Fox News deliberately targeted Michigan’s Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, already under threat from domestic terrorists, as part of its pro-death campaign against health orders designed to reduce the catastrophic rise in coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and fatalities.
Fox’s coverage of the health measures could have been ripped from a Dr. Scott Atlas prescription pad. Media Matters explains:
Scott Atlas, the right-wing radiologist who vaulted to power because President Donald Trump liked his Fox News appearances, is no longer guiding the federal government’s coronavirus response from the White House. But Fox’s pandemic coverage in the days following his exit from the administration show that his contrarian views are still in vogue at the network, even as the virus surges across the country.
…
[G]overnors across the country are desperately implementing new restrictions on business operations in hopes of keeping as many people alive as possible. But Fox is waging a campaign against the public health measures because of their economic cost to small businesses, denouncing them outright rather than pushing for more federal funding to keep owners afloat.
In Fox’s Through The Looking Glass world of grievance messaging, the network is painting efforts to save lives as life-threatening and suggesting that endangering lives by ignoring health and safety rules is some kind of fight for survival.
Not a lot of daylight between the "news" and "opinion" sides today. pic.twitter.com/GjnfNhbLVI
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) December 7, 2020
The meme is especially heinous when used against Whitmer. Michigan officials have already been under threat over the election, including the secretary of state who had armed protesters show up at her house over the weekend. In October, a domestic terrorist plot to kidnap and execute Whitmer and other Michigan officials was thwarted.
So there was simply no excuse for the deliberately incendiary segment about Whitmer’s 12-day extension of a ban on indoor restaurant dining headlined “Small Business Under Siege.”
Host Neil Cavuto asked his guests, restaurant owners Joe and Rosalie Vicari, “These latest orders were based on a serious spike in cases in your state, according to the governor, and warrant this drastic move. She doesn’t want to do it, says she’s been compelled to do it. What do you think?”
That served as little more than an opening for Joe Vicari to suggest that Whitmer has some sinister secret motive:
VICARI: I think she’s got her own agenda. I think that this has nothing to do with the science because if it did, then she said that it has gone up the last three weeks. Well, we’ve been shut for three weeks, so it hasn’t been coming from restaurants. … There’s no rhyme and reason for this. Our neighbors in Ohio are open. You can drive 40 miles south and go to restaurants there, and again the restaurants in Michigan have done all the protocols they’ve asked us to do. …
I think there’s a different agenda that the Democratic governors have, and I don’t know what it is.
Michigan currently ranks 9th in coronavirus deaths per capita and its hospitals are full. We understand the frustration but no governors should be demonized for trying to save lives and public health systems.
You can see Fox’s recklessness in action below, from the December 7, 2020 Your World.
