On Thursday, Chris Cuomo devoted the majority of his Primetime show to a lengthy and at times headache-inducing interview with White House counselor Kellyanne Conway.

For 39 minutes straight, Cuomo battled it out with Conway, with the pair talking over each other much of the time.

It was a bit much for Don Lemon, who took Cuomo to task for the exchange during the handoff.

After asking Cuomo simply “Why?” he called Conway’s performance a “defective, dismissive and histrionic display of non-answers.”

He then said this: “At a time when the American people need to be reassured that we are in good hands, when all of the evidence shows that the president is lying to the American people, what Kellyanne Conway does and what the apologists do, they, how do I say this nicely? I don’t want to be rude. They take up your time, our time, on national television, when we could be learning something that’s important to us.”

Cuomo, however, was very quick to defend having Conway on for most of his show and after a bit of back and forth with Lemon said that these one-on-ones are why he left the morning.

“All I’m saying is I hear you, I respect the thing. That’s why I don’t do panels on the show,” Cuomo said. “I don’t want a panoply of heads giving me their opinions on things. I want people who are players and I want to test them. That’s what Cuomo Primetime is all about, the reason I left the morning. I didn’t come here to do more of what I was doing in the morning. So I get it. I get it.”

Then further justify having Conway on he added: “I’m saying that’s their best. She is their best on this. That’s why they sent her out to come after me. And I want the American people to see what the president considers his best defense. And they saw it.”

Lemon then questioned Cuomo over what he thought the people got.

“I think they saw that she has a hard time justifying what the president has said,” Cuomo explained on. “That she tries to use cleverness in place of — having real arguments and real facts, they’re not on her side.”

Finally after a bit more back and forth and Cuomo justification, Lemon ended the handoff by saying to his fellow CNN host, “you have more patience than I do.”

Watch above, via CNN

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