This reporting appears as one of several scoops featured in this week’s edition of Confider, the media newsletter that pulls back the curtain to reveal what’s really going on inside the world’s most powerful navel-gazing industry. Subscribe here and send your questions, tips, and complaints here.
For more than a year now, Fox News star Tucker Carlson has gone out of his way to avoid confirming whether or not he’s vaccinated. This month, however, he bragged about having not gotten a single jab.
While speaking at Awaken Church earlier this month, the primetime star heaped praise on the San Diego megachurch for defying COVID-19 restrictions throughout the pandemic before mocking the need for additional booster shots.
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“I skipped the first three, I’m not getting that one either,” Carlson said, to rapturous applause from the crowd, Voice of San Diego first reported.
Additional audio provided to Confider by the nonprofit investigative outfit confirmed Carlson’s remarks, which further included him citing his having grown up “next to the Salk Institute in La Jolla” as evidence that he is “obviously” not opposed to vaccines.
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“I’ve had like a million of them,” he said, but regarding the COVID shots, Carlson added of its proponents: “I look at these people, like, this just does not make sense at all. And I have no idea what’s up here, but whatever you’re telling me it’s just not true.”
The loudest anti-vax voice among a plethora of Fox News cranks, Carlson had repeatedly leaned on privacy rights to justify not providing his vax status when asked. “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? We can trade intimate details,” Carlson texted The New York Times last year when asked.
And while the far-right cable host has loudly demonized others who’ve imposed vaccine mandates, his principles stopped at Fox News’ door as he largely remained mum about their strict protocols, prompting others in the media to call him out for his blatant hypocrisy.
Carlson and reps for both Fox News and its Murdoch ownership did not respond to requests for comment.
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