With Tucker Carlson about to host “COVID conqueror” Donald Trump for an interview and “medical evaluation” tonight, this seemed a good time to highlight Carlson’s rant against facemasks earlier this week.
After playing clips of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging mask wearing, including one where she said “real men wear masks,” Carlson sounded like a high school bully as he mocked her: “You’re not a real man if you don’t wear a mask? What are you even saying? She’s not saying anything. She’s just judging you, and she’s lying as she does it.”
He showed clips of Pelosi and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) not wearing masks in public, then said, “that was fine with us.” He continued, “These people are hypocrites obviously, but it’s worse than that, they’re self-righteous.”
“All of us are prisoners of their vanity,” Carlson said self-righteously. He went on to attack “vapid” California Governor Gavin Newsom for making a public service announcement promoting face masks. Carlson sneeringly called it a “propaganda video.”
“What if it doesn’t help anyone? Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. Has there ever been shallower virtue signalling?”
Then, without irony, he claimed that “underneath all of this is cruelty.”
FACT CHECK: In August, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (HME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine projected that 70,000 lives could be saved if everyone in the U.S. started wearing masks.
Does Carlson, who works from a safe, remote studio, allow himself close contact with unmasked people? Or is he a hypocrite and demand from others what he demonizes on the air?
You can watch Carlson place attacking Democrats over protecting public health below, from the October 6, 2020 Tucker Carlson Tonight, via Media Matters.