.
8. Jussie Smollett, martyr
Jussie Smollett’s well-staged “hate crime” blew up in his face thanks to a contradictory story, African partners who went public, and video footage of the “attack.” But Lemon seemed to indicate that none of this means Smollett was wrong. In February 2019, Lemon said the fact that the American people did not believe Jussie Smollett’s story was “not his fault”; he lost in the court of public opinion, Lemon said, and apparently not due to his story being objectively false.
9. America was about to become a dictatorship…last year
Like any commentator, Lemon warned his followers that American’s light of freedom would soon be extinguished — because President Trump wanted people to crack down on BLM/Antifa rioters. Lemon was triggered last June when the president implored America’s mayors to “show strength” against the rampaging rioters. “We are teetering on a dictatorship,” Lemon told his audience. “America, open your eyes.” Curiously, that dictator slinked off hours before his successor was sworn into office six months later.
10. Americans think black people are subhuman
Part of the elitist mindset is reassuring yourself that others are not as refined, evolved, or genteel as you and your allies. “I don’t know if America sees black people and especially black gay men as fully human,” Lemon, who is black and gay, said last month. Objectively, racist attitudes continue to reach new lows.
Honorable mentions:
Lemon’s erroneous reporting ranges from the ethereal to the mundane. In 2019, Lemon said that the word disrespectful is “not actually a word.” On the other hand, Lemon said that “Jesus Christ, admittedly, was not perfect when He was here on this Earth.” He went on to say that Jesus was not white but “looked more like a Muslim” — apparently unaware that Islam is a religion, not a race.
No one who talks for a living can avoid making mistakes — but Lemon’s mistakes emanate from his far-Left worldview, which he admitted in an August 2017 exchange with The Daily Wire’s founder, Ben Shapiro. Lemon admitted, “We shouldn’t pretend that there’s this fake objectivity” in the media. “Everyone has a point of view. That doesn’t mean that you’re biased.”
Reporting a narrative rather than the facts doesn’t mean that you — or your viewers — are well-informed, either.
The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.