Lara Logan, once a deeply respected and award-winning investigative reporter, told Fox News viewers on Monday night that “people all across the world” are telling her that America’s top infectious disease expert is just like Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi doctor known as the “Angel of Death.”
With the new super-mutated Omicron variant sparking concern around the globe over a possible new round of lockdowns and restrictions, conservatives and right-wing media have started pushing conspiracy theories about the new virus strain. A number of Fox News hosts and GOP politicians have suggested that Democrats are making up COVID-19 variants in an effort to “cheat” and steal the upcoming election.
At the same time, while Dr. Anthony Fauci has sounded the alarm over the “troublesome” Omicron’s potential resistance to immune protection, the chief White House medical adviser said he doesn’t anticipate any additional travel restrictions as he doesn’t sense a “high degree of severity” with the virus.
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During an appearance on Fox News Primetime on Monday, Logan—who hosts a program on Fox Nation, the network’s online streaming service—complained that the coverage of the latest variant had been over the top. Indeed, she insisted the concern over COVID-19, in general, was exaggerated.
“And what is happening over time is that the entire response to COVID and everything that we were told about it from the beginning is being exposed. And it’s falling apart,” she declared. “The lies are coming apart. Really now, there is no justification for putting people out of their jobs or forcing vaccine mandates for a disease that ultimately is very treatable.”
Logan added: “It’s cheap to treat. Medicines are available all over the world. And it has death rates that compare very much to seasonal flu.”
After brushing off the dangers of COVID-19, which has killed more than 750,000 Americans and millions of people around the world, Logan took aim at Fauci. And she claimed numerous unnamed people had directly compared him to a monstrous Nazi physician.
“What you see on Dr. Fauci, this is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them,” she said, referencing Fauci’s recent remarks. “He represents Josef Mengele. Dr. Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps.”
Logan, whose rhetoric has grown increasingly unhinged and conspiratorial recently, then reiterated that “people all across the world are saying this.” In her telling, the “people” are likening Fauci to Mengele because of the response to COVID-19 and “what it has done to civil liberties, the suicide rates, [and] poverty.”
For over a year now, Fauci—who has gradually become a villain in MAGA world—has been the target of hate mail and death threats, with many even comparing him to Adolf Hitler. This past July, a man was charged with making graphic and violent threats to Fauci. In one email, the man said Fauci and his wife “will have the teeth smashed out of its worthless k--- skull if you say ONE MORE WORD about ‘mandatory vaccines.’”