Tucker Carlson mocks Joe Biden for wearing face mask on Zoom call: 'Digital Covid could be anywhere'
Conservative political commentator and Fox News TV host Tucker Carlson has spoken out time and again on the coronavirus pandemic and expressed opinions that led to a backlash. But that has not stopped him and now, Carlson has mocked President Joe Biden for wearing a mask during a Zoom call with other world leaders, saying the latter was concerned about contracting ‘digital Covid’.
Biden last week spoke to several world leaders in a virtual climate summit hosted by the White House, including his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping. While it was alleged that the US president was the only one to wear a mask during the conference, PolitiFact ran a fact check to say that Biden was not alone in the room while speaking with the other leaders. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and other aides were also present. Other pictures of the summit showed some other leaders also wearing masks at various times during the event.
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But Carlson was little convinced. Carlson said on his Fox News show on April 27: “What got your attention was Joe Biden. Of the 16 heads of state who were present, only Joe Biden wore a face mask. He sat there silently, nose and mouth covered in black cloth like a wrestler from an old western as Vladimir Putin held forth on international affairs - but here’s the weirdest part: that meeting took place over Zoom.” He said the US was blindly following recommendations on mask rules without giving the rationale a thought.
“All precautions against COVID are considered legitimate by the American news media, no matter how self-evidently lunatic they may be,” he said. “Covering your face during a Zoom call, drive to work alone with a mask on, it's all normal, says The New York Times.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Biden was wearing the mask to not only send a message, but also because there were other people in the room where he sat. Carlson though continued to ridicule the 78-year-old president saying: “The message is that Joe Biden is putting in place precautions, those would be sensible precautions, precautions against Zoom because it turns out COVID is digitally transmissible.”
Coronavirus travels through fibres, mocks Carlson
“It travels through the fibers, the virus embeds itself among the one and zero and springs unsuspected, teeth bared and ready to strike, from any available hot spot - whether it’s at Starbucks, down in your basement rec room, even the Oval Office. Digital COVID could be anywhere - where there’s an internet connection, there's a pandemic,” the right-wing commentator said.
Carlson also noted that Biden himself had announced earlier in the day that fully-vaccinated Americans like him could remove their masks while venturing outdoors, though not among crowds. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also eased its guidelines on Tuesday, April 27 to say fully-vaccinated Americans do not need to cover their faces anymore unless they are with a lot of strangers. The president, who has taken both the doses, later walked out alone from the White House with his mask on. Carlson mocked the White House saying it had a “mask fetish”.
More than 32 million people have been hit by the pandemic in the US, more than any other nation in the world, with the death toll crossing 573,000, according to Johns Hopkins University tracker.