Fox News ran a segment sponsored by The Wellness Company on Tuesday in which Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt and Dr. Peter McCullough — the lifestyle brand’s “chief scientific officer” and a one-time Fox regular — gushed over its “Medical Emergency Kit.”

“You are a genius,” Earhardt said after introducing McCullough, whose board certifications were apparently revoked over his false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. “You’re a cardiologist. And then you said during COVID we need a better way. We need a kit with all of these drugs so that we can have them at the ready.”

McCullough touted the kit’s pre-prescribed medications to treat “dozens” of “common infections” as well as Lyme disease without seeing a doctor and having them diagnose your symptoms.

Under Earhardt’s gentle prodding, McCullough highlighted the kit’s benefits for vacationers; offered it up as a solution for accessing drugs manufactured overseas “when the shipping lanes are uncertain”; directed viewers to the company’s website to purchase it; and touted its affordable price, saying it’s “way cheaper than going to an urgent care.”

“It’s amazing,” Earhardt said at one point, “You have that idea that we all are like, Why didn't I think of that?”

If you weren’t paying close attention, it was easy to miss Fox News’ disclosure that it was running sponsored content. At the beginning of the Fox & Friends segment, small text at the bottom of the screen read, “This segment is made possible by our sponsor: The Wellness Company.” 

Fox subsequently posted the segment on its website.

Fox & Friends has run sponcon segments over the years on subjects like The Museum of the Bible, the hats worn at the Kentucky Derby, and GMC’s Hummer EV. But in taking money from a lifestyle brand to help sell its medical products to network viewers, Fox seems to have entered new territory. 

Indeed, Fox’s segment serves as a testament to the right-wing con culture in which propagandists use ideological, often paranoid, political coverage to build trust with the movement’s rank-and-file, then get paid by people looking to cash in on their audience.

The Wellness Company tries to cash in on the right’s ivermectin craze

The Wellness Company — like other pill mills that use MAGA-inflected marketing to sell their product — fits perfectly into that ecosystem. Its Earhardt-approved “Medical Emergency Kit” retails for $299.99, including a “Free Doctor Consult” with one of TWC’s prescribing “licensed providers.”

Notably, while the product website touts the kit’s “8 life-saving prescriptions” and remedies for “30+ illnesses,” it highlights one medicine in particular — ivermectin. That’s the antiparasitic drug that Fox hosts and other right-wing media figures recklessly promoted during the COVID-19 pandemic as an alternative to the vaccines they claimed were ineffective and unsafe. They were wrong about ivermectin, as numerous studies found — but their rhetoric helped drive down vaccination rates on the right and create demand for ivermectin as a COVID-19 therapy, with deadly results. 

McCullough, like Earhardt, is a familiar face for the Fox audience — and thus a key validator for The Wellness Company’s product. An internist and cardiologist, he became a frequent presence on Fox during the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccines, making at least 37 appearances on its weekday programs in 2021 and 2022. 

McCullough used the network’s platform to undermine the public vaccination effort, tout the purported effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin in treating the virus, and claim that an NFL player who was struck in the chest, collapsed on the field, and was diagnosed with cardiac arrest had suffered “vaccine-induced myocarditis.”

McCullough’s COVID-19 vaccine commentary made him an outcast in the medical community. 

His former employer, Baylor Scott & White Health, filed a lawsuit against him in 2021, citing “irreparable reputational and business harm” caused by McCullough being identified with his former Baylor titles in interviews (the parties apparently reached a settlement in 2023). 

Then in 2022, the credentialing committee of the American Board of Internal Medicine recommended stripping McCullough of his certifications over his vaccine claims. The Journal of Medicine reported in January 2025 that ABIM’s look-up tool identified McCullough’s certifications in internal medicine and cardiovascular disease as “Not Certified, Revoked,” which remains their current status.

But as The Daily Beast reported in a 2023 profile of The Wellness Company, McCullough became “a hero in anti-vaxx circles” — and thus an attractive business partner for Foster Coulson and Dave Lopez, the “Trumpworld-linked investors” who founded TWC that year. They were joined by other “disreputable medical professionals,” including TWC “Chief Epidemiologist” Dr. Harvey Risch, another veteran of Fox's crusade against the COVID-19 vaccine campaign. 

As the Beast detailed, the group was “hawking a Goop-like lifestyle brand—complete with supplements, podcasts, telehealth, and even a dating service—to conservative audiences with the help of far-right influencers.”

The company has tried to tap into the right-wing fearmongering of the day. When conspiracy theorists warned in 2024 about a plan to kill off “excess population” through the hypothetical pathogen “Disease X,” The Wellness Company ran sponsored content at outlets like Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit pointing to its “Medical Emergency Kit” as a remedy. 

Over the past few months, ads for TWC have also run on the right-wing podcast shows of Candace Owens and Jack Posobiec. 

But now with a sponsored Fox & Friends segment, TWC is taking that act to a much bigger audience — one they are counting on to trust the testimonials from McCullough and Earhardt.