Fox & Friends saluted Texas’ lifting of its face mask mandate by visiting a crowded, maskless diner in McKinney, Texas where weekend cohost Will Cain gave appreciation to one customer who told viewers, “assess the situation and think for yourself, like Rush Limbaugh wanted us to do.”

It’s still astounding to me that Fox would prioritize its politics over its viewers’ actual lives but that’s what the network has done throughout the pandemic.

In the first celebratory visit, cohost Brian Kilmeade introduced the segment with gaslighting: “Will, guess what? Texans are being empowered by their governor to act responsibly,” Kilmeade said with gusto. Cain interviewed several enthusiastically mask-free diners, including a teacher who said it was appropriate for mask rules to remain in place at her school but seemed to think nothing of possibly contaminating herself at the diner. As Raw Story noted, the diner was filled to 100% capacity.

Later, Fox & Friends returned to the crowded diner. we had maskless Cain gushing, “This is freedom right here! This is free to conduct business.” He didn’t mention a thing about freedom to avoid contamination from a friend, family, coworker or customer who cares more about not wearing a face mask than about other peoples’ health and lives.

Cain validated the lie that masks don’t help prevent the spread in a chat with a diner named Frank (I’ll skip the last names to protect the selfish.) “You were telling me, if I remember your words correctly, when you look state by state, those that have had the highest infection rates and those that are not, it’s brain dead to have locked down.”

Did you notice how, despite his obvious stamp of approval, Cain slyly made sure to emphasize that that’s Frank’s view, not his own? That’s probably because Frank's claim is false. Eight of the top 10 states that saw the highest new coronavirus cases per capita in October did not have a widespread mask mandate, Vox reported. The site also noted that in Kansas, counties that mandated masks stabilized their cases whereas cases doubled in the counties that didn't. In fact, the counties with the highest number of cases per resident in today’s New York Times count are mostly in red states. Three of the top five counties are in Texas.

Cain let Frank continue by saying that Texas had “probably closed down a little too tight.”

After moving on to Roland, the Limbaugh fan who is also a criminal defense attorney, Cain got to “fascinating” Gus. He’s a retired New York City police sergeant who moved to Texas because “I like my guns and I lean a certain way.”

Before tossing back to the approving cohosts in the studio, Cain asked café’s owner, “How does it feel to be open 100% capacity?”

“I love it, I love it and I just want to say we’re proud of our governor,” owner Bill Smith told us.

Fox likes to pretend it’s “America’s Newsroom” but here was an out-and-out false view of both America and Texas.

FACT CHECK: The majority of Americans think restrictions in Texas were lifted too quickly. As much as Cain pretended he and his pals represent Texas’ views, the truth is they don’t. A recent poll found Texans split evenly on the repeal of the mask mandate.

You can watch Cain push a pro-death agenda in the name of “freedom” below, from the March 10, 2021 Fox & Friends.