Monday, FNC host Tucker Carlson questioned so-called health experts and public official’s insistence on mask mandates, even after dubious science and double standards for individuals based on political circumstances, including Black Lives Matter protests that took place in 2020.
Carlson urged his viewers to question and speak about the efficacy of masks and against mask mandates when possible.
Transcript as follows:
In May of last year, if you can remember back that far, the Mayor of Los Angeles, a man called Eric Garcetti issued this order to the people he oversees, and we’re quoting, “Bring your mask with you whenever you leave home. That will help us get more freedoms,” end quote.
Eric Garcetti isn’t much of an orator, to put it mildly, but that was a memorable quote, mostly because of the questions it left unanswered. For example: is it really possible to spread the coronavirus outside? That’s the first most obvious question. And then more fundamentally, since when is the mayor of a city in charge of doling out America’s freedoms? Aren’t those freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution, the one that created this country? That’s what they’ve been telling us?
So it would have been nice to hear those questions answered. Unfortunately, at the time, a lot of the country was so terrified of the new pandemic that nobody thought to ask those questions. People just obeyed.
That was a big change, and other politicians watched as it happened.
They saw a smarmy non-entity like Eric Garcetti, a guy you wouldn’t trust to clean your pool suddenly assume unprecedented godlike new powers simply by asserting them, “Cover your face.” Okay, boss. Not a bad trick.
So naturally, other politicians wanted some of that power. That’s why they are in the business, for power. So they did the very same thing that Eric Garcetti did, and once again, no one pushed back against them.
In San Francisco, the authorities demanded that citizens wear masks while running outside. In the City of Boston, the mayor extended that requirement to all outdoor physical activity, quote, “You need to be wearing a face-covering when you’re out exercising.”
Well, in a functioning democracy like we had just a few years ago, demands like that would be impossible to make. A politician might prefer that you wear a mask outdoors, but he couldn’t make you do it. At best, he’d have to ask you nicely, he’d have to show you the science and then try to convince you to follow his advice, one adult to another. The onus would be on him to make his case, the onus would not be on you to obey the command.
But over the course of the corona pandemic, the opposite happened, it was inverted, and it happened because large groups of people failed to resist it happening, so it kept happening. And as it did, it became more unreasonable and more disconnected from science day by day.
As of tonight, for example, more than 15 months after we first told you about the spread of this weird new virus in China, the State of Michigan now requires children as young as two to wear facemask while in quote, “public spaces” and places like camps or daycare centers. That’s not a suggestion, it is an order. They all are.
Watch what happened to a pregnant mother on Spirit Airlines when authorities discovered that her two-year old wasn’t wearing a mask.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): And on this Spirit Airlines flight from Orlando to Atlantic City, Monday —
PASSENGER: What did I do?
FLIGHT ATTENDANT: I told you, not compliant, you will have to get off.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): A family of four told to get off the plane. A pregnant mother seen in this video clip wearing a mask with a two- year old child eating yogurt on her left, a seven-year-old child with special needs next door. A flight attendant appears to tell the family, the two-year-old wasn’t wearing the mask.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: It’s the law. Right? We’ve heard. But why is it the law? Is there a scientific justification for the law? No, there’s not.
Children are not at meaningful risk from COVID. They never have been. Adults who’ve been vaccinated or naturally infected and that’s a huge percentage of the American population are not at risk either.
If you’ve got high levels of antibodies in your system, you are almost certainly safe. Those who don’t have antibodies can get the shot. Every American who wants the vaccine can get the vaccine, and that means that at this point, there is no scientific justification for any mask mandate anywhere. It’s that simple.
And the idea that people were being told, being forced to wear masks outside should shock us. There was never any meaningful risk of mass transmission outdoors. We’ve known that for at least a year.
Last spring, researchers in China traced 318 separate coronavirus outbreaks to find out where they originated and how. They found that of those 318 outbreaks, only a single one could even plausibly be connected to a person who was outside, all the rest were indoors.
Last November, a review of all existing peer-reviewed research on this subject appeared in “The Journal of Infectious Diseases” and that review found that the odds of contracting the coronavirus outside were about 19 times lower than the risk of contracting it inside. In April, researchers in Japan came to the same conclusion.
And then finally, last week, “The New York Times” admitted all this. According to the newspaper scientists have discovered, quote: “Few, if any documented cases of brief outdoor interactions leading to COVID transmission.”
So people running in the park are safe, they always were safe. And in fact, the evidence that they are safe is so overwhelming that even America’s leading purveyor of lockdown porn has been forced to concede it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: Let’s talk about masks. I mean, you’re seeing more and more talk about it. I know the C.D.C. is looking at perhaps revising their guidance about wearing masks outdoors at this time. Well, what’s your best guidance on that at this point?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I don’t want to get ahead of them, George, but I think it is pretty commonsense now that outdoor risk is really, really quite low particularly, I mean, if you are a vaccinated person, wearing a mask outdoors, I mean, obviously the risk is miniscule.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: “It’s pretty commonsense now that outdoor risk is really, really quite low,” says Dr. Fauci. Really? So why didn’t Dr. Fauci tell us this? Fauci himself clearly knew this was true. You saw him at a baseball game, not wearing a mask. He wasn’t worried, and for good reason.
Kamala Harris clearly knows the truth as well. She’s had the vaccine, two doses of it. So she is not concerned about getting the virus, yet she wears the mask anyway. And then she ostentatiously socially distances. Why? Well, it’s a charade. It’s maintained for reasons that have nothing to do with science or public health. That’s all very obvious now.
The question is, why have we put up with it? We’ve known this for a long time. We’ve done it for certain for almost a year since that day last June, when America’s so-called public health community united as one to tell us that coronavirus restrictions do not apply to BLM rioters. They’re exempt from the virus.
You’re still not allowed to get married or go to church or see your elderly parents as they die alone, but if you break things on behalf of the Democratic Party’s power structure, you can loot the Dollar Store and no one gets sick. That’s science.
That’s not an exaggeration. That’s literally what they told us.
And the second they told us that, we knew for certain they weren’t serious. So why did we keep playing along? That is a sincere question. We should ponder that question.
We acquiesced to their power grab. They let it, we let it happen. And because we let it happen, a lot of people got hurt and many of those people were children.
Schools around the country shut down and those that remained open forced students to comply with mandates that in the end damaged them, maybe permanently.
At a school board meeting recently in Colorado Springs, an elementary teacher called Stacy Adair showed a photograph of what a kindergartener’s face looks like just an hour into the school day. The masked kindergartener was required to wear was covered with dirt around the mouth and nose quote, “I don’t need to tell you it is very unhealthy for a student to breathe through this mask,” Adair told the Board. Of course, it is.
But officials ignored her and then they doubled down, quote: “Masks will be worn whenever and wherever possible.” The District announced, ” … worn by everyone including kindergarteners.”
Colorado’s Governor weighed in, “No more complaining,” he said. “If you keep whining about mask mandates, we will close the schools again.” That was a threat. So the mandates remain.
Most children in Colorado are required to wear masks in schools statewide, even when they play sports. So how many kids are being hurt by this? That’s a question that no one asked and we should all be troubled by, a lot.
A physician called Mary Harrow told the Colorado Springs School Board that quote: “The data are overwhelming on this topic. “Masks,” the doctor said can quote, ” … cause low oxygen and high carbon dioxide levels, shortness of breath, toxicity, inflammation, increased stress hormones and sugar in the body and create fear, anxiety, headaches, compromised cognitive performance and other problems.”
Did you really need a medical degree to know that? People need fresh air, especially children. Deprive them of fresh air and you hurt them. You knew that. We all knew that. It is obvious. And perhaps because it is so obvious, anyone who says it out loud is at risk of being fired for saying it out loud.
Earlier this month, for example, we spoke to a high school track coach in New Hampshire who was fired for saying it. Watch.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRADLEY KEYES, FORMER TRACK AND FIELD COACH, PEMBROKE ACADEMY: My goal is to get these mandates removed, and it’s not just track and field. It’s tennis. It’s baseball. It’s every outdoor sport, mask will be worn all times, practices and competitions.
Tennis, wonderful example. Singles tennis, you go watch practices, everyone is wearing masks. Competitions, they will be wearing masks even though they are 30 to 60 feet apart on the courts.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: Masks on a tennis court. Future generations will mock us for this, but we allowed it. We let power-drunk politicians wreck the country in exchange for promising to protect us from a virus that 99 percent of us would have survived anyway. What were we thinking?
Masks have always been incompatible with the free society. We used to know that. Masks strip people of their identity as individuals. Masks transform people from citizens into drones. They isolate us, they alienate us. They shut us off from one another.
Masks prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you.
Masks are for the guilty. They are signifiers of shame and submission.
Until recently, many jurisdictions had laws against wearing masks in public. Only Klansmen and armed robbers wore masks. The rest of us showed our face, we were free people.
But then we gave in to the demands of people like Eric Garcetti and because we did give in, this grotesque version of Halloween went on for more than a year and it’s still going on.
Not even Tony Fauci still pretends that masks are medically necessary, instead, masks are purely a sign of political obedience like Kim Il-sung pins in Pyongyang. We wear them because we have to. The only people who wear masks voluntarily outside are zealots and neurotics.
How neurotic are they? Well, we know. A Pew survey from last March found that 64 percent of white Americans who classify themselves as liberal or very liberal have been diagnosed with an actual mental health condition. And you see them everywhere when you walk down the street in any major city.
If you dare to go on foot from Union Station to the Capitol, for example in Washington without wearing a mask, angry Biden voters will snort at you in judgment. “How could you?” They’re saying from behind the gauze. How could you? That’s the question we should be asking of them in return.
The rest of us should be snorting at them first. They are the aggressors. It’s our job to brush them back and restore the society we were born in.
So the next time you see someone in a mask on the sidewalk or on the bike path, do not hesitate, ask politely, but firmly, “Would you please take off your mask? Science shows there is no reason for you to be wearing it. Your mask is making me uncomfortable.” We should do that and we should keep doing it until wearing a mask outside is roughly as socially accepted as lighting a Marlboro in an elevator. It’s repulsive, don’t do it around other people.
That’s the message we should send because it’s true.
As for forcing children to wear masks outside, that should be illegal. Your response when you see children wearing masks as they play should be no different from your response to seeing someone beat a kid in Walmart, call the police immediately. Contact Child Protective Services. Keep calling until someone arrives.
What you’re looking at is abuse, it is child abuse, and you are morally obligated to attempt to prevent it. If it’s your own children being abused, then act accordingly.
Let’s say your kid’s school e-mailed you to announce that every day after lunch, your sixth grader was going to get punched in the face by a teacher, how would you respond to that? That’s precisely how you should respond when they tell you that your kids have to wear masks on the soccer field. That is unacceptable. It is dangerous and we should act like it, because it is.
But too few of us have responded like that. We have been shamefully passive in the face of all of this. As our cities get crazier and harder to live in, so many of us have just decided to run away, avoid conflict. I can’t deal with it. Move to the suburbs. Flee to Florida.
Get as far away as possible from the hyper-aggressive zealots changing everything for the worst overnight. You don’t want to deal with them. So, so many have decided to start over somewhere else.
But why? The people making these demands don’t own America. They didn’t build America. They didn’t build anything, they can’t, and they’re not allowed to wreck it.
And if we let them wreck our cities, why do we think they will stop there? If they can turn Brooklyn and San Francisco into uninhabitable indoctrination camps, why can’t they do it to Naples or Oklahoma City or Coeur d’Alene or wherever you’re planning to go? They can do it and they will do it.
Theirs is an evangelical faith. They will not stop until we make them stop. Fighting back is the only option. If we don’t resist, there is no escape.
So how do you resist? The first step is to say the obvious, say it loudly, say it often. This is not about science. This is about political power.
If it was about science, Fauci and Kamala Harris would be happy to hear, for example, the Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis discuss the science behind mask mandates with a Harvard Professor. They would welcome that. But they hated it, so they just pulled the whole thing off YouTube.
Here’s part of what they refused to let you hear.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Dr. Gupta mentioned about, you know, not putting masks on kids. That’s not effective. Not necessary. Martin Kulldorff, do you agree in school, there is no need for them to be wearing facemasks?
MARTIN KULLDORFF, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE AT HARVARD MEDICAL SCHOOL AND A BIOSTATISTICIAN AND EPIDEMIOLOGIST AT THE BRIGHAM AND WOMEN’S HOSPITAL: Children should not wear face masks. Not this — they don’t need it for their own protection and they don’t need it for protecting other people either.
QUESTION: I mean, I think schools, how do you teach a child to read with facemasks on Zoom?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CARLSON: So that’s now banned, scientists talking about science. Those aren’t scientists anymore, they are now dissidents. How is this happening? Well, it happens because we allow it to happen. Because we buy into their demands, because we internalize their standards.
If you decided to burn American flag in a public park tomorrow, how would they respond to that? Well, of course, they would applaud. That’s your First Amendment right? You’d be fighting the tyranny of the people who created this horrifying country.
How by contrast would they respond if you burned a pile of surgical masks in a public park tomorrow? They probably wouldn’t like it. But that’s your right, too.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.