Instead of apologizing for mocking Joe Biden for modeling safe behavior and wearing a face mask in public, “Dr.” Brit Hume doubled down, claimed the mask was unnecessary and accused Biden of looking “ridiculous.”
“Ultimate journalist” Martha MacCallum opened a discussion with Hume about the "backlash" with a softball, “What point were you trying to make?”
Hume said Biden, “like anybody else wearing a mask, looked ridiculous” and, for extra gratuitous malice, added that Biden’s sunglasses “made him look especially ridiculous.”
Hume didn’t let the fact that he has no credentials in medical science or public health keep him from playing an expert on TV. “He’s not a COVID carrier, so the idea you’re wearing a mask to protect someone else doesn’t seem to apply here, especially with the fact that it’s outdoors where there’s very little empirical data indicating that the virus spreads very easily outdoors. … You really don’t get it by simply passing somebody. … He didn’t really need to wear a mask.”
FACT CHECK: Although experts agree that the risk of contagion is less outdoors than indoors, it is not risk free. Even Fox’s own expert advises wearing a mask outside.
MacCallum pushed back ever so gently. “Yes, but I mean that, so it’s interesting,” she said. “The White House is sending out, I think, some mixed messages here because you have the surgeon general saying when you go outside please wear a face covering.”
But then MacCallum helped validate Hume by saying, “This is sort of the fine print that no one ever brings up. [White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx] says if you can’t social distance when you’re outside, wear a mask.”
“Exactly, that’s right,” Hume agreed appreciatively. “It’s amazing to me that this issue of whether to mask or not mask has become this huge flashpoint.”
MacCallum did not note the irony.
After viewers saw a clip of Biden saying he wears a mask to “lead by example,” “Dr.” Hume suggested it’s better to be sorry than safe: “I don’t think it makes much of an example to wear a mask where, in a situation where nearly all the data we have indicated that it’s not necessary. And on top of that, it looks absurd,” he sneered.
Hume added that Trump “thinks Biden looks ridiculous and he kind of does, and he doesn’t want to look that way. And the fact, the fact that he retweeted that tweet of mine, which I certainly didn’t expect, suggests that he agrees with what I said. He doesn’t want to look funny.”
You may recall that Hume, who appeared via a safe remote location, recently called it an “entirely reasonable viewpoint” that seniors should be willing to die for the sake of revitalizing the economy. But once again, Hume said nothing about going out in public without a mask himself.
You can watch Hume mock and attack Biden’s cautious, potentially life-saving behavior below, from the May 26, 2020 The Story with Martha MacCallum, via Media Matters.