Far-right TV host Tucker Carlson hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID-19 and doesn’t plan to be, according to a report from the Voice of San Diego. It’s the first time Carlson has publicly declared his vaccination status, though it obviously needs to be taken with a huge grain of salt, given Carlson’s penchant for lying.
Carlson was talking to a crowd at Awaken church’s San Marcos campus when he brought up potential plans for a fourth covid-19 shot being available to all Americans, according to the Voice of San Diego.
“I skipped the first three, I’m not getting that one either,” Carlson told the crowd.
Carlson, arguably America’s most powerful white supremacist, has spent the past two years sowing doubt about the efficacy of the covid-19 vaccines, while still insisting that he’s not an anti-vaxxer. And most people had widely assumed Carlson was vaccinated, since it’s a condition of employment at Fox News.
The COVID-19 vaccines have been literal life-savers for countless people who’ve chosen to get vaccinated, but Carlson and many of his other colleagues have characterised the vaccines as both dangerous and a way to control the population. Carlson has even compared covid-19 vaccine mandates to “Nazi experiments.”
As a result, people who watch Fox News are much less likely to get vaccinated compared with people who watch competing cable news channels like CNN and MSNBC. Just 62% of Fox News viewers have been vaccinated against COVID-19, compared with 83% for those who watch CNN, based on polling from last year.
Fox News viewers are also much more likely to believe conspiracy theories about the vaccines, according to a study in 2021 by the Kaiser Family Foundation, such as the idea that COVID-19 vaccines contain a microchip and the idea that COVID-19 vaccines change your DNA. And Tucker Carlson, with the most watched show on all of cable news, has played no small part in that.
Carlson grew up in the San Diego area, the son of Dick Carlson, former head of America’s top foreign propaganda agency, the U.S. Information Agency under President Ronald Reagan. Tucker Carlson’s step-mother, Patricia Caroline Swanson, is an heiress to the Swanson frozen food empire.
Is it still possible that Carlson was vaccinated in secret? Absolutely. Carlson is an admitted liar who plays a character on TV. But no one will likely no for sure anytime soon. At least until one of his family members writes a tell-all book about what it was like living with the 21st century Father Coughlin. We can hope.