Fox & Friends Struggles With ‘Unsubstantiated’ Facts and Wuhan Lab Leak Theories: ‘Penguins or Pangolins?’

Fox & Friends appeared somewhat delighted by new reports that give credence to the theory that the deadly Covid-19 pathogen leaked from a Wuhan Lab that studies virology. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently admitted that he was not certain that the global pandemic started in a Chinese wet market, which sent a number of conservative commentators who have long been eager to blame China into something of a “see I told you!” tizzy.

Fox News White House reporter Peter Doocy raised this issue during a Monday press conference with Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who revealed the Biden Administration was working with the World Health Organization to get answers from China on the original of the contagion.

But that didn’t play so well on the now super-sized curvy couch. “We don’t trust China,” Ainsley Earhardt asserted. “China won’t let us in the lab and they won’t release the blood samples. We don’t know where this started. Is there a possibility it started in the lab? Yes. Why are all the media outlets saying they claim to know where it started when they won’t even let us in the lab?”

Steve Doocy followed by citing a Washington Post fact check from last year that claimed that former President Donald Trump and his then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were pushing an “unsubstantiated lab theory.”  Doocy mocked that idea with “That was their fact-checker. How can you fact-check something where you don’t have the facts? They didn’t have the facts a year ago.” In defense of Doocy, WaPo also called the lab leak theory “doubtful” a year ago.

Doocy’s understanding of “unsubstantiated,” however, was undermined by his following admission that “At this point, we don’t know, but at least people are not dismissing it now as a fringe thing.”  Yes, “unsubstantiated” effectively means not knowing, which is … exactly what the Washington Post fact-checker claimed?

But Brian Kilmeade’s struggling with the animal kingdom—in particular, which species were alleged to be involved in the Wuhan lab leak—took the cake. “If someone told it you it either started in a Wuhan lab — where they were testing viruses like this — or a bat that bit a pangolin and someone ate it? What would be the more plausible theory? I don’t know! I would assume the guy in the lab coat and the goggles!”

“I hadn’t heard the thing about the penguin,” Doocy noted, mishearing what Kilmeade said.

What followed was a legitimately funny 30 seconds or so in which Kilmeade struggled with penguins and pangolins, and eventually admitted “I don’t know all my animals. I should have watched wild kingdom one more time Sunday at 7:00.” Same.

Watch above via Fox News.

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