Don Lemon defends Tucker Carlson amid confrontation video

CNN anchor Don Lemon on Monday criticized the treatment of Tucker Carlson by a man who confronted the Fox News host in a Montana fishing shop over the weekend.

“I never thought I’d be in the position to maybe somehow have to defend Tucker Carlson,” Lemon said before showing the footage that was posted to Instagram by Dan Bailey, the man who confronted Carlson.

In the footage, Bailey calls Carlson “the worst human known to man” and accuses him of killing people by promoting vaccine misinformation.

“My daughter’s here,” Carlson tells Bailey.

In a debate with his fellow CNN commentators, Lemon took the side of the Fox News personality.

“Let me tell you this, I don’t like it,” Lemon said of the encounter after playing the footage. “I don’t like it when people do that because I would not want it to happen to me.”

He adds, “But I have mixed emotions because Tucker has done this to people before.”

CNN commentator Ana Navarro in turn issued a scathing rebuke of Carlson, arguing that COVID-19 is a sensitive topic and that “people have every right to be furious.”

After acknowledging Carlson’s past personal digs at him and troublesome remarks on the pandemic, Lemon said he still doesn’t feel the situation was appropriate.

“I think that what Tucker says much of the time is completely reprehensible and divorced from reality,” Lemon said, “but he has a right to be in a space and not be accosted and not be ambushed by anyone.”

Lemon echoed the wording and sentiment used by Fox News in a statement the outlet released regarding the incident.

“Ambushing Tucker Carlson while he is in a store with his family is totally inexcusable,” it read. “No public figure should be accosted regardless of their political persuasion or beliefs simply due to the intolerance of another point of view.”