Posted by: Lizzy Murica
On the April 26 edition of “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” host Tucker Carlson took on outdoor mask mandates, pointing out that those involved in Black Lives Matter riots appeared to be exempted, and encouraging his viewers to stand up to masking mandates not backed by science.
Carlson began by pointing to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti as an inspiration for widespread mask mandates.
He quoted orders from Garcetti in May of 2020 to:
“Bring your mask with you whenever you leave home.
“That will help us get more freedoms.”
Carlson asserted that Garcetti received no pushback because “a lot of the country was so terrified of the new pandemic” that they didn’t question the outdoor spread of coronavirus, nor the encroachment upon freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution.
As a result, he continued, other politicians “watched as it happened,” and proceeded to act to take that sort of power for themselves, and found no pushback either.
Carlson went on to suggest that this would not have happened in past years, saying:
“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.”
He continued:
“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.”
Tucker next reviewed scientific studies that bolstered his opinion on the unscientific nature of outdoor mask mandates.
He cited a study from China, in which 318 coronavirus outbreaks were investigated. Out of those, he said:
“only a single one could even plausibly be connected to a person who was outside.”
In addition, Carlson noted that The Journal of Infectious Diseases reported in November of 2020 that “the odds of contracting the coronavirus outside were about 19 times lower than the risk of contracting it inside.”
Those results, he added, were duplicated by a study in Japan.
Carlson also quoted the New York Times as citing scientific studies that noted:
“Few, if any documented cases of brief outdoor interactions leading to COVID transmission.”
Carlson then shared the recent words of Dr. Anthony Fauci, from an April 25 broadcast of ABC News’ “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos.
In the interview, Stephanopoulos asked Fauci:
“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?”
Fauci responded:
“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.”
Carlson next reminded viewers of Fauci’s famous appearance, maskless, at a baseball game, and also described the “charade” of vaccinated Vice President Kamala Harris as she “ostentatiously socially distances.”
He then continued by comparing how the Black Lives Matter rioters were treated, as opposed to the general public, saying:
“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.”
He added:
“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.”
Carlson continued by discussing harm that masks can do to children.
He gave an example of testimony at a school board from Colorado Springs teacher Stacy Adair, who presented the board with a photo, taken after one hour of use by a kindergartner, of a dirt-covered face mask. Adair suggested to the school board that it was “unhealthy for a student to breathe through this mask.”
The school board, Carlson said, “ignored” Adair and “doubled down” on mask wearing. Carlson added that their edicts were supported by Colorado Governor Jared Polis, who instructed his constituents not to complain, and “threat[ened]”:
“If you keep whining about mask mandates, we will close the schools again.”
Carlson added that “we should all be troubled by” the fact that no one is asking how children are being harmed by mask wearing, including mask requirements for outdoor sports.
He told his viewers:
“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.’”
Carlson continued:
“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.”
He went on to say:
“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?”
Carlson added his observations on the significance and meaning of masks, saying that they “strip people of their identity as individuals…. isolate us, they alienate us.”
He continued:
“Masks prevent intimacy and human contact. If I can’t see your face, I can’t know you….
“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.”
Carlson went on to suggest that his viewers begin to push back publicly against outdoor masks.
He asserted that it is mask wearers who currently do the pushing, saying:
“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?’
Carlson continued:
“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.”
He instructed his viewers:
“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.”
Carlson next returned to the subject of children wearing masks outside, suggesting that such a situation should be treated as “child abuse.”
He said:
“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…. It is dangerous and we should act like it, because it is.”
Carlson went on to assert that the “evangelical faith” of outdoor mask mandates are not about science, but rather “about political power.”
As proof, he pointed to a discussion between Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Dr. Martin Kulldorff, Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and biostatistician and epidemiologist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
This conversation, reported Carlson, was removed from YouTube. It featured Dr. Kulldorff telling Governor DeSantis:
“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.”
Carlson suggested that if the mask issue were about science and not politics, Fauci and Harris would entertain such discussions.
Instead, he went on to say, such scientific voices are silenced:
“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.”
Carlson concluded:
“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.”