It takes a certain special kind of something to cash the check it brings and sleep at all

After Biden’s speech on Thursday, the host of Fox News’s most-watched show responded by bringing anti-vaxx shithead Alex Berenson on to lie to his viewers about a literal life-or-death matter:

Noting that Biden said there will soon be enough federally approved vaccines for every person in America, Carlson proceeded to then openly question the efficacy of immunizations while seemingly rallying to the defense of anti-vaxxers.

“The military will give you that shot, and if you take that shot, things potentially could get back to normal,” Carlson said. “No mention at all of the people who might not want to take the shot.”

The Fox News host added: “As the president said, if you take that shot, wear your mask, and listen to Dr. Fauci, it is possible that you might be able to gather in small groups with the ones you love for the Fourth of July. We might have to rescind that right, but it’s possible, if you are obedient, you will get it.”

The conservative primetime star, after rhetorically shouting “how dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with,” went on to welcome spy novelist turned COVID contrarian Alex Berenson.

Berenson, who has spent much of the past year raising skepticism about lockdowns, masks, and other coronavirus guidelines, has recently become one of the most vocal vaccine skeptics. In fact, earlier this week, Berenson falsely claimed on Carlson’s show that Israel’s vaccine rollout hasn’t worked while outright lying about the vaccine’s effectiveness.

Another good story about the families being broken by grandparents being fed deranged propaganda by Rupert and friends shows the impact this can have:

Early in the pandemic, Claire had sewn masks for the family even before they had become adopted widely, Laurie said. Now Claire doubted the seriousness of the risk presented by the coronavirus because of what she was reading online about it. Laurie agonized about Claire singing at church again, going to the grocery store again, getting her hair done again.

She was distraught when Claire told her that she would not get inoculated against the virus because she heard “abortion cells” from hundreds of terminated pregnancies were used in the vaccines, which Laurie refuted.

The truth took some difficult parsing. The vaccines did not contain fetal tissue from recent abortions, nor were any abortions performed for the purpose of vaccine development. Several of the common lab-grown cell lines that were used to test or develop the vaccines, however, were first derived decades ago from cells collected after at least two abortions and copied over time for scientific research. Weighing those facts, the Vatican and many prominent Catholic leaders nonetheless encouraged vaccination, but it was not uncommon for conservative Christians to worry that the vaccines were morally tainted.

But Laurie had lost their argument before it even started. She felt as though the facts did not matter, like her expertise as a physician did not matter. Truth was a process born of trust, and maybe that was what was missing between them now.

She had diagnosed the problem. She could not treat it.

Given the demographics of the Fox News audience, Tucker’s vaccine trooferism alone is going to get a non-trivial number of people killed.