Last updated on August 10th, 2021 at 04:37 pm
CNN’s Brianna Keilar put the blame on Republican Fox viewers for the COVID surge and the right blew a gasket.
On CNN’s New Day, Keilar talked about Republicans falsely blaming immigrants for spreading COVID, and it enraged people like Benny Johnson of the Tea Party. (Yes, the Tea Party is still around).
Ah yes.
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The talking points went out this morning.
The logical argument that "open borders leads to more disease" was far too obvious and damaging and libs panicked to come up with something.
However, libs will be shocked to realize that no one believes this agitprop anymore https://t.co/TWSabMq4Zr
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 9, 2021
Keilar responded:
Unvaccinated Americans, disproportionately Republican Fox viewers, are fueling the surge, not migrants who are near 100 percent tested and quarantined if positive. Why not talk about the border crisis without dabbling in BS and racist tropes about immigrants. https://t.co/xrDYH6LrbM
— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) August 9, 2021
Dana Loesch emerged from her dank and dark corner of the Internet to blame blacks and Hispanics for the COVID surge, but Keilar had a response for her too:
Yeah, except White Americans way outnumber Black and Hispanic Americans. So despite the percentage disparity there are way more unvaccinated Whites. Math is silly like that. https://t.co/YnRqqKCjdE https://t.co/M9rJ2PJbcr
— Brianna Keilar (@brikeilarcnn) August 9, 2021
A Morning Consult poll has consistently found that Fox News viewers have the highest rate of vaccine skepticism among mainstream media consumers.
The only people with a higher level of skepticism are those who get their news from social media, and one suspects that if the data were broken down more, it would be Facebook users who are driving the skepticism.
Republican elected officials like Govs. Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis have been blaming immigrants for the spread of COVID to deflect from their own failed policies in handling the pandemic.
CNN’s Keilar wasn’t putting up with the usual right-wing attempts to bully a member of the media into renouncing the facts. Fox News and its viewers are a driver of vaccine misinformation, and they finally getting called out by everyone else for spreading illness and death.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association