On Monday, April 13, former Ronald Reagan Cabinet member Bill Bennett went on Fox News to give his expert opinion on COVID-19. Bennett is probably best known as a right-wing moral “crusader,” who, it turns out, was full of shit. But just because you spew mostly methane doesn’t mean you can’t get a place to speak to millions of people. Bennett went on Fox News to speak with Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade about the coronavirus pandemic. Turns out, Bennett has “taken a step back” and decided that every world expert and scientist is wrong: this isn’t a pandemic. Talking about projections that “only” 60,000 Americans will die from COVID-19 (if we are lucky), Bennett explains that this is the same number as the flu. (According to the CDC, estimates of flu-related deaths in the U.S. for 2019-220 are 24,000-62,000.)
BILL BENNETT: Now, we all regret the loss of 61,000 people—if that’s what it turns out to be—I’m gonna tell you I think it’s going to be less, and salute all those working on the front lines on this: the hospital workers, the nurses, the doctors, etc. and the generosity of the American people. But if you look at those numbers, and see the comparable, we are gonna have fewer fatalities from this than from the flu.
Bennett’s most obvious expertise is probably in gambling. When he was exposed for being something of a gambling obsessive, contradicting his faux-sober and even-keeled public propaganda, Bennett did what all right-wing political hypocrites have done: he laid low for a little bit and then found a career speaking as an elder statesman on Fox News.
Bennett goes on to refer to an earlier interview with TV quack Dr. Oz, saying that old people and those with serious health issues are still the only real people at risk. He also explains how this has led to unneeded panic and the closing of businesses. He might want to talk to New York City, but Bennett’s experience in the tri-state area is most likely localized to Atlantic City. So far, everything Bennett has said is wrong and misleading and dangerous to the general public. But Bennett having already paid the big blind eye here on conservative news wasn’t going to just pass, he was ready to double down on his gaslighting.
BENNETT: This was not, and is not, a pandemic.
Let that sink in. It turns out, that not only are the liberals and their partisan public health politics wrong, so is the entire planet. Kilmeade gives what passes for pushback on Fox & Friends, saying that “Well, it is labeled a ‘pandemic.’” Way to be a coward, Brian.