Tucker Carlson, the cable news lifer who traffics in outrage and paranoia nightly on Fox News, has been playing footsie with anti-vaxx conspiracy theories for weeks.
On Wednesday night, his commentary reached a new low. Carlson asserted that thousands of people have died since taking a COVID-19 vaccine.
This assertion is both obviously true and dangerously misleading. There’s been no credible connection between the vaccines and “thousands” of deaths. In fact, COVID deaths have dropped precipitously as more and more Americans have gotten inoculated.
But Carlson’s phrasing was intentionally misleading, implying a causality where none exists. Of course thousands of people have died after getting the vaccine. After all, 107 million Americans are fully vaccinated and millions more are in between their first and second dose. Because that number is so large – and because public health officials prioritized vaccinating elderly people – it is inevitable that some of them will die for reasons completely unrelated to the vaccine. The vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting hit by a car, or drowning in a swimming pool, or dying of heart disease, or succumbing to any of the myriad ways people meet their maker.
Consider: You could also say, factually, that billions of people have died after eating an apple or that millions have expired after watching Fox News. People do things and then they ultimately pass away. Such is life…and death.
In other words, Carlson’s monologue might have withstood a literal fact-check but it fails the common sense test.
Carlson is not stupid. He likely knows all this. He peppered his disingenuous monologue with question marks as if that’s cover for playing with specious ideas that endanger public health. That’s the nature of the bad faith game he’s been playing on TV for years – the incredulous tone, the dumbfounded look on his face, the ‘just-asking-questions’ shtick. These are the actions of a man who watches his ratings rise as his penchant for truth-telling falls.
His enablers at Fox – and the audience that empowers him – share some of the blame. But keep in mind that Carlson is a product of CNN and MSNBC, as well. They may have cut ties with the right-wing provocateur, but he fine-tuned his penchant for overstatement and reactionary commentary on their air.
It’s also tempting to dismiss Carlson and refuse to feed his fire. Truth be told, these ‘can you believe this crazy sh*t’ posts are a bit exhausting. But Carlson’s already holding the most powerful megaphone in cable news. And vaccine hesitancy – and the media figures who push it – is an urgent topic in a country desperate to emerge from a debilitating pandemic.
Because if Carlson dissuades his audience from getting vaccinated, we’ll all pay the price. Indeed, COVID-19 is a killer of Republicans and Democrats alike and herd immunity requires buy-in from across the political spectrum. The GOP – and Trump followers in particular – make up the core of Carlson’s audience. Their vaccination rates have lagged.
Notably, the vaccination rate at Fox News itself seems fairly high. On Thursday morning, Fox host Steve Doocy brandished his vaccination card on air, joking that his colleagues wanted to see it. And Jesse Waters, a wannabe Carlson, posted a pro-vaccine message on Twitter last night. CNN has a roundup of other Fox News and conservative personalities who have criticized Carlson’s most recent nonsense.
To be fair, Carlson himself has encouraged the vaccine on his show. But introducing doubt on the topic – like he did on Wednesday night – serves as permission for the vaccine hesitant to remain so. And remember, this isn’t some two-sided topic or fodder for the culture wars. This is public health. This is our best shot of eliminating a virus that has killed nearly 600,000 Americans.
That doesn’t mean that legitimate questions aren’t allowed. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine was briefly paused while concerns were investigated and then dismissed.
But that was an inquiry led by public health officials. Tucker Carlson’s questions last night? Those were the opposite. Those were the playthings of a man whose only expertise is outrage. One suspects that Carlson doesn’t care if you’re jabbed or not. He just cares that you tune in. And over the course of his decades in media he’s developed a reliable playbook: scare the audience, even if that means lying to them.