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Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Friday called CNN’s Brooke Baldwin an “airhead” as he ranted about an interview she’d conducted with a barbershop owner who was planning to defy coronavirus lockdown laws.
Baldwin on Thursday spoke with Juan Desmarais of Vacaville, California, who said he wasn’t worried about contracting COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, and would reopen his three stores the following day.
“I’ve had it. It was not fun,” responded Baldwin, who only returned to the air following her own battle with the virus on Monday, as he cautioned her guest against downplaying the threat of the illness.
Carlson interviewed Desmarais on Friday and at times appeared more intent on calling out Baldwin’s interview than talking with the businessman himself.
“He was lectured by someone with a guaranteed income. Some airhead,” said Carlson, later telling Desmarais that he’d been “really struck by the pompous lecture that you received from one of their anchors yesterday. Someone who will not be out of work when you are out of work.”
Desmarais said Baldwin had a “somehow better than me tone” during their interview. “I think she does have a secure job, her hair looked amazing and I think she’s not in the same boat as I am,” he added.
Check out the interview here:
Carlson has repeatedly claimed on his widely watched primetime show that the contagion that has killed more than 64,000 people nationwide is not as deadly as health experts say.
Also on Friday, he again railed against statewide stay-at-home orders that have been implemented in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
“Where did politicians get the authority to do this? Because some elderly power-drunk epidemiologist told them to do it? That’s not how our system works. It can’t work that way,” he claimed.
Check out the segment from the 8-minute mark in the video below:
Baldwin is yet to respond to Carlson’s insult.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, however, on Tuesday delivered a stinging rebuke of Fox News’ coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling it “coronavirus trutherism.”
Hayes noted how the majority of the network’s New York workforce is currently working from home, while Carlson was “broadcasting in safe isolation” and “telling you it’s safe to go out.”
Dozens of professors and teachers of journalism and communications have also called out the network’s coverage of the pandemic, describing it in an open letter to Fox Corporation chairman Rupert Murdoch and his son, company CEO Lachlan Murdoch, as “a danger to public health.”
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