Ignoring staff safety and dismissing at-risk members, Brian Kilmeade demands Congress work in-person during the pandemic

Written by Bobby Lewis

Published

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade is calling on members of Congress to go back to work at the U.S. Capitol, even though many states, and Washington, D.C., still have stay-at-home orders, which hint at the danger of such a move. Worse yet, during his demands for Congress to get to work, Kilmeade ignored the health and safety of congressional staff, including those working in members’ offices, custodial services, and security.

There’s been an ongoing debate on whether Congress should be in session during the pandemic. The Senate decided to meet in person starting Monday, but the House scrapped similar plans last week amid safety concerns for members and staff.

At the beginning of the May 5 edition of Fox & Friends, Kilmeade downplayed the uniquely lethal threat of COVID-19 to older members of Congress and staff, arguing that travel is always risky for senior citizens and the immunocompromised and that if COVID-19 is now going to be a hindrance for them to congregate in person, then they “shouldn’t have run for reelection” before.

From the May 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): As far as Congress goes, look, everybody's at risk. If you're older, you're at risk. If you have underlying conditions, you're at risk. But when you ran for reelection over and over and over again, and sometimes won 10 or 15 times, you've been there 30 or 40 years. As you got up into your 70s and 80s, you had to know the risk of going home and coming back is going to be -- something could jeopardize your health. You had to know there could be a 9/11, unexpected event happening from an economic collapse on down. In comes a pandemic, and now you say, “Well it's too much of a risk for me to go." Well, you shouldn't have run for reelection then.

Later in the show, when fellow co-host Steve Doocy tried to explain the risk for members of Congress and other workers to contract COVID-19 and suggested a compromise of Congress convening remotely, Kilmeade doubled down: “You’ve got to work. Don’t take the job if you don’t think you can do it at an older age.” When co-host Ainsley Earhardt brought up the unpredictability of the coronavirus pandemic, Kilmeade retorted, “We didn’t know about 9/11.”

From the May 5, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends

STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Just as is the current case in society, there are some people who are over 65 years old. There are some people with preexisting conditions who simply are vulnerable to this virus. And so those people, whether they are in the Senate or the House or they work at a grocery store, they're not going to work right now if they can help it because they are being isolated and our experts are telling us, Brian, that that's the best way to continue to lessen the burden on our hospitals, et cetera, keeping hotels closed and things like that in some cases, simply to flatten the curve so that we can get on the right course. And so I get why some people say you know what, if somebody is over 65 they don't want to go to work. But at the same time, there are workarounds. The House of Commons is doing it via teleconference, so maybe the Senate does the same thing. Maybe the House does, who knows?

AINSLEY EARHARDT (CO-HOST): Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Compromise.

BRIAN KILMEADE (CO-HOST): Yeah, I know Kevin McCarthy's here. You've got to work. Don't take the job if you don't think you can do it at an older age, and their constituents should know that. Hey, if I send my man or woman there and they're 90 years old as Sen. [Dianne] Feinstein, are they going to be able to work through a crisis? And if you can't work through a crisis, you can't take the job. That's just the fact of this unprecedented times we're in.

EARHARDT: Well in their defense though Brian, in their defense, they didn't know -- coronavirus is something we've never experienced before, and it spread so fast --

KILMEADE: We didn't know about 9/11.

DOOCY: Right, but also there are people who are at a young age who are especially vulnerable, if they've got diabetes and heart problems as well. You could be 35 years old and that could make you vulnerable to this.

One week earlier, Kilmeade had lashed out at Earhardt’s concerns about her sick mother potentially contracting COVID-19 due to other people not practicing social distancing. The new exchange suggests once again that as long as Kilmeade gets his wish of reopening the economy, the health and safety of anyone else doesn’t matter to him.