A few days after Fox News host Pete Hegseth called on “healthy people” to muster up the “courage” to go get infected with coronavirus in order to achieve “herd immunity,” Hegseth agreed with Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade on Monday that Americans need to take on a “military mindset” and enter public spaces.
Promoting his latest military-themed special on Fox Nation, the network’s online streaming service, Hegseth was asked by the Fox & Friends crew if there was a similarity between military combat and the current pandemic that has killed roughly 80,000 Americans.
“I was going to say, all of you guys in the special, you’re used to fighting an enemy who you can see coming at you, but this is so different because it’s invisible,” co-host Steve Doocy noted.
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After Hegseth said that his “Modern Warriors” special shows the need for people to “have some courage to be out and get open and be responsible,” Kilmeade explicitly asked if the American public could learn a lesson from soldiers in terms of confronting the disease as states rush to reopen businesses.
“About 78,000 are dead, we understand how many got the virus and will. I get it,” Kilmeade stated. “But at the same time, can you get the military mindset with the masses of, take on the enemy because we have no choice—sitting on the sideline will destroy the country. How do you get the military mindset for the everyday American?”
Hegseth, an informal adviser of President Donald Trump who was once under consideration to run the VA administration, responded that the “military mindset is a patriotic mindset.”
“It’s what forged and founded this country,” he continued. “It is courage. We can be responsible, we can follow guidelines—while also reopening. We have to reopen, guys, right now, even in some of the more difficult places, or the livelihoods of people is going to crush more folks, or as many—I’m not talking in a statistical sense—as the actual virus itself.”
Hegseth’s remarks come on the heels of him calling for healthy Americans to embrace the “American spirit” and help open back up the economy by willingly going out in public and risking infection.
“Now that we are learning more, herd immunity is our friend,” he declared last week. “Healthy people getting out there—they are going to have to have some courage!”
The vast majority of the public, meanwhile, still believe it is too soon for the nation to be reopened, feeling it will result in a higher death toll. Current models now project a sharp upturn in deaths after taking into account the relaxation of social distancing guidelines and increased mobility.
