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COVID misinformation, racism, and propaganda: Fox News’ newest show is already a disaster

Written by Alicia Sadowski & Rebecca Martin

Published

On January 18, 2021, Fox News replaced its “straight news” program The Story with Martha MacCallum with Fox News Primetime -- a new opinion show that has sought to raise the rhetorical temperature and advance more reactionary propaganda. In an attempt to increase ratings, the series of guest hosts have already tapped into familiar — but dangerous — right-wing narratives and inane commentary to peddle fear and spread lies. 

In just a little over a month, rotating hosts Maria Bartiromo, Rachel Campos-Duffy, Trey Gowdy, Brian Kilmeade, Mark Steyn, Katie Pavlich, Lawrence Jones, and their guests have trafficked in COVID misinformation, racism, and right-wing grievances. 

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  • Pandemic misinformation and misguided health commentary

    • Host Brian Kilmeade said it’s “counterintuitive” to the American dream for the U.S. to have pandemic protocols and restrictions because we’re “this risk-taking society” that settled the West. [Fox News Primetime, 1/19/21]
    • Guest Mike Rowe claimed that the government can’t fix the coronavirus because “a plague is a biblical thing.” [Fox News Primetime, 1/20/21]
    • Host Maria Bartiromo claimed that President Joe Biden’s ban on the phrase “China virus” is another example of cancel culture. [Fox News Primetime, 1/26/21]
    • Guest Steve Hilton claimed that Biden chief medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci is responsible for the creation of COVID-19. [Fox News Primetime, 1/19/21]
    • Guest Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) argued that schools that aren’t open shouldn’t get federal aid. [Fox News Primetime, 1/27/21]
    • When talking about reopening schools, host Trey Gowdy complained about the “CDC and those crazy scientists.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/2/21]
    • Host Mark Steyn complained about “the reach of Dr. Fauci’s awesome powers” after a man streaked at the Superbowl while wearing a mask. [Fox News Primetime, 2/8/21]
    • Host Rachel Campos-Duffy attacked school relief funding as a supposed payoff to unions for helping elect Biden. [Fox News Primetime, 2/18/21]
    • Host Katie Pavlich attacked Fauci for “moving the goal posts to influence the public into complying with whatever guidance du jour he is trying to push.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/23/21] 
    • Pavlich claimed prioritizing the advice of epidemiologists like Fauci was part of the “long list of mistakes that we’ve made” during the pandemic. [Fox News Primetime, 2/23/21]
    • Pavlich said teachers unions are keeping schools closed as “blackmail” and “extortion” during the pandemic. [Fox News Primetime, 2/25/21]
    • Host Lawrence Jones solely blamed Biden for 100,000 COVID deaths since his inauguration: “That’s on his watch.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/1/21]
    • Jones threatened teachers union officials pushing school closure health measures: “Make sure that the people who locked up your children never have the chance to do it ever again.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/2/21]
    • Jones and guest Dana Loesch complained that the “gun lobby” is demonized, but teachers unions wield comparable power and damage by keeping schools closed. [Fox News Primetime, 3/2/21]
    • Jones and guest Victor Davis Hanson compared advice urging masking to avoid catching the flu to “wear[ing] a space helmet” to work. [Fox News Primetime, 3/3/21]
    • Almost a year into the pandemic, guest Maj Toure called COVID a “hoax.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/4/21]
    • Guest Maryam Qudrat accused teachers unions of setting up a “racial war” for resisting opening schools during the pandemic. [Fox News Primetime, 3/4/21]

  • Racism and anti-immigrant rhetoric

    • Guest Lara Logan complained that “national security” is being sacrificed for “migrant care,” saying that wanting border security does not make you a “white supremacist.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/3/21]
    • Host Mark Steyn and Fox host Pete Hegseth attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) for denigrating America as racist after her family fled Somalia and she found electoral success: “She’s got a little bit of a terrorism problem in her back yard that she hasn’t addressed.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/12/21]
    • Guest Tucker Carlson fearmongered that the American government is cracking down on citizens breaking the law but that immigrants will face no impunity. [Fox News Primetime, 2/12/21]
    • Host Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that “identity politics” hurt the military in the same way segregation did. [Fox News Primetime, 2/16/21]
    • Host Katie Pavlich and guest Julio Rosas attacked the Biden administration’s “radical immigration agenda” for acting as a “magnet for illegal migrants.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/22/21] 
    • Pavlich praised Trump as consistent on immigration policies despite harsh rhetoric compared to Biden’s “faux compassion” toward immigrants. [Fox News Primetime, 2/24/21]
    • Pavlich and guest Stephen Miller complained that the Biden administration is giving education to migrant children while simultaneously “capitulating to teachers unions” and keeping American schools closed. [Fox News Primetime, 2/26/21]
    • Guest Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) falsely claimed that the asylum process is primarily for people “who are already here,” and people “overseas” and “south of our border” should attempt protection only through “embassies and our consulates” This is incorrect, and host Laurence Jones did not correct him. [Fox News Primetime, 3/2/21]
    • Jones fearmongered about migrants at the border: “The crush of migrants storming our southern border ... not only have they arrived, [but] tens of thousands of more are coming.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/3/21]
    • Jones accused tech companies like Google and Facebook of threatening to “tank the economy” if the Biden administration doesn’t help Dreamers. [Fox News Primetime, 3/3/21]

  • Right-wing grievances

    • Guest Brit Hume said cancel culture is dividing the country “deeper and more bitter[ly]” than the Vietnam War did in the 1960s. [Fox News Primetime, 1/19/21]
    • Host Brian Kilmeade claimed he’s never seen “a violent Trump crowd,” and guest Pete Hegseth added that comparing “thugs” who stormed the Capitol to Trump supporters is like comparing “apples and oranges.” [Fox News Primetime, 1/19/21]
    • Kilmeade and guest Steve Hilton complained that the Paris accords call for people to stop questioning the science of climate change. [Fox News Primetime, 1/20/21]
    • Kilmeade awkwardly asked if Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) approved of Trump’s decision to leave a note for Biden. [Fox News Primetime, 1/20/21]
    • Kilmeade complained that Biden is following model/author Chrissy Teigen on Twitter while noting, “Can you imagine, too, if President Trump had one attractive woman, Hollywood starlet, following him? Would that have been a three-day story on another network?” [Fox News Primetime, 1/22/21]
    • Host Maria Bartiromo complained about losing Twitter followers and the platform potentially turning into “Wikipedia,” which she said “could not be more false.” [Fox News Primetime, 1/26/21]
    • Host Trey Gowdy complained that he is in the “minority” of people who hold the value of “unity” over that of diversity, saying diversity “comes easy” and “comes naturally” for the U.S. [Fox News Primetime, 2/4/21]
    • Gowdy told his audience that Democrats believe people need a “psychological evaluation” to exercise their constitutional rights, including the Second Amendment, and argued gun legislation is ineffective because “there is no test” to “predict human behavior” or whether someone is inclined to use a weapon for harm. [Fox News Primetime, 2/5/21]
    • Host Mark Steyn compared former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial to England’s posthumous execution of Oliver Cromwell and said Democrats would like to parade Trump’s head on a stick. [Fox News Primetime, 2/8/21]
    • Steyn and guest Michele Bachmann complained that Democrats have created a “fake narrative” about the January 6 insurrection to denigrate Trump supporters. [Fox News Primetime, 2/8/21]
    • After Quillette editor Jonathan Kay mistakenly used dog shampoo for three months, Steyn and Kay complained about actor Seth Rogen making fun of Kay on Twitter. [Fox News Primetime, 2/8/21]
    • Steyn conspiratorially questioned why officials have not announced a cause of death for Officer Brian Sicknick, who was killed during the January 6 Capitol insurrection, saying that in “functioning jurisdictions” it would have been announced. [Fox News Primetime, 2/8/21] 
    • Steyn said January 6 “might have been insurrection, but it wasn’t an insurrection-insurrection.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/9/21]
    • Steyn and guest Debra Soh argued that “wokeness” is America’s “worst export,” undermining people’s ability to “live freely” in America and abroad in countries like France. [Fox News Primetime, 2/9/21]
    • Steyn attacked New York Times writer Tom Friedman for making too many Flintstones vs. Jetsons comparisons. [Fox News Primetime, 2/9/21] 
    • Guest Victor Davis Hanson said Western culture is “is self-critical, self-reflective” in a way the others like Islamic and Chinese cultures are not. [Fox News Primetime, 2/9/21] 
    • Steyn said America's “once-fashionable old identities” have been “otherized.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/10/21] 
    • Guest Peter Navarro compared Simon & Schuster’s choice not to do business with Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Nazi book burnings: “The Nazis burned books;Simon & Schuster burn book contracts.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/11/21] 
    • Guest Douglas Murray said Trump supporters are being deemed domestic terrorists after the January 6 insurrection because the Southern Poverty Law Center has “too much money and not much to do with their time.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/11/21] 
    • Host Rachel Campos-Duffy compared urban schools to “indoctrination machines.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/16/21] 
    • Guest Chris Rufo said parents have to get over the fear of being called a “white supremacist or a racist or a bigot” when fighting against anti-racism efforts in schools. [Fox News Primetime, 2/16/21] 
    • Campos-Duffy complained that positive media coverage on Biden’s sleep schedule only adds to his image as “Sleepy Joe.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/16/21] 
    • Hegseth complained that the Biden administration’s push to acknowledge ableism bias in the Navy is dumb because he wants “able-bodied people manning my ships.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/16/21] 
    • Campos-Duffy said the climate agenda is not based on science and blamed the Texas power grid failure on frozen wind turbines. [Fox News Primetime, 2/18/21]
    • Campos-Duffy called Biden’s Catholicism into question over reproductive rights access. [Fox News Primetime, 2/19/21]
    • Campos-Duffy claimed that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s nomination of Russel Honoré to lead the January 6 investigation is “very third world.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/19/21]
    • Guest Jack Carr argued that politicians who seek gun reform have a “moral vanity” that motivates them to “strip our amendments.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/22/21]
    • Host Katie Pavlich and guest Karol Markowicz argued that politicians fighting to raise the minimum wage are a reflection of the “elitism” of the Democratic Party. [Fox News Primetime, 2/23/21]
    • Pavlich claimed that policies that allow trans women to compete in sports “disenfranchise female athletes” and put fellow athletes in danger of “harassment.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/24/21] 
    • Pavlich accused Democrats and mainstream media outlets of demonizing all gun owners as “terrorists.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/24/21]  
    • Guest Lara Logan postulated that Democrats are going to use going on “a QAnon website once” or going to a Trump rally as disqualifying events to own a gun. [Fox News Primetime, 2/24/21] 
    • Pavlich praised Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) for being the “one of the few senators brave enough” to launch a transphobic attack on Biden’s transgender assistant secretary of health nominee. [Fox News Primetime, 2/25/21] 
    • Guest Charlie Kirk claimed he is leading the “protectors and the guardians of all the progress that the first- and second-wave feminists made in the last 100 years” by arguing trans women should not compete in women’s sports. [Fox News Primetime, 2/25/21] 
    • Pavlich pushed for more gun ownership to deter violent crime as opposed to reporting crime to police authorities because you “can’t be a good witness if you’re dead.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/25/21] 
    • Pavlich complained that by keeping fencing around the Capitol, Democrats are “exploiting” the “ugliness” of the January 6 insurrection “indefinitely” because it makes Republicans and Trump supporters “look bad.” [Fox News Primetime, 2/26/21]
    • Guest Sean Hannity mocked Biden as “weak,” “frail,” and “struggling cognitively” for carrying around a notecard with the exact numbers of American COVID-19 deaths: “What’s on the card? My name is Joe? My wife’s name is Jill?” [Fox News Primetime, 3/1/21]
    • Host Lawrence Jones and guest Carley Shimkus complained that because Atlantic columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates believes in systemic racism, he is unqualified to write the new Superman movie. [Fox News Primetime, 3/1/21]
    • Jones and guest Karl Rove framed H.R. 1, the For the People Act meant to protect voting rights, as a tool for politicians to “rob you blind.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/4/21]
    • Guest Dave Rubin dismissed the threat of white supremacy: “We got Aunt Jemima off syrup, we got Uncle Ben off rice. So, we're actually removing people of color so that if you go to stores, you're only going to see white people on food packaging. So is that coming from the white supremacists or is it coming from the wokesters?” [Fox News Primetime, 3/4/21]
    • Guest Sonnie Johnson compared reproductive rights like abortion to “slaughter.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/5/21]
    • Jones and guest Kayleigh McEnany attacked Biden about a “crisis” at the border due to a “flood of migrants” and “a crumbling border wall.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/5/21]
    • Jones and the panel attacked climate czar John Kerry for “zipping around the world” in his private jet and demonizing Trump. [Fox News Primetime, 3/5/21]
    • Guest and math professor Sergiu Klainerman argued that cultural sensitivity on college campuses would prevent things like “insisting on the right answer” or “showing your work.” [Fox News Primetime, 3/5/21]