Fox and Friends hosts suggest new Covid variant was made up by Democrats to help Biden

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US President Joe Biden was seemingly blamed by Fox & Friends hosts for the discovery of a new Covid variant after the US introduced travel bans on several southern African countries.

As the hosts of Fox and Friends pointed out on Saturday, lockdown measures – despite not being introduced by the federal government – were a reason behind the current supply chain crisis and a rising cost of living that was starting to be felt by US consumers.

Pete Buttigieg, the US transportation secretary, also said in recent days that the US “can’t fix the supply chain problem until the pandemic is over, until Covid is over,” as Rachel Campos-Duffy told Fox & Friends viewers and her co-presenters Pete Hegseth and Will Cain.

“And now we see these new variants,” she added. “So that’s the answer: more lockdowns, more lockdowns, more fear and therefore he doesn’t have to do his job of fixing the supply chain because we’ll keep this whole thing going”.

The host appeared to suggest that Mr Biden had created a new Covid variant to prolong the supply chain crisis, and to introduce “more lockdowns, [and] more fear” that allowed the Democrat not to do his job. This is false.

Apparently in agreement, Mr Hegseth said, “You can count on a variant about every October, every two years,” and appeared to mimic a phone call in which Mr Biden says “we’re gonna need a new variant here”.

Also suggesting that Mr Biden had invented a new variant of Covid, Mr Cain told his Fox & Friends co-presenters, “You’re probably right. However, they could speed up. The variants could come more quickly.”

It comes after the World Health Organisation (WHO) identified omicron as a variant of concern after it was discovered by South African scientists this week. The variant, which remains under investigation, has since been detected in a handful of European countries.

It is not known by how much the variant is resistant to existing Covid vaccines, and how serious its symptoms are, although Dr Anthony Fauci, the chief US medical adviser, has acknowledged that omicron’s arrival in the US was an inevitability.

The Fox & Friends segment came a day after the Biden administration said it was banning travel from South Africa, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia or Zimbabwe, in a bid to curb the spread of the omicron variant.

The cable channel has face condemnation in recent months for furthering scepticism around face coverings and vaccinations against Covid, particularly as Fox requires its own employees to show proof of full vaccination to work at the company.