Photo via @Mediaite/Twitter
November 22, 2021, 3:48 pm*
Fox & Friends Weekend host and current guest host of Fox News Primetime Pete Hegseth could only last through 13 minutes of what was supposed to be a 30-minute interview with Mediaite Editor-in-Chief Aidan McLaughlin once the hard questions started coming out. It started out okay, but once McLaughlin began pushing Hegseth on his refusal to state who won the 2020 election and Fox News’ vaccine policy, he began to get upset.
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The beginning of the interview centered on the “Patriot Awards,” which were apparently done in response to Hollywood allegedly becoming too political with their awards show speeches, talking about issues affecting real people instead of boring screeds thanking people we’ve never heard of. If you hadn’t heard of the Patriot Awards, it’s probably because no one except that type of conservative watched them, but Hegseth reports that many award recipients went on anti-Biden screeds during their time at the podium.
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The good news is that the awards show had a vaccine mandate, so at least the attendees were safer than they would have been otherwise. The bad news (for Hegseth) is that McLaughlin linked this to the common conservative outrage over the vaccine mandates being implemented by the Biden administration.
“There was a vaccine or test requirement at the Patriot Awards, which is very similar to the policy at Fox News,” said McLaughlin. “Do you have an issue with Fox News having a policy like that, which is effectively the same as Biden’s vaccine mandate for big businesses?”
The problem with this is that is traps Hegseth in the middle of two job requirements: 1) don’t ever admit that Joe Biden ever did anything good, and 2) never speak a negative word about his lords and masters at Fox News.
“You’re not mandated to get the vaccine because you can get a test. I’m not in charge of it. I don’t make the calls, but either you — you have the option to get a test, so it’s not actually a complete vaccine mandate, and that’s fine. I mean, so it’s not my call,” Hegseth rambled.
Unfortunately for the Fox News host, Biden’s vaccine mandate also allows for regular testing as an alternative to the vaccine. In fact, Biden’s rules are far less strict than Fox News’ vaccine mandate.
“But Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate for big businesses has been the subject of criticism, and that’s even less stringent than the one at Fox News, right?” McLaughlin pointed out. “It requires weekly testing as opposed to daily testing.”
Hegseth’s response was basically that it’s okay for companies to do vaccine mandates but it’s not okay for the government to make them, but it is okay for companies to force their workers to get vaccinated, but only if the government didn’t tell them to do it? Then he insulted his host while singing praises to the almighty Fox News.
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“The government shouldn’t be telling them what to do. Every company has its own policies and I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity to work at Fox News Channel. And it does things that no other organization does, including your organization Mediaite, which is part of the trash heap of left-wing media that does the same thing everyone else does. That’s why we’re number one. I can’t even imagine what the clicks are on your site. Is it like 15 people a day? Like only journalists in New York City?”
“Sixteen,” McLaughlin calmly corrected him.
The interview ended shortly after McLaughlin asked Hegseth about his vaccine status, which Fox News hosts of course react to in the way that normal people do when you ask about the nature of their genitals. Earlier, Hegseth also pointedly refused to state that Biden won the 2020 election, saying that “we’ll see what happens” as though Joe Biden weren’t the sitting president right now.
Based on the responses to Mediate’s posting of the clip from the interview, the organization has quite a bit more than 16 fans, or at the very least, Pete Hegseth has thousands of haters out there.
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I would ask him why DeSantis is blocking companies from having vaccine mandates..if he is in favor of companies making their own decisions
— Nick Done
(@NickDone8) November 21, 2021
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*First Published: November 22, 2021, 3:47 pm
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