CNN’s Brianna Keilar Shreds Fox News for Peddling Covid ‘Misinformation’: ‘The Biggest Names on That Network Have Helped Politicize This Pandemic’

Brianna Keilar shredded rival cable news channel Fox News on her CNN show Thursday, slamming the network for politicizing the coronavirus pandemic and pushing misinformation.

“The biggest names on that network have helped politicize this pandemic, making misleading or false claims about everything from masks to social distancing to treatments for the virus,” said a clearly indignant Keilar, adding that “if you only watched Fox News,” you might believe several false ideas, like gathering indoors in large crowds without face masks is safe or that “Democrats want schools and businesses to be closed forever.”

“And why would you think that?” Keilar asked rhetorically as she introduced several clips of Fox News programs pushing those exact messages.

One clip showed a doctor on Laura Ingraham’s show claiming that there were “decades” of studies showing that “for respiratory viruses, masks do nothing.”

“That is just false,” declared Keilar. “It’s nonsense, and it’s dangerous. It’s like telling people, ‘Go ahead and smoke, it’s actually healthy for you.'”

Keilar mentioned that researchers at Brigham Young University had compiled “more than 115 scientific studies on the coronavirus, and there is consensus, broad consensus, that masks work.”

She added more criticism for another Ingraham guest who criticized Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden for relying on “faulty” models, by pointing out that the models had turned out to be inaccurate — but not how Fox had framed them as overly alarmist. Instead, the models used by the federal government has repeatedly underestimated Covid-19 deaths.

“These are lives, that they are not being truthful about,” said Keilar. “These are families, destroyed, that they are lying about.”

Keilar also took issue with the assertion that critics of President Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic were just trying to “panic the country.”

“People are trying to ‘panic the country’? Because nearly 200,000 Americans dying in seven months is actually, what, no big deal? Is that what he’s saying?” retorted Keilar, adding that America would soon be facing a “twindemic” as flu season began.

Furthermore, continued Keilar, America’s Covid deaths were expected to add another 200,000 lives lost in less than half the time in the coming months — “and that is based on models that have so far lowballed the number.”

Keilar called CDC Director Robert Redfield’s comments that face masks were a better protection than even a vaccine something that could have been a “lifeline” for Trump’s reelection campaign, but instead Trump responded “by demeaning Redfield and slapping him down, and Fox News ran with it — they enabled it.”

“Misinformation is a virus unto itself,” Keilar concluded. “And Fox News is the vector.”

Watch the video above, via CNN.