“Morning Joe” co-host Jonathan Lemire dedicated a significant portion of Monday’s broadcast to fact-checking and disputing claims made over the weekend by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. about the Covid-19 pandemic, calling them both “false” and “outrageous.”
“Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made several controversial and often false claims about Covid-19, vaccines and measles over the weekend,” Lemire noted of Kennedy’s already-infamous interview with CNN’s Dana Bash. “Many of his claims flat-out contradict established scientific evidence.”
“We have a lot of fact-checking to do,” Lemire added. “It was a pretty outrageous performance.” The “Morning Joe” host then began pushing back against the HHS secretary’s claim that America had the highest death rate during Covid, despite the country’s sweeping lockdown protocols.
“Actually, not accurate. In reality, according to Johns Hopkins University of Medicine, numerous countries recorded higher cumulative per capita Covid-19 death rates than the U.S.,” Lemire said. “That includes Peru, Bulgaria and Hungary. Nine of the top ten states with the highest death rates per capita went for Trump in the 2016 election. In 2020, eight of these states went for Trump.”
He went on to vehemently dispute Kennedy’s suggestion that there were ICUs all over the country, including in New York City, that were completely empty at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Kennedy’s claim is false and, frankly, infuriating,” Lemire said in response. “In March of 2020, FEMA sent 85 refrigerated trucks to New York City to serve as temporary morgues because hospitals in the nation’s largest city were at full capacity. Hundreds of bodies had to be stored in those trucks. Additionally, the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 400,000 in Trump’s first term.”
“It’s a lie,” the host concluded. In a later segment that also aired Monday morning, he further lamented Kennedy’s behavior this past weekend.
“It’s not just that he’s part of arguably America’s most famous political dynasty,” Lemire noted. “But here he is, in an extraordinary influential and powerful position, just getting on television and, in an angry sort of unhinged way, lying, disputing settled fact, disputing settled medicine and, frankly, saying things that aren’t just incorrect about what happened in the past but are dangerous for America’s health going forward.”
