Fox News host Tucker Carlson described Dr. Anthony Fauci on Wednesday as “a malignant buffoon” for having repeatedly changed his talking points over masks during the past year.
“Now science is telling us we need to wear two masks, instead of just one,” Carlson said. “In fact, experts on other networks suggest we might need to wear three masks just to be safe. Think about it like triple-bagging your face. That’s the only way to be safe.”
Carlson then played a clip of Fauci describing double-masking as “common sense.”
“So if you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective, and that’s the reason why you see people either double-masking or doing a version of an N-95,” he said.
“So double-masking is ‘just common sense, just common sense!'” Carlson mocked. “How long are people going to put up with this? Follow the logic. Wouldn’t it just be safer at this point just for people to stop breathing entirely? You wouldn’t get COVID. You kind of get the impression that’s kind of where Tony Fauci may be a few months from now.”
Carlson went on to criticize Fauci for claiming less than a year ago that Americans “should not be walking around with masks” because they did not provide the “perfect protection” people believed them to provide.
“Right now, in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks,” Fauci said last spring. “Right now, people should not be walking around — there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” Fauci reiterated. “When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better, and it might even block a droplet. It’s not providing the perfect protection that people think it is.”
WATCH:
At the end of a bit on this insane notion that we should look seriously at wearing two or three masks, #Tucker calls Dr. Tony Fauci "a malignant buffoon."
"This guy is a malignant buffoon. He is and the teachers unions are actively hurting children. They are." pic.twitter.com/bikIfzjEbZ
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 28, 2021
The Centers for Disease Control’s COVID-19 protection guidelines state that people should “wear a mask to protect yourself and others and stop the spread of COVID-19,” stay at least 6 feet (about 2 arm lengths) from others who don’t live with you,” and “avoid crowds.” The agency recommends that people should wear masks that have “two or more layers of washable, breathable fabric,” “completely cover your nose and mouth,” and “fit snugly against the sides of your face and don’t have gaps.” The recommendations also state that the average person should not wear masks that “are intended for healthcare workers, including N95 respirators or surgical masks.”
“This guy’s a malignant buffoon,” Carlson responded. “He is, and the teachers’ unions are actively hurting children. They are. Why are we listening to any of these people?”
Wearing three masks has recently become vogue, as The Daily Wire reported:
On a CNBC program hosted by former Fox News host Shep Smith, former CBS/MSNBC/NBC correspondent and host Contessa Brewer said three is better than two, citing “experts.”
“So yeah, the experts keep telling us that wearing masks is really about protecting ourselves, protecting others from ourselves in the event that we are contagious. But you know if other people aren’t wearing their masks or they’re wearing them improperly, we need to protect ourselves. So experts say you can double up with a tight weave fabric mask for added protection,” Brewer said.
“Now, Virginia Tech researchers found that doubling up these cloth masks increases the efficacy from 50% to 75%. A three-layer mask could block up to 90% of the particles.” A graphic accompanying the declaration used the word “efficiency” instead of “efficacy.”
Wags on social media had a field day. “We’ve lost our ever-lovin’ minds,” wrote one person on Twitter, adding, “I thought it was a parody. Nope… it’s real.”
Related: Fauci Raked In The Largest Taxpayer-Funded Salary Of 2019