“Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth made a surprising admission on Sunday, telling viewers that he hadn’t washed his hands in a decade and said he was skeptical that germs were even real.
“My 2019 resolution is to say things on air that I say off air. I don’t think I’ve washed my hands for 10 years. Really, I don’t really wash my hands ever,” Hegseth boasted on the Sunday edition of the program. “I inoculate myself. Germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them. Therefore, they’re not real.”
“I just can’t get sick,” he added.
Hegseth’s co-hosts Ed Henry and Jedediah Bila reacted with visible shock at the disclosure but did managed to power through the moment. There was also a clear gasp from someone on set off camera.
Hegseth is a longtime co-host of the Fox News morning show and is known to be a favorite of President Donald Trump.
In October 2017, he sat for an intimate dinner with Trump and some other Fox News hands at the White House and was mentioned as a possible replacement for David Shulkin as head the Department of Veterans Affairs. (He appointed Robert Willkie instead.)
There’s no word yet on how Hegseth’s admission will sit with Trump, who has bragged about being a germaphobe.
When asked for comment, a spokesperson for Fox News pointed to Hegseth’s response to a tweet in which Hegseth seemed to endorse MSNBC host Chris Hayes’ suggestion that the “Fox & Friends” star was “pretty clearly joking.”
https://twitter.com/PeteHegseth/status/1094979958722756608