Don Lemon made false claims about the coronavirus pandemic, including stating that “everyone was working from home” during the pandemic, on a Thursday appearance of the Full Send Podcast.
The hosts of the podcast, notorious internet prankster Kyle Forgeard and his burly bodybuilding co-host Bradley Martyn, pressed Lemon on his Covid coverage, which included encouraging Americans to shun their unvaccinated countrymen.
“I think people are Monday morning quarterbacking the idea of vaccines,” Lemon claimed after Martyn pressed him on his pandemic coverage. He then said “it was a one in a lifetime pandemic, and people didn’t know,” calling for grace for those behind the lockdowns and the development of the vaccine. He acknowledged that “they made mistakes” but argued people “should have been doing what was best for their fellow man,” arguing those against masks were “selfish.”
Lemon later said he was trusted “science” and “the doctors” regarding the vaccine and was in favor of it.
“Shouldn’t other people have the right to not take the vaccine? And not be, like, forced to put something in their body that they didn’t want to?” Forgeard asked him
“Yes, you’re an American, you have the right to do that,” Lemon replied.
“But it seemed at the time like media was really shaming people, like if you didn’t get a vaccine it’s your fault” Forgeard shot back.
“Well, I don’t know if the media was shaming people,” Lemon retorted.
In 2021 Lemon explicitly called for the public to shame the unvaccinated. “The people who are not getting vaccines, who are believing the lies on the internet instead of science, it’s time to start shaming them, what else — or leave them behind,” Lemon said in a 2021 episode of CNN Tonight.
CNN’s @DonLemon: Like Trump voters, we should call unvaxxed Americans “stupid” and “start shaming them”
“Or leave them behind. Because they’re keeping the majority of Americans behind.” pic.twitter.com/6Ga4oQ7kic
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) September 16, 2021
“I think what people were saying was — I think people were being selfish about that. If you don’t get the vaccine then don’t get the vaccine, but don’t expect to be able to do and go places …” Lemon said on the Full Send Podcast
“And work, and like make a living,” Martyn interrupted. (RELATED: We Checked, And Don Lemon Told A Series Of Whoppers During The Elon Musk Interview)
“Well, everybody’s working from home, people weren’t at work,” Lemon answered.
Lemon’s assertion that everyone was working from home appears to be debunked by none other than Lemon himself, who at the pandemic’s peak in 2020 applauded the “army of immigrants and people of color and poor people” who were working to keep New York City “running.”
While many workers were able to pivot to working at home, select industries were decimated by the inability to perform their jobs on site.
Overall job losses peaked in April 2020, with approximately 23 million “cumulative job losses” in May, according to an analysis from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce.
Employees in industries like hospitality, education and retail experienced significantly higher increases in unemployment levels than other industries, both at the April 2020 peak of overall unemployment and in subsequent months, according to the Georgetown analysis.
