Robert LaMay was celebrated as an anti-vax culture war hero by the vaccinated Fox News hosts – that is, until he died of COVID. Last night, MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell did more for LaMay’s family than any of the wealthy Fox hosts or the billionaire Murdochs will likely ever do.
In case you missed it, LaMay, a Washington state trooper, became a Fox News celebrity after he opted for early retirement rather than comply with the state’s vaccine mandate and announced in a viral video, on his last day of work, that Gov. Jay Inslee should “kiss my a**." As Media Matters put it, “Fox News wanted viewers to hear an anti-vax trooper’s story – until he died of COVID.” As of this morning, Fox still hadn’t found the decency to let their viewers know LaMay died on Friday, much less honor his death. (The news was published on FoxNews.com, accompanied by a video showcasing parents who “stand up to colleges imposing vaccine booster mandates on students.”)
Here's Laura Ingraham taking credit last night for a university dropping its vaccine requirement. Still no mention of Robert LaMay, her guest who refused the vaccine and died of COVID on Friday. pic.twitter.com/deBeOt9Q1F
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 2, 2022
But O’Donnell found that decency and more. After blasting Fox’s treatment of LaMay, O’Donnell noted that LaMay left behind a wife and four children and that his paycheck had been their only source of support. Then he set about raising money for the family.
O’DONNELL: No word yet on how much Rupert Murdoch will contribute to the GoFundMe page set up for Robert LaMay’s family. How about the hundred million dollars or so that he pays the Fox hosts who do everything they possibly can to steer people away from taking the vaccine that all of them have taken? The vaccine that Rupert Murdoch flew across the Atlantic Ocean to get in England before he could get it here?
So far, the LaMay family’s GoFundMe page has raised $7,610 since Robert LaMay quit his job in October.
Please consider helping Robert LaMay’s family now. I’m going to make a contribution to the GoFundMe page and I hope you do, too, because Robert LaMay’s family needs our help now. And we can be sure that Rupert Murdoch will do nothing.
A few minutes later, the GoFundMe page had raised $10,638.
That must have been before O’Donnell’s $10,000 donation. As I write this, the GoFundMe page has raised $51,742. O’Donnell is listed as the top donor.
Many of the other donors credit O’Donnell for their contribution. I did not see any Fox personality listed as a donor.
You can watch O’Donnell prove he has the decency that Fox News hosts and the Murdochs utterly lack below, from MSNBC’s February 1, 2022 The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, via Media Matters.
Wonderful topic for your next column, if you’re up to it. The fiends made utter fools of themselves this morning as they giggle and chortled over what they thought was going to be a dire jobs report. A prediction of 300,00 job losses was mentioned with undisguised glee. Turned out to be a massive move in the right direction PLUS the last two months of 2021 were corrected upwards by hundreds of thousands. Twitter went nuts over them rooting for failure.
Different folks are struck by different things.