Fox Nation’s Patriot Awards event will have strict COVID-19 vaccination and testing requirements

Fox personalities participating have raged against vaccine protocols

Fox Nation, Fox News’ online streaming platform, is hosting “Patriot Awards 2021” in Florida on November 17 with strict COVID-19 vaccine/testing requirements for entry.  At this event, all attendees must show either a vaccine card or a negative COVID-19 test taken prior to the event.

COVID Guidelines and Details, Fox Nation

These rules follow commonsense public health directives, mirroring Fox’s own vaccine passport system (and similar protocols for Fox Corporation shareholders). The venue holding the Patriot Awards, Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, which is owned by Seminole Gaming, does not have any vaccine or testing requirements in place. Even while Fox News pundits publicly decry COVID vaccine mandates as government overreach, their office and events are protected. 

Fox News has repeatedly praised Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis throughout the pandemic for being tough on health regulations and mandates. It has also been revealed that Fox News and the Florida governor have coordinated broadly on coverage to build up his presidential star power.

Many of those listed as “special guests” at the Patriot Award event have spoken out against vaccine and testing requirements.

  • Dan Bongino

    Dan Bongino works for both Cumulus Media and Fox News, and while he has given Cumulus an ultimatum over what he calls the company’s “political” mandate and begged to be fired, he has not criticized Fox for its rules. Bongino has also called for “mass disobedience” over vaccine mandates.

  • Tucker Carlson

    Fox host Tucker Carlson has said vaccine mandates “are hurting the country” but when pressed about Fox News’ own mandate, bumbled his response, claiming to not know all the details because “I’m just an employee of the company.”

  • Steve Doocy

    Fox host Steve Doocy acknowledged that Fox News has a vaccine mandate even while he and his co-hosts hyped employee walkouts over similar rules elsewhere. Doocy has also fearmongered that the Biden administration’s vaccine mandate and testing requirement could leave “millions of hard-working Americans” jobless.

  • Ainsley Earhardt

    Fox host Ainsley Earhardt has pushed back on supposed vaccine outreach by the Biden administration because “we as Americans can make our own choices for our own families, for our own bodies. … Do you want someone knocking at your door that you don’t know, that’s a stranger?”

  • Sean Hannity

    Fox host Sean Hannity warned viewers that the government will target “your loved ones” if you don’t get vaccinated and claimed vaccine and testing requirements are “clearly unconstitutional” and that President Joe Biden was  “vilifying half the country.”

  • Pete Hegseth

    Fox host Pete Hegseth claimed that government vaccine mandates are a threat to freedom, saying that people on the left want to “steamroll a lot of those basic principles in the name of science, in the name of safety.”

  • Laura Ingraham

    Fox host Laura Ingraham claimed that “Democrats are showing their true authoritarian colors on the vaccine issue” and attacked the “small-minded control freaks” implementing vaccine mandates.

  • Johnny Joey Jones

    Fox contributor Johnny Joey Jones said that vaccine mandates infringe upon health care workers’ freedoms.

  • Lawrence Jones

    Fox reporter Lawrence Jones claimed, “Democrats are reviving segregation. The white-only signs that people like Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and countless others fought to tear down appear to be making a comeback -- but this time, they are cleverly disguising them as vaccine passports.”

  • Brian Kilmeade

    Fox host Brian Kilmeade praised an organizer of an anti-vaccine protest that stormed Barclays Center in New York for supporting “great people who feel the same way about the vaccine” that “are not being listened to.” Kilmeade ended the interview by telling the organizer, “Thanks for standing up,  appreciate what you’re doing.”

  • Lara Logan

    Fox Nation host Lara Logan claimed that by encouraging vaccination, the Biden administration has brought about the end of “sovereignty of our own bodies” because “we have to take a vaccine that’s not really a vaccine, it’s mRNA.”

  • Jeanine Pirro

    Fox host Jeanine Pirro claimed the Biden administration’s vaccine and testing requirement is “Marxism” because it divides the vaccinated from the unvaccinated. Pirro claimed that unvaccinated people do not endanger vaccinated populations. Pirro has also said that “I'm older, and I probably should be one of the people to be vaccinated. But I won't. I'm not going to allow them to do that to me.”

  • Mike Rowe

    Fox Business host Mike Rowe has spread misinformation about COVID-19 on Facebook and joined Fox News Primetime in a segment that suggested American businesses are suffering from the mandates and that they had led to labor shortages. On his Facebook page, Rowe has made clear he is vaccinated but has otherwise taken an approach that The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last describes as “anti-anti-anti-vaxx.”

  • Clay Travis

    Fox Sports host Clay Travis praised Brooklyn Nets player Kyrie Irving and former ESPN reporter Allison Williams for being willing to “lose their job over a COVID vaccine mandate.” Travis said it takes “way more bravery” to lose your job “than just getting the vaccine.”