Don Lemon Dings CNN Colleague’s McCarthy Interview Over Lack of Fact-Check

Don Lemon did not seem terribly impressed with his own network’s sought-after interview with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, wondering aloud on Monday how the Republican congressman managed to get away with not being fact-checked.

“I think it’s important to have Kevin McCarthy on, but it needs to be fact-checked,” Lemon said to his CNN This Morning co-hosts. “A lot of what he said in the interview was not factual.”

The newly minted morning host’s comments followed CNN congressional reporter Melanie Zanona’s sit-down interview with McCarthy, in which he claimed fentanyl was the top killer of Americans between the ages of 18 to 45. The wide-ranging interview touched on McCarthy’s plans should he become the next Speaker of the House, including his plans to install Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on House committees if the GOP takes back the House majority.

“You have to stop fentanyl from coming across [the border],” McCarthy said. “Fentanyl, when you think about it, is a chemical of mass destruction. It’s killing our next generation. It’s the number one killer of Americans between the ages of 18 and 45, and any time you think about that, those are the ages of individuals who enlist to defend our nation. That is the age that’s most productive in the workforce. It is destroying this nation.”

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McCarthy’s claim, however, has no confirmed basis in fact, as Lemon pointed out.

The figure was published by the advocacy group Families Against Fentanyl, which compared synthetic opioid deaths to other causes of death between 2019 through 2021. However, the opioid category encompassed multiple drugs, and the CDC confirmed to the Associated Press that it did not have specific data regarding fentanyl deaths within that age group. “It doesn’t appear that fentanyl alone is the leading cause of death among 18-45 year olds and definitely is NOT the leading cause of death among all adults,” the spokesperson said. “However, we don’t break down the leading causes in such a way that we can rank fentanyl anywhere.”

The lack of real-time pushback to that claim, among others, seemed to irk Lemon the most.

“He misled people about fentanyl in that,” Lemon said. “There’s a lot that needs to be fact-checked when it comes to what Kevin McCarthy said.”