Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk plays the conservative victim card on this morning's Fox & Friends, and pretends he's not part of the problem when it come to spreading disinformation about the coronavirus vaccines.
As we've discussed here over and over again, Fox seems to be trying to just kill off as many of their viewers as possible with their constant lies and fearmongering over the COVID vaccines, and Media Matters took a deep dive during a two-week period earlier this month. The numbers, while disgusting, aren't all that surprising to anyone who regularly monitors the garbage they're spewing on the propaganda network day in and day out.
Fox has undermined vaccination efforts in nearly 60% of all vaccination segments in a 2-week period:
Fox News has relentlessly undermined the effort to get Americans vaccinated against the COVID-19 disease. From June 28 through July 11, 57% of segments about coronavirus vaccines on the network included claims that undermined vaccination efforts.
Amid a push from the Biden administration and medical officials to increase vaccination rates, Fox News has repeatedly fearmongered about and downplayed the need for continued vaccination campaigns.
From their summary:
- Over a two-week period, from June 28 through July 11, Fox News aired 129 segments about coronavirus vaccines. Of those, 57% included claims that either undermined or downplayed immunization efforts.
- Forty-five percent of segments included claims suggesting that the vaccination drive is coercive or that it represents government overreach.
- Thirty-seven percent of segments included claims suggesting that vaccines are unnecessary or dangerous.
- Fox & Friends, including its early morning and weekend iterations, aired the most vaccine segments during this period, with more than half (52%) featuring claims undermining or downplaying immunization.
They were at it again this Sunday, with Kirk attacking the media and the government for trying to contain the spread of disinformation, calling it government "collusion," and then pretending that he himself hasn't participated in helping to spread those lies:
And look, some people in the mainstream press are trying to mis-categorize efforts like our own, where we're just saying that no one should be forced to take the vaccine as this massive smear of anti-vaccine disinformation, which is obviously not even close to being true.
As the Media Matters post reported, Kirk just hosted anti-vax conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on his podcast last week, and his track record before that was awful as well:
Kirk has frequently promoted conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. He has repeatedly attacked the science supporting mask mandates; claimed that “by historical standards, this is not a pandemic”; advocated for people to disregard local public health ordinances; and recently compared vaccine requirements to apartheid during an appearance on Fox News. (Per Media Matters’ internal database, Kirk has been a guest on weekday Fox News programming at least 68 times since January 1, 2020.)
As Biden rightfully noted, these social media companies like Facebook are literally "killing people" with disinformation. He should have included Fox in there as well. They're just as dangerous, if not more so.
