Conservative Max Boot goes off on Fox News for endangering people with their lies

Conservative Washington Post columnist Max Boot unleashed on Fox News for their long history of lies that are now endangering people's lives.

In his Tuesday column, Boot highlighted the many foolish lies Trump has told about the coronavirus also known as COVID-19. He first told Americans that it would disappear by April. He has been comparing it to the ordinary flu, despite the mortality rate appearing to be much higher. The economic impact has also been ignored as he's claimed it's only fake news bringing down the markets.

Trump is acting like “the mayor in Jaws, blithely ignoring reports of a gigantic shark because he didn’t want to hurt the tourism season," Boot quoted New York Magazine writer Jonathan Chait.

The disinformation isn't only up to Trump and his Twitter account, however. The right-wing "pseudo-journalists" on Fox have been carrying the water since the beginning, Boot said.

"Think I’m exaggerating? I only wish I were," Boot wrote, citing sites monitoring Fox News lies.

"In 2014, Fox News commentators were blaming President Barack Obama for the spread of Ebola. Now they’re blaming everyone except the president," he continued. "On Monday, Trish Regan was on Fox Business denouncing coronavirus concern as 'yet another attempt to impeach the president.' In her demented view, Trump’s opponents are deliberately inducing stock-market losses (presumably Democrats don’t own 401(k)s?) in an attempt to 'to demonize and destroy the president.' Naturally Trump — Fox News viewer No. 1 — retweeted her diatribe."

Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson did the same.

Hannity whined, “we’re scaring people unnecessarily.” And that some unnamed group known as "they" are “bludgeon Trump with this new hoax.”

Coronavirus isn't a hoax.

"Carlson, often the most rabid host on Fox, has actually been an outlier of sanity on this subject," a surprised Boot wrote. "Like a Russian TV host, he knows it’s too dangerous to critique the supreme leader by name."

By this week, Carlson blasted unnamed politicians "people you trust, people you probably voted for," saying that they failed to take the virus seriously enough. "This is real,” Carlson said.

"The 'conservative' media have long shown their contempt for facts and science — for instance, by playing down the danger of climate change or Russian election attacks," closed Boot. "Never has their contempt for the truth been more dangerous than it is today. To defeat coronavirus, we must first combat the mental afflictions — irrationality, conspiracy-mongering and Dear Leader-like devotion to Trump — spread by exposure to right-wing media."

Read his full piece at the Washington Post.