A Fox News host backtracked on Monday after he said that the death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell raised "new concerns" about vaccines.
"The fact that Colin Powell died from a breakthrough COVID infection raises new concerns about how effective vaccines are long-term," Roberts wrote about an hour after Powell's family announced the death.
Roberts failed to mention that Powell had a compromised immune system due to his treatment for multiple myeloma.
After two hours of criticism on Twitter, Roberts deleted his initial tweet.
"I deleted my tweet about the tragic death of Colin Powell because many people interpreted it as anti-vax. It was not," he wrote. "Yes, Powell had myeloma, but I was still stunned to hear of his passing from COVID."
"His death is a loss for our community and our country. I plan to get a booster as soon as possible," he added.
Fox News host Will Cain leveraged the death of former Secretary of State Colin Powell to rant against Covid-19 vaccines.
"This day will be a day for many things," Cain said about an hour after Powell's death was announced. "It's also a day to remember the implications on everyday Americans."
Cain noted that a statement from Powell's family said that he had died from complications due to Covid-19 despite being fully vaccinated.
"The family has made a point on their post on Facebook this morning that Colin Powell was fully vaccinated," the Fox News host said. "And as Americans out there wonder what lies ahead for them and they search and they need truth moving forward, we're seeing data from across the world. We're seeing data from Europe, from the United Kingdom, the fully-vaccinated people are being hospitalized and fully-vaccinated are dying from Covid."
"And here we have a very high-profile example that is going to require more truth," he continued, "more truth from our government, from our health leaders as well. As we talk about this story on a day when state after state and institution after institution are pushing mandates for vaccination."
Fox News host Chris Wallace asked Dr. Anthony Fauci why he had become "so controversial," which can be partially blamed on the network where he was appearing.
The question from Wallace came at the conclusion of an interview with Fauci on Sunday.
“When this pandemic started, I think it's fair to say you were generally regarded as the authority on infectious disease," Wallace stated. "But as time has gone on, you've become a polarizing figure. Critics accuse you of sending mixed messages. There's allegations that you helped fund dangerous research at the Wuhan lab."
"Two questions: Why do you think you've become so controversial? And honestly, do you think there's anything you have done that has contributed to that?" the Fox News host asked.
Without specifically calling out Fox News, Fauci said that conspiracy theories were partially to blame for his sullied reputation.
"I have stood for always making science, data and evidence be what we guide ourselves by, and I think people who feel differently, who have conspiracy theories, who deny reality that's looking them straight in the eye, those are people that don't particularly care for me," he explained.
Rolling Stone pointed out that Fox News personalities have made Fauci a divisive figure by relentlessly attacking him on the air.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) disagreed with Fox News host Maria Bartiromo on Sunday after she accused Democrats of "bank surveillance" because of a new proposal from the Biden administration.
The new tax law proposal would require banks to report the total dollar amount of annual transactions to and from bank accounts if it's greater than $600 in a year. The information would be used to flag the accounts of people who may have underpaid taxes.
But outlets like Infowars have twisted the proposal to suggest that the IRS will be spying on each individual transaction.
Bartiromo added to the misinformation during her interview with Khanna on Sunday.
"Is this bank surveillance still in this spending bill?" she asked.
"Maria, let me just put some facts out there," Khanna replied. "First of all, the bill does not in any way surveil individual transactions. There is no oversight of individual transactions. All it does is ask the banks to give the total amount that was deposited and the total amount that was spent. And the reason is because there are a lot of businesses in this country that aren't paying the taxes that you and I pay."
"So if the banks have to give a statement on interest, why don't they give the total net outflows and net inflows so people pay their tax," he added.
Bartiromo wrongly suggested that individual "transactions" would be monitored.
"You say it's not transactions but you just said it's the total deposit -- what people are taking out and what people taking in," she said. "I mean, $600 or even $10,000 captures most Americans."
"It would be over $10,000," Khanna explained. "But it would not be, here's what you spend it on and here was the deposit. It's just going to say, did you make money in the year? And if you made money, pay your tax. Just like banks tell you if you made interest, you have to pay your tax. Just like you get a W-2. The idea is just that businesses should pay their tax."
"And I don't think this is going to surveil or snoop into people's privacy in any way," he remarked. "Because banks won't have the ability to go after the individual transactions."
"But it is surveillance," Bartiromo shot back. "Because the banks have to report that but I don't want to get into the weeds."
The hosts of Fox & Friends melted down on Sunday after DC Comics removed "the American way" from Superman's motto.
During a segment on the Fox News morning show, host Peter Hegseth reported that the motto has been changed from "truth, justice, and the American Way " to "truth, justice and a better tomorrow."
"What does that mean?" Hegseth remarked. "We don't know."
"If you have an ounce of creativity, you can create a comic book company that buries DC," co-host Will Cain growled. "You can create any type of company out there that actually reflects the views of the American people because increasingly these corporations have left behind the vast majority of their own consumers."
Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy said that the new motto made her "pessimistic" about the future of the United States.
"I love your positivity and, honestly, I want to believe it," Campos-Duffy opined. "But I just wonder -- I think these corporations are smart and I think they are investing in the future."
The co-host then linked Superman's motto to "the indoctrination of our children."
"I believe that our generation on up still does believe in the American way," she continued, "that's the goodness of America. I think these corporations are looking at, you know, the future, which are our children and they know that so many of them don't love -- aren't being taught to love America. If you're not being taught to love America at a young age, it's really hard to love America later."
"And you know, Superman was so emblematic of who we were," the co-host said. "And we all kind of grew up with him and this idea of what America was and it's changing before our eyes."
Campos-Duffy added: "I worry about America. I hate to be pessimistic because I've always been an optimist! But it's scary!"
Hegseth went on to note that "Superman already renounced his citizenship at the U.N."
"Did that really happen?" Campos-Duffy wondered.
"One-hundred percent," Hegseth replied.
"He's a global citizen," Campos-Duffy complained.
Cain suggested that parents around the country who opposed critical race theory would also prevent Superman's motto from changing.
"They're not letting tomorrow be ceded to the likes of DC Comics," he insisted.
A law professor from the University of Baltimore asserted this week that it is likely too late to preserve a true democracy in the United States.
During an appearance on MSNBC, Professor Kim Wehle was asked why she believes "it's too late to save this country."
"If you couple Joe Biden's lagging approval ratings, the expectation that most people don't turn out at midterms, gerrymandering across the country," Wehle explained. "We're also seeing anti-voting laws and a new wave of laws that are taking the sort of bureaucratic role of counting votes and putting it in the hands of politicians. And this Big Lie."
"We're seeing things set up for the midterms to hand over Congress to Republicans and then regardless of where the vote lies in 2024 that the election will be swung to Donald Trump," she continued. "What we will see under a Donald Trump version 2 is no accountability."
Wehle predicted that Trump "won't make the mistakes he did last time" by failing to pack the government with loyalists.
"And we're not seeing the Democrats prioritize saving Democracy in the next 12 months before the midterms, which really has to happen," the professor stated. "They're just not doing what is needed, which would be to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, to do something about the Electoral Count Act, maybe make D.C. a state so there are two more senators."
Wehle added: "All of those things -- the finger in the dike. It's just not happening and I think the window is closing for it to happen. So that's why I'm not sanguine about the future of American democracy. And most Americans cannot imagine that they will wake up one morning and have something other than democracy."
"This is something that has happened over and over in history and there's nothing special about America that protects democracy for our children and our grandchildren. And that's what really keeps me up at night," she concluded.
A Fox News segment on Monday celebrated the works of explorer Christopher Columbus, who is responsible for rapes, murders and genocide of indigenous people.
Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy began the segment by blaming "cancel culture" for the effort to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples Day.
Talk show host Joe Piscopo argued that Columbus Day should not be replaced because it would dishonor his Italian grandparents.
"They were treated with the utmost disrespect and they fought so hard," he whined. "They wanted to come here just to be American. That's all they wanted."
"Why are they trying to take this away?" the former comedian asked. "You diminish the fight and the journey of my grandparents by trying to cancel out Columbus!"
Campos-Duffy went on to slam historian Howard Zinn as a "Marxist" because he had advocated for ending Columbus Day in an effort for the United States is to reject its racist foundations.
"You know, I don't know how that got into the school system," Piscopo complained. "But you have to understand is, what we celebrate today, Columbus Day, is even beyond Columbus. It's celebrating the ethnicity of America. The ethnicity and the mosaic is the foundation of the United States. It's the strength of America. They literally, by their hands, built this great country, the Italian Americans, the Jewish Americans, the Latino Americans, the Black Americans, the Chinese Americans. We're all in this together!"
He added: "And once you cancel out one of these groups, the Italian Americans, you hurt all of America."
"They say that he was so brutal," Campos-Duffy said of Columbus. "It's interesting that those who are trying to cancel Christopher Columbus are the same people who are trying to cover up the brutality of communism and socialism in the 20th century."
A Fox News segment criticized former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday after he referred to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol as simply "one day in January."
Pence made the remarks Monday on Sean Hannity's Fox News program but it took almost a week for anyone on the network to criticize the comments.
"Saying 'one day in January' is kind of like calling 9/11 one day in September," Fox News host Howard Kurtz noted on Sunday. "It was a pretty tragic day!"
Kurtz went on to ask Fox News contributor Mara Liasson if she agreed with Pence's assertion that the media is focusing on Jan. 6 to distract from President Joe Biden's challenges.
"No!" Liasson replied. "I think there has been tremendous coverage of Joe Biden's considerable woes. I think the media has been like a dog with a bone on that."
"The other thing that Mike Pence said which I think it's absolutely false is to say that by focusing on January 6, the most violent insurrection against the Capitol in over 100 years, somehow is denigrating the 74 million people who voted for Donald Trump," she added. "That's just completely false."
"Right," Kurtz agreed. "That had completely nothing to do with it."
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy suggested on Sunday that Google is trying to "control" his thoughts through its search platform.
McCarthy made the claim after Fox News host Maria Bartiromo accused Google of conspiring with the Biden administration.
"The DOJ has asked Google to send them the people who search for certain phrases," Bartiromo explained. "And is Google participating in this? Tell me about that. This was very concerning when I understood what this was all about -- that Google was actually going to provide phrases that we put in that search bar."
"We know how Google tries to control our thoughts," McCarthy agreed, "and what we can read on the basis that 90% of any search inside the internet goes through Google. But now, the Biden administration's government is asking Google to tell them whoever searches certain phrases."
"I just read about this this week," he added. "This is a real concern."
While it was not immediately clear which report McCarthy was referring to,
Forbes reported last week that the Department of Justice had asked Google to provide data on anyone who searched for the name or address of a sexual assault victim.
But the report found no evidence that Google is using mind control.
Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday tried his hardest to get Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) to say whether he believes the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" from Donald Trump.
The question came up during an interview on
Fox News Sunday.
"There are irregularities in all elections," Wallace noted. "Do you think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and in continuing to make that charge, not having states do election reform, but specifically making this charge that the election was stolen, do you think that that hurts -- undermines American democracy?"
Scalise deflected instead of answering the question.
"I've been very clear from the beginning," he said. "If you look at a number of states, they didn't follow their state-passed laws that govern the election for president. That is what the United States Constitution says. They don't say that the states determine what the rules are. They say the state legislatures determine the rules."
"But the states all certified [the election]," Wallace interrupted.
"But at the end of the day, are we going to follow what the Constitution says or not?" Scalise continued. "I hope we get back to what the Constitution says but clearly in a number of states, they didn't follow those legislatively-set rules."
"So you think the election was stolen?" Wallace pressed.
"I -- what I said is there are states that didn't follow their legislatively-set rules," Scalise repeated. "That's what the United States Constitution says. And I think there are a lot of people that want us to get back to what the Constitution says we should be doing, not just with elections, with a lot of other things too. And then there are some people that just want to ignore what the Constitution says and do their own thing."
Wallace noted that Trump continues to hold rallies falsely insisting that he won the 2020 election.
"I guess the question is -- last time, I promise -- do you think the election was stolen or not?" the Fox News host asked. "I understand you think there were irregularities and things that need to be fixed. Do you think the election was stolen?"
Scalise again refused to give a yes-or-no answer.
"It's states that did not follow the law set," the Louisiana Republican opined. "When you see states like Georgia cleaning up some of the mess and people calling that Jim Crow law. That's a flat-out lie."
This week, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen told a bipartisan committee about the horrors of how her former company put profits over the safety of children and the dissemination of accurate news.
But on Thursday, writing for Slate, Aaron Mak noted that many Republican pundits — who have long bashed Facebook for supposedly censoring conservatives — are suddenly realizing that they can't stay on the anti-Facebook train.
"After Haugen appeared before the Senate Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection to much bipartisan praise, conservative outlets began disparaging her personally and framing the affair as a made-up scandal," wrote Mak. "The reasons why these personalities have split with politicians on the issue are numerous, and they contain one interesting wrinkle: They illustrate just how reliant the right has been on Facebook's dominance this whole time."
As Mak noted, even while firebrand GOP politicians like Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) joined Democrats in praising the whistleblower for coming forward, pundits reacted differently. Fox Nation commentator Dan Bongino claimed that Haugen is part of a "left-wing op," far-right YouTuber Steven Crowder made sexually derogatory attacks on her and called her warnings about teen suicide a "predator feminist agenda," and Jesse Watters of "The Five" said Facebook should not be blamed for political polarization. And Ben Shapiro called it the pretext for a left-wing "power grab" to kick conservatives off the social network.
There is a reason for the sudden wagon-circling, argued Mak. It turns out that, contrary to their longstanding claims, right-wing pundits are heavily reliant on Facebook to spread their messaging.
"[One] explanation might be that right-wing media dominates on Facebook and arguably has the most to lose from, say, a government-forced algorithm change, particularly one that de-emphasizes content that elicits extreme emotions," wrote Mak. "Content from Shapiro, Bongino, and their ilk consistently appears in rankings for the best performing posts on any given day. Indeed, while Facebook is one of their favorite punching bags in their protests about political bias, it's also a huge driver of traffic for them ... No wonder these personalities have finally come out swinging for Facebook. The cliché about politics and strange bedfellows is there for a reason."
"I still believe Fox said, 'Hey, come and sue us quick so we can fire Lou Dobbs,'" Lindell explained.
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Bannon replied. "You're going pure conspiracy theory."
"I think they invited the lawsuit," Lindell insisted. "After November 3rd, after they called Arizona early, they didn't talk about the election. You go back in time and you can't find them talking about the election. They were too busy talking about Hunter Biden's laptop after the fact."
"I believe because they were sued by Smartmatic which was kind of weird," he continued. "And all of the sudden, they invited Dominion in and then fired Lou Dobbs the next day, whenever it was. And then nobody could go on Fox anymore and talk about the 2020 election. It's a good excuse for Fox."
Watch the video below from Real America's Voice.
Mike Lindell's latest conspiracy theory is Fox News asked for Dominion's lawsuit so they could fire Lou Dobbs. pic.twitter.com/0ryqF1gnXc — David Edwards (@DavidEdwards) October 5, 2021
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon suggested on Tuesday that Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen is part of a "psyops" campaign to destroy former President Donald Trump's MAGA movement.
Bannon spoke out on his daily broadcast as Haugen was testifying before a Senate hearing on Facebook's history of putting profit over its users' health.
During an interview with GETTR CEO Jason Miller, Bannon alleged that Haugen's testimony was a psychological operation to "shut down the [former] president's movement."
But Miller disagreed.
"People are going to look back at what's happened the past two weeks with the Facebook whistleblower, with what's happening with the Wall Street Journal exposé," Miller said. "The hearing that Marsha Blackburn is leading in the Senate right now, this is the Goths sacking Rome."
Bannon pushed back by pointing to Haugen's 60 Minutes interview as evidence of "psyops."
"You do agree that this is psyops?" Bannon asked. "This whistleblower is not really -- she's dumping MAGA information. Correct? I agree the Goths are sacking Rome. But the oligarchs and the mandarins in the mainstream media are trying to protect this by taking down the Trump movement."
"Two things can be true at the same time," Miller agreed.
The GETTR CEO went on to suggest that a 5-hour Facebook worldwide outage on Monday had been a conspiracy orchestrated by Facebook.
"The fact that a company that big, that powerful would do some multi-platform upgrade all at the same time for Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp -- it's absurd. It defies logic, Steve. I'm not buying it. I'm not the hardcore Area 51 truther but I'm saying people aren't talking about targeting pre-teen girls anymore."
