Host Rachel Campos-Duffy praised Sen. Ron Johnson for “not falling for the Covid scam” during Sunday’s episode of Fox & Friends Weekend.
“I saw you had a podcast with Russell Brand. … You two couldn’t look more different and yet both of you were the most courageous people during the Covid pandemic scam, and both of you have stood up for those who were vaccine injured,” Campos-Duffy told Johnson.
Covid-19, which Campos-Duffy called a “scam,” has caused more than seven million deaths worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
Campos-Duffy, a former Real World cast member, has spread Covid disinformation before. She previously claimed the pandemic was a “psy op” and lied when she alleged that “there is not one child that was healthy that died of Covid.” In 2021, she compared vaccine mandates to “apartheid.”
“We are starting to see this sort of apartheid-type vaccination system where, you know, if you are vaccinated you get certain privileges,” Campos-Duffy said. “If you are unvaccinated because, you know, you don’t want to take the vaccine or you have natural immunities because you already had Covid, you’re going to be denied certain privileges, including seeing your doctor.”
Campos-Duffy has claimed she is unvaccinated, despite a Fox News policy that required all of the network’s New York City employees show proof of vaccination to work in their headquarters during the pandemic.
After President Joe Biden made a joke that all of the Fox anchors in attendance at the 2022 White House Correspondents Dinner were vaccinated (proof of vaccination was required to attend), Campos-Duffy claimed that she and co-host Pete Hegseth — neither of whom were at the event — had not gotten the Covid vaccine.
“They tried to call out Fox News and say ‘Look! Fox News is all vaccinated!’ No, that’s not true!” she said. Campos-Duffy then pointed to Hegseth and said the two of them are “not vaccinated” because the network “allow[s] people choice.”
According to a company memo from December 2020, “All workers in NYC who perform in-person work at an office location, including Fox employees, must show proof of receiving at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.”
Campos-Duffy is far from the only spreader of Covid disinformation on the network. Anchors Brian Kilmeade and Laura Ingraham have also fear-mongered about the vaccine and downplayed the virus and pandemic. Ingraham, Sean Hannity and former Fox host Tucker Carlson also promoted ivermectin as a Covid treatment despite a lack of scientific evidence.
President Donald Trump discussing Venezuela at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago.
Why Venezuela Could Be a Turning Point in Gen Z’s Support for Trump
When Donald Trump called himself “the peace president” during his 2024 campaign, it was not just a slogan that my fellow Gen Z men and I took seriously, but also a promise we took personally. For a generation raised in the shadow of endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it felt reassuring. It told us there was a new Republican Party that had learned from its failures and wouldn’t ask our generation to fight another war for regime change. That belief stood strong until the U.S. overthrew Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Growing up in the long wake of the wars in Iraq in Afghanistan shaped how my generation learned to see Republicans. For us, “traditional” Republican foreign policy became synonymous with unnecessary conflicts that caused young people to bear the consequences. We heard how Iraq was sold to the public as a necessary war to destroy weapons of mass destruction, only to become a long conflict that defined the early adulthood of many millennials. Many of us grew up watching older siblings come home from deployments changed, and hearing teachers and coaches talk about friends who never fully came back. By the time we were old enough to pay attention, distrust of Bush-era Republicans wasn’t ideological, it was inherited from what we had heard.
As the 2024 election was rolling around, that dynamic had flipped. After watching wars in Ukraine and Gaza dominate headlines while Joe Biden was president, the Democrats were now the warmongers. My friends constantly told me how a vote for Kamala Harris was a vote to go to war. On the other hand, Donald Trump and the Republicans were the ones my friends thought could keep us safe. “I’m not voting for Trump because I love him,” one friend told me. “I’m voting for him because he cares about us and I don’t want to go fight in a stupid war.” For many of my friends, much of their vote came down to one question: Who was less likely to send us to fight? The answer to them was pretty clear.
Fast forward to now, and Venezuela has begun to complicate that belief. Even without talk of a draft or a formal declaration of war, the renewed focus on U.S. involvement and troops on the ground has brought back the same language of escalation my generation was taught to distrust. Young men online have been voicing the same worries, concerned that the ousting of Maduro mirrors the early stages of wars they were raised to fear. When I asked a friend what he thought about Venezuela, he shared that same sentiment. “This is how all these wars always start,” he told me. “They might try to make it sound like it’s not actually a war, but people our age always end up being the ones that pay the price for it.” For young men who supported Trump because they believed he represented a break from interventionist politics, Venezuela blurs the line between the “new” Republican Party they thought they were backing and the old one they were raised to reject.
For many young men, Venezuela has become a major part of a broader shift of how they view Trump. A recent poll from Speaking with American Men (SAM) found that Trump’s approval rating has fallen 10 percent among young men, with only 27 percent agreeing with the statement that Trump is “delivering for you”.
Gen Z men’s support of Trump was never about ideology or party loyalty, it was about the idea that he had their back and would fight for them. But that’s no longer the case. Recently, Trump proposed adding $500 billion to the military budget. Ideas like that will only hurt the president with young men. My friends don’t want more military spending that could get us entangled in foreign wars; they want a president who keeps them home and fights for their economic and social needs. As Trump pushes for a bigger military and more intervention abroad, the promise that once made him feel like a protector of young men now feels out of reach.
For my generation, Venezuela isn’t just another foreign policy dispute, it’s a conflict many young men worry they could be the ones sent to fight. Gen Z men didn’t support Trump because he was a Republican, but because they believed he was different from the old Republicans. He would be a president who would have their back, fight for their interests and keep them from fighting unnecessary wars. Now, that promise feels fragile, and the fear of being the ones asked to face the consequences has returned. For a generation raised on the effects of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the idea of another war isn’t abstract, it’s personal.