Fox & Friends lets its favorite gym owners promote a conspiracy theory that COVID restrictions are a plot to spread the virus

Gym owner: “I sincerely think that they are actually looking to make sure they can mandate a peak and a spike in COVID cases in the fall so they can shut everything down again. … They don't have any data and science to back anything up.”

Written by Bobby Lewis

Published

On August 13, Fox & Friends again hosted the co-owners of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey, to promote their legal battles with the state government over COVID-19 restrictions. Co-owner Frank Trumbetti floated a bizarre conspiracy theory that local governments’ COVID-19 mitigation efforts are actually an attempt to “mandate a peak and a spike in COVID cases in the fall so they can shut everything down again.”

For months, Fox News has given Atilis Gym obsessive, fawning coverage of its defiance of the state’s COVID-19 mitigation efforts, including by waiting in vain for video of the gym owners being arrested by state police, which Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth hyped as a possible confrontation between the “growing movement” and a SWAT team. 

On another occasion, Fox & Friends very briefly mentioned the danger of going to a gym during the pandemic, only for Fox Business to promote gym reopenings again later in the day. Fox & Friends did not abandon its insistence that gyms must reopen, and that brief mention of safety concerns was never substantively discussed on the show.

At the end of the August 13 segment, Brian Kilmeade thanked them for “fighting for so many other people.”

From the August 13, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): All right, so we have 50 states. Right now, you think it the number's less but I have one, two, three, four, five, say I have eight states that are banning health clubs. What stats are they looking at, and how dare they do this to small business owners across the country? What is the logic? 

FRANK TRUMBETTI (CO-OWNER, ATILIS GYM): I have no idea what the stats they're looking at, but I sincerely think that they are actually looking to make sure they can mandate a peak and a spike in COVID cases in the fall so they can shut everything down again. That is my honest belief. That if they open up gyms they know that everybody's going to go to them, they're going to get healthy, they're going to feel better and they're going to build their immune system, and they're going to have less of a spike in the fall. And I truly believe that that's what this is all about, because they don't have any data and science to back anything up. We have, as of midnight last night, we have 19,389 people that have come through our facility, and we have zero people who have come back -- and we're doing contact tracing and everything, and nobody's come back with COVID. And we have now recently acquired -- and we haven't put it into implementation yet -- we have some rapid COVID-19 antibody tests that we're going to be offering for free once we figure out the legalities of how to do it with a nurse, and what other business is doing that? As far as that goes.

KILMEADE: None. None. And they can put out monitors to monitor restaurants and bars and make sure you're not having a good time. They revoke licenses for people who are violating, but they can't do it to gyms? You would welcome the monitoring because you're living up to everything that they require. This is inexcusable. Two gym franchises have declared bankruptcy, 24 Hour Fitness and Gold's, and now small businesses are going to go belly up and they don't care. Guys, thanks for fighting for so many other people. I appreciate it. Frank and Ian, continued success.