A Fox News Host Lashed Out At A Guest Who Accused The Network Of Ignoring Soaring Coronavirus Deaths

Fox News spent much of the spring downplaying the world-altering impact that COVID-19 could have on America. The public health crisis that’s followed that denial of basic facts from our nation’s leadership has caused nearly 300,000 deaths, an untold number of which could have been prevented with a more thorough acceptance of the basic science behind the pandemic and safety measures to help control it.

And now, even people on Fox News have noticed the network’s impact on those who continue to deny the severity of the pandemic or even acknowledge the rising death toll that’s followed an explosion of cases in the United States in recent weeks. On Thursday, the result was one anchor attacking a guest for pointing out that spiral of silence in the first place.

As The Hill pointed out the incident happened between guest Marie Harf and Outnumbered host Harris Faulkner, who quickly defended the network in a tense segment, in which Harf broke the fourth wall, in a sense, and pointed out that people on the program were arguing about various safety restrictions in place in states without talking directly about the horrific number of people coronavirus is killing each day:

“We’re 43 minutes into this show and we haven’t mentioned that 3,000 Americans died yesterday. More than on 9/11,” said panelist Marie Harf, a former Democratic staffer who often serves as a liberal panelist on Fox News’s program “Outnumbered”…

Harf added that public health officials are “not perfect” but they are “trying” to slow the spread of the coronavirus and said Americans “cannot lose sight of the tragedy that is unfolding in the country, in large part because people want to go about life as normal, and a lot of people don’t want to wear masks even though the evidence is overwhelming that they save lives.”

Other mental gymnastics on COVID-19 has been going on lately with guests appearing on Fox News. That includes a Trump surrogate claiming Joe Biden was not fit for the presidency because he didn’t have “firsthand experience” with coronavirus. As in, he didn’t contract COVID-19 like Trump did. But the raw numbers (behind the sense that Fox is downplaying the soaring death toll fueled by a lack of cohesive masking and coronavirus safety measures nationwide) are clear. A day after the anniversary of Pearl Harbor, the New York Times reported more people died of coronavirus than the total killed in the attack that brought the United States into World War II.

But rather than take the note, Faulkner defended Fox News and the size of their collective hearts, which apparently go out to the unmentioned people killed by COVID-19 each day while panelists argue about hair salons and governors who refuse to issue mask mandates amid skyrocketing case counts and deaths:

“I feel like Marie, you took a shot at us there,” Faulkner said. “But if you don’t think that our hearts are big enough to mourn for the people who we have lost during the pandemic, what exactly are you trying to say? That is offensive and is not true.”

Faulkner argued the best way to “protect those people we love so much is to make sure the decisions that we make give them longevity after the pandemic as well.”

Faulkner wanted Harf to “keep your judgment some place where you know you can fact check it because you can’t see my heart.” But others have actually fact-checked the number of times the daily death count — which is breaking new records daily and is likely to rise even further after a well-traveled Thanksgiving in America despite the pandemic — on Fox News, and it can’t even beat Hunter Biden these days.

It’s a horrible situation all around, and talking about death all day might not make for the best of television. Still, while Fox News may not like getting shots taken at it from its own guests, it’s hard not to wonder if maybe Harf hit a bit of a nerve here.