White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, on Thursday morning, July 21, announced that President Joe Biden had "tested positive for COVID-19" and went on to say that Biden was "experiencing very mild symptoms." The 79-year-old president, according to Jean-Pierre, had been vaccinated for COVID-19 and received two booster shots — and she said that Biden will "participate in his planned meetings at the White House this morning via phone and Zoom."
Fox News pundits have been quick to respond to the news, including Joey Jones — who described Biden's COVID-19 infection as "karma."
Jones told a Fox panel, "I think life comes at you fast. I think when you're pretending to have cancer one day and you've got COVID the next, you might want to recalibrate how you treat things and how you talk. But I don't wish bad luck on him, and I'm not going to say that's the reason why. It's just, maybe that's a good opportunity for him to have a reality check."
Jones' "pretending to have cancer" comment was in response to Biden's Wednesday, July 20 speech in Somerset, Massachusetts on climate change. Discussing the health effects of emissions from oil refineries, Biden told the New England crowd, "That's why I — and so damn many other people I grew up with — have cancer and why, for the longest time Delaware, had the highest cancer rate in the nation."
Biden wasn't announcing a new cancer diagnosis, and he wasn't "pretending to have cancer," as Jones claimed. According to the Washington Post's Glenn Kessler, Biden was referring to "non-melanoma skin cancers" that he had in the past.
On July 20, Kessler tweeted, "Check out Biden's medical report. Before he became president, he'd had non-melanoma skin cancers removed. Has no one at @RNCResearch ever had this common procedure?"
Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the leading White House medical expert, have been aggressive proponents of vaccination for COVID-19 — stressing that COVID-19 infections among the vaccinated and boosted are more likely to be milder infections. And Biden's infection, based on Jean-Pierre's announcement, appears to bear that out. Although Biden was infected despite being vaccinated and twice boosted and is now avoiding in-person meetings, he is well enough to be going ahead with meetings on the phone or via Zoom.
According to Jean-Pierre's announcement, Biden "has been in contact with members of the White House staff by phone this morning."
Biden is among the many U.S. government officials who have had a positive COVID-19 diagnosis despite being fully vaccinated. Others have ranged from Fauci to Vice President Kamala Harris to Sen. Elizabeth Warren to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — all of whom had milder infections.
Watch the Fox News video below or at this link:
Fox News' Joey Jones suggests it was "karma" that Joe Biden got covid because he was "pretending" to have cancer yesterday.
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) July 21, 2022
"That's karma man! You don't want to fool with that. You don't want to put into the universe something like that." pic.twitter.com/itvuIFdJtp
