‘Fox & Friends’ Hosts Fight With Each Other Over COVID Rules
In a rare moment of genuine disagreement, Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt were forced to give Brian Kilmeade a reality check about the out-of-control pandemic.
The three Fox & Friends hosts tend to be on the same page with each other about stuff. Unlike on certain other morning talk shows, there’s a level of baseline consensus. That’s sort of their thing.
So it was surprising Monday morning when Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt had to repeatedly talk Brian Kilmeade off the ledge from telling viewers that any and all restrictions to protect them from COVID-19 were nonsense.
As Thanksgiving fast approaches, health officials around the country are urging Americans to be responsible to keep the coronavirus from spreading ever further out of control during this crucial period before vaccines can be rolled out. But Kilmeade called new statewide rules like lockdowns and curfews “brutal” and “unnecessary” precisely “because the vaccine is no longer a hope, it’s a reality.”
“We are weeks away from three straight vaccines in a row, can we have a business to go to?!” Kilmeade asked angrily, seriously overestimating the time it will take for those three promising vaccines to actually reach enough Americans to slow the spread.
“This is a very super-challenging time,” Doocy explained to Kilmeade, who appeared to chime in with “get high” in response. “We heard that there would be a second wave and it is spiking right now. We’re going back up that mountain, we’re going the wrong way.”
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When Kilmeade started to push back, Doocy noted that there have over one million new cases in the last 10 days and while “we may not like it,” leaders are just trying to do things like close bars after 10 p.m. because that’s when the masks start coming off and people get even more irresponsible.
“You have to be smart about this!” added Earhardt, who began the pandemic by telling Fox viewers it was the “safest time to fly” and more recently said she was “shocked” to learn that children could contract the virus.
As Kilmeade began ranting about how safe the bars are after 10 p.m., Doocy smiled and told him, “I haven’t been to a bar or a restaurant for nine months!”
“I have!” Kilmeade shot back before accusing officials of cutting small business owners “off at their knees again” by imposing a curfew.
“And I get that," an increasingly reasonable Doocy replied. "The problem is—and this goes back to the very beginning—they don’t want to overwhelm the hospitals. The numbers are going through the roof and hospitalizations are going up as well. So ultimately, what we’re saying is, you just have to be smart, understand the risk, and that’s why there are these restrictions.”
“Well, they don’t trust us!” Kilmeade whined. “Because they’re making these restrictions and taking personal decisions away. That’s what they’re saying. They know more, which I find unbelievably disrespectful.”
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