Fox News has sabotaged the vaccination campaign. Now a Fox anchor is attacking Joe Biden for vaccination rates being too low.

Written by Eric Kleefeld

Published

In a monumental display of hypocrisy on Sunday, a Fox News anchor and his guest attacked President Joe Biden for the fact that America’s vaccination rate against COVID-19 is too low. 

“This year we have lost more people in this country to COVID than we did during the first year of the pandemic, when Donald Trump was president — and now we have the vaccines,” anchor Jon Scott said.

Hugo Gurdon, editor-in-chief of the Washington Examiner, further pointed out that “the vaccination rate is only 58% here, considerably lower than in other places. So [Biden] hasn't got his arms around it.”

But Fox News itself has undermined the Biden administration’s vaccination campaign relentlessly, running at least one claim that undermined vaccines nearly every day in a six-month period. At the same time, the company has implemented its own stringent health policies, including vaccination and testing mandates and masking at company offices — even as the network has elevated those who refuse the vaccine in other places into culture war heroes, calling for Americans to “fight back.”

Considering that the company is now attacking Biden for his supposed failure to get the whole country vaccinated, it can no longer be denied that the network’s anti-vaccine campaigning is part of a deliberate campaign of political sabotage — even if this could potentially damage its own viewers’ health. (Fox News viewers, meanwhile, have become visibly angry at the few network personalities who encourage vaccination.)

On Sunday’s edition of Fox Report with Jon Scott, the anchor and his guest accused Biden of hypocrisy for implementing travel restrictions on South Africa after that country had identified the new omicron variant of COVID-19. As the conversation progressed, Scott and Gurdon accused Biden of having over-promised the extent to which the country would become vaccinated — ignoring the extent to which the network’s opinion commentators and purported “straight news” anchors have baselessly spread fears about the vaccines.

Upon further thought, the two concluded that Biden could not be specifically blamed “if people don't want to get the vaccine,” but Gurdon insisted that the president still should not have claimed the U.S. would reach his goal of 70% of the population being vaccinated.

As for figuring out whom to blame for continued vaccine hesitancy, though, perhaps they should try watching more Fox News programming, in which the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the Pfizer vaccine for people over age 16 was treated as bad news, and since then vaccinations for children have been relentlessly propagandized against. And in the wake of the omicron variant having been identified, the network’s anti-vaccine misinformation from its hosts and guests still isn’t stopping.

From the November 28, 2021, edition of Fox Report with Jon Scott

JON SCOTT (ANCHOR): You mentioned that tweet from then-candidate Joe Biden, this was back in 2020 after then-President Trump imposed a travel ban. And candidate Biden wrote, “A wall will not stop the coronavirus. Banning all travel from Europe — or any other part of the world — will not stop it. This disease could impact every nation and any person on the planet — and we need a plan to combat it.” He also wrote in — this was a little earlier, in February of 2020, he tweeted, “We are in the midst of a crisis with the coronavirus. We need to lead the way with science — not Donald Trump's record of hysteria, xenophobia, and fearmongering. He is the worst possible person to lead our country through a global health emergency.”

And yet, this year we have lost more people in this country to COVID than we did during the first year of the pandemic, when Donald Trump was president — and now we have the vaccines.

HUGO GURDON (WASHINGTON EXAMINER EDITOR-IN-CHIEF): Exactly so, exactly so. The pandemic exploded in March of 2020, which was 10 months before Donald Trump was out of office. President Biden, by coincidence, now has been in office for 10 months. More people have died under President Biden than under President Trump, and Biden inherited the vaccines. You know, he came into office promising that he was going to get his arms around this in a way that the previous administration had not.

But, you know, the vaccination rate is only 58% here, considerably lower than in other places. So he hasn't got his arms around it. And as I say, what this is is just a way of looking like he's doing something meaningful, but in fact not managing this thing very well at all.

SCOTT: Well, he pledged that he was going to get 70% of the country vaccinated. That hasn’t happened. You know, if people don't want to get the vaccine — and I am one who has been vaccinated — but if people don't want to get the vaccine, can you blame the president that they don't want to do it?

GURDON: Well, perhaps not. But then you shouldn't claim that you're going to do it. I mean, I think that getting vaccinated is always a matter of personal choice. You know, one of the decades-long cries of the left is “my body, my choice,” and this is an area where people are making the choice not to get vaccinated. I have been vaccinated, and I think that everybody should get vaccinated, I think it’s wise to do. But if you’re not going to be able to do it, you shouldn’t claim that you're going to get it done. And you know, what’s happened is there's a big gap now between what President Biden said he would do and what he’s managed to do.