Fox Host Puts Kellyanne Conway In The Hot Seat Over Trump's COVID-19 Mistruths
Children are not "nearly immune" to the coronavirus, Sandra Smith told her guest.
By Josie Harvey 07/08/2020 2:35 PM AEST
White House senior counselor Kellyanne Conway attempted on Thursday to spin US President Donald Trump’s false claim that children are “nearly immune” to the coronavirus — but met repeated pushback from Fox News host Sandra Smith.
That claim earned Trump a long-overdue rebuke from Facebook, which removed the post in question from his profile. Twitter, too, penalised the president’s campaign for posting a clip from his Wednesday morning “Fox & Friends” interview in which he claimed, “If you look at children, children are almost ? and I would almost say definitely ? almost immune from this disease.”
“There is a debate happening whether or not Facebook and Twitter should be arbiters of truth and decide what is fact and fiction,” Smith began. She then pulled up figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to those figures, children under the age of 18 account for 7.4% of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the US, a figure that’s been rising over the past month, Smith told Conway.
“So kids are getting this disease, Kellyanne,” she added.
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Conway insisted Trump was referring to children being less susceptible to dying from the virus, which is very different from having immunity. After that, she pivoted to attacking Twitter and tech companies for “election interference,” but again, Smith pressed Conway to respond to Trump’s misinformation.