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Fox & Friends’ Pete Hegseth says he doesn’t wash his hands—and he sounds quite proud about it.
“I don’t think I’ve washed my hands for 10 years,” he told viewers Sunday as part of his 2019 resolution to say things on-air that he says off-air.
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His comments drew laughs and at least one audible off-camera groan. But Hegseth was undeterred.
“I don’t really wash my hands, ever,” he added.
“I inoculate myself,” he continued. “Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them, therefore they’re not real […] I can’t get sick.”
And after his co-hosts called on viewers to weigh in on the matter, Hegseth held his hands up to the camera for inspection. “These hands look pretty clean to me,” he said.
When he faced pushback on Twitter, he doubled down on his comments with the hashtag #DontWash. Though he later back-pedaled in a tweet and said the media should “loosen up.”
It’s quite possible that Hegseth was joking about germs not being real—because, frankly, it’s just too stupid (see: the flu, the wind, or any other thing that is not visible to the naked eye but definitely exists).
But if his aversion to hand-washing is real, doctors say it’s deeply problematic, and leaves him—and his unlucky colleagues and family—at a higher risk of contracting diseases.
“As everybody knows, germs do exist, and hand washing is really the most important single thing that anybody could do to keep themselves healthy,” Richard Martinello, an associate professor of infectious diseases in internal medicine and pediatrics and the medical director of infection prevention at Yale New Haven Hospital, told The Daily Beast.
Hand washing helps fight germs in two ways, Martinello explained. Every time someone washes their hands, the soap and water help to scrub off germs, dirt, and grime. And in some cases, the soap and water will damage the germs too.
It’s remarkably effective. A 2007 newsletter from Harvard states that washing your hands with soap and water for 15 seconds cuts bacteria by about 90 percent; an additional 15 seconds nixes 99.9 percent.
When your hands are cleaner, you’re less likely to get sick through the traditional transmission pathways: touching your eyes, nose, or mouth, or eating contaminated food.
But it protects other people, too. “If you shake hands with someone, the bacteria on your skin is being transferred over to that individual,” Michael Pentella, an epidemiology professor at The University of Iowa, told The Daily Beast. “If you haven’t washed your hands in 10 years, you have quite a large number of bacteria on your skin.”
For Pentella—who keeps a bottle of hand sanitizer on his desk and uses it multiple times a day—two of the most concerning risks for Hegseth’s coworkers are food-borne illnesses, like norovirus, or respiratory illnesses like a cold or the flu.
It should be noted that this practice is especially gross in a city like New York—where Fox & Friends is taped—where subways, taxi handles, and city bikes provide fertile ground for germs.
And if Hegseth comes into contact with those with weaker immune systems—like infants or the elderly—it’s even worse, noted Marilyn Roberts, a professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at The University of Washington.
Pentella and Roberts guessed that Hegseth is probably exaggerating when he says he never washes his hands—and they pointed out that as long as he showers, he’s practicing proper hand hygiene at least once a day.
“I’m hopeful he takes a shower,” Roberts said.
But that’s nowhere near enough. At a minimum, they said, you should wash your hands after using the bathroom, before and after preparing food, and after working out. The CDC offers even more expansive recommendations, advising you to wash your hands before eating food, before and after caring for sick people, and after coughing or sneezing, among other things.
In other words, Hegseth’s declared hand-washing behavior is pretty reprehensible. But if he was serious about germs not being real, that’s potentially more damaging.
“I really thought [Hegseth’s comments] discounted the whole field of microbiology,” Pentella said. “Because microorganisms—germs—are real things, and it was proven a long time ago that even though you can’t see them, they cause disease.”
“Every year, we don’t see the influenza virus being passed from person to person,” he added. “But we know it exists.”
“It baffles me, if it’s not a joke, that a belief like that could be held. But there’s also people who believe that the earth is flat,” Martinello said.
He added that even if Hegseth was joking about his hand washing routine, he’s still in the wrong because Fox viewers might actually believe him and follow suit.
“The comments are unfortunate, because they were on the news—and some people may actually take it as face value rather than seeing it as something that was joking,” Martinello added. “It really does a disservice to the health of Americans.”
Hegseth, by the way, was once considered by President Trump for the role of Veterans Affairs secretary. As Forbes notes, that would have put him in charge of the largest integrated health care system in the U.S.
