Any other network would fire Jesse Waters (photo, left) for his recent speech to a rightwing group, but not Fox.
Speaking to a partisan crowd about Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the federal infectious diseases agency, he said, “Now you’re going for the kill shot. The kill shot with an ambush, deadly, because he doesn’t see it coming. This is when you say: ‘Dr. Fauci, you funded risky research at a sloppy Chinese lab. The same lab that sprung this pandemic on the world. You know why people don’t trust you, don’t you?’ Boom, he is dead! He is dead! He’s done!”
(Read story here.) This speech is protected by the First Amendment. The government can’t prosecute him for it. But Fox sure could fire him for it, because the First Amendment doesn’t apply to them.
Watters essentially accused Fauci of playing Russian roulette with “risky research” and then blamed the Covid-19 pandemic on him. He was building on earlier comments by another Fox propagandist, Tucker Carlson, who’d said, “The guy in charge of America’s response to COVID turns out to be the guy who funded the creation of COVID.” This is utter nonsense, but it plays on Republican anti-science, anti-health attitudes.
In the real world, where judgments are based on facts supported by evidence, it’s nearly impossible for the Covid-19 virus to be man-made, and while a lab accident can’t be totally ruled that’s very unlikely, so the pandemic almost certainly didn’t originate in a lab. In any case, as Fauci told Congress, the $600,000 that NIH provided to the Wuhan lab wasn’t for “gain-of-function” research.
What Fauci told the press, after his congressional testimony, was “it would ‘almost be irresponsible’ to not collaborate with Chinese scientists given that the 2003 SARS outbreak originated in China. ‘So we really had to learn a lot more about the viruses that were there, about whether or not people were getting infected with bad viruses.’” (Details here.)
This will make perfect sense to people who have brains and are capable of thinking.
The right’s demonization of Dr. Fauci is scapegoating, a search for enemies, and a propaganda tactic. That’s not what real journalists do, so you can’t call Carlson or Watters journalists. Like all of Fox’s on-air personalities, they’re propagandists. They’re peddling a false narrative for political gain. This blog doesn’t use Fox as a news source for a reason: It’s dishonest, partisan, and non-factual.
But that’s not why Watters should be fired by the likes of Fox. Even a propaganda shop should have a modicum of civic responsibility. He should be fired for inciting violence against a public official. For this language: “Kill shot,” “ambush,” “deadly,” “he doesn’t see it coming,” “Boom,” “he is dead.” Because, rightwingers being what they are (angry, gullible, not very bright), when you say that to such an audience, someone in the crowd may take it literally, even if Watters used the language metaphorically (as he and Fox claim he did).
In any case, it’s never appropriate to talk about public officials in that manner, even as a metaphor. If you have a problem with the way they’re doing their job, then talk about why you think they’re screwing up, in such a way that your complaints can be fact-checked.
In Dr. Fauci’s case, that fact-checking has already been done, and the rightwing complaints against him have been found wanting in terms of both accuracy and validity.