After comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to Nazi war criminal Josef Mengele, and receiving widespread criticism from Jewish groups and the Auschwitz Museum, Fox Nation host Lara Logan is only digging in.
On Wednesday, the disgraced investigative reporter swung at her critics, posting links to conspiracy websites that claim HIV is “entirely fake” while boosting a tweet attacking the Auschwitz Museum for criticizing Logan.
The ordeal began earlier this week when Logan claimed during a Monday night appearance on Fox News that the White House was overhyping the super-mutated Omicron variant, likening the nation’s top infectious disease expert to Mengele, a Nazi doctor known as the “Angel of Death” for medically experimenting on Jewish prisoners in the Auschwitz death camp.
“What you see on Dr. Fauci—this is what people say to me: that he doesn’t represent science to them. He represents Josef Mengele,” she exclaimed, adding: “And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this, because the response from COVID, what it has done to countries everywhere, what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, the poverty, it has obliterated economies.”
Logan, who in recent years turned into a far-right provocateur, sparked intense backlash from Jewish organizations and Holocaust memorials. The Anti-Defamation League condemned the former CBS News reporter for “making outlandish and offensive analogies” while the American Jewish Committee called her comments “utterly shameful” and called for a public apology. “It is disrespectful to victims & a sad symptom of moral and intellectual decline,” the Auschwitz Museum tweeted on Monday night.
Logan, rather than apologize or back off of her comparison, decided to double down. Taking aim at Fauci over his research work during the early days of the AIDS epidemic, Logan shared a slew of articles suggesting that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director had done more harm than good.
A number of the links she posted on Twitter were to far-right conspiracy websites, such as The Gateway Pundit. As The Bulwark’s Christian Vanderbrouk noted, Logan also linked to sites that peddle outrageous theories that HIV is “entirely fake” and obsess over Freemasonry. (One of these tweets is now pinned to the top of her Twitter timeline.)
Outside of turning to the fever swamps of the internet to prove herself right on Fauci, she also amplified attacks on Holocaust remembrance groups to her 197,000 Twitter followers for merely denouncing her Nazi analogy. (And during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, no less.)
“Shame on the Auschwitz Museum for shaming Lara Logan for sharing that Jews like me believe Fauci is a modern day Mengele,” read the tweet boosted by Logan.
Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Following the publication of this article, the Auschwitz Museum claimed that Logan had even blocked their official Twitter account.
Both the ADL and American Jewish Committee blasted Fox News for its continuing silence on their star’s inflammatory rhetoric, especially with Logan doubling down on her comments.
“It's not surprising that neither Logan or Fox News have apologized for the incredibly offensive remarks Logan made,” ADL spokesperson Jake Hyman said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. “Logan and the network seem to be immune to shame and allergic to remorse. It's equally disturbing, yet also not surprising, Logan would double-down this morning on Twitter.”
The American Jewish Committee's director for combating antisemitism, meanwhile, told CNN that it is “deeply unsettling” that Logan has not apologized and dug in on her “disgusting comparison,” adding that Fox’s “silence has been deafening.”
After gaining a solid reputation as an award-winning investigative reporter for CBS News during the 2000s, Logan's credibility took a serious hit in 2013 after her bombshell Benghazi story for 60 Minutes was completely debunked. Apologizing for the inaccuracies on the air, she was then forced to take a lengthy leave of absence. She would eventually leave the network in 2018.
Following her departure from CBS, Logan soon became a right-wing cause célèbre as she became a fierce critic of the mainstream media. Eventually, she landed at Fox News in 2020, hosting her own show on the network’s online streaming service Fox Nation.
Since then, she has moved further to the fringe, regularly drawing attention for delivering unhinged, conspiratorial rants. She has credulously pushed obvious hoaxes about left-wing activists under the guise of reporting, falsely asserted that Sweden has “no vaccinations,” inaccurately claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine isn’t “really a vaccine,” and warned Fox viewers that Haitian migrants could act as a “virus bomb” on the United States.