If you needed a reminder that a large chunk of the country lives in an alternate reality, Fox News, as usual, has you covered.
A segment from the network's morning show Fox & Friends filmed at a packed New Jersey diner has gone viral because of the comments from customers that the segment featured.
It's the type of stuff that is brain-meltingly divorced from reality, starting with four little words spoken by a woman who told host Pete Hegseth:
"The virus is over."
The segment aired Thursday morning.
Hegseth, who was visiting the diner for the first time the pandemic began in March, spoke with several patrons, all of whom had bizarre things to say.
One woman named Donna was particularly outspoken:
"We're Americans, we're free. We don't want to be forced to wear a mask. We don't want to be quarantined."
"We don't want to be check-pointed [sic]. We don't want any of that stuff."
"And we worry that if Donald Trump is not reelected, we're going to lose all of that. And that's what really scares us because after this, where do we go?"
Donna went on to boil the viral pandemic down to an issue of individual freedom.
"We're loving life! That's all we want to do. We're not telling anybody else that they shouldn't do what they want to do. But don't tell us what to do."
Another woman Hegseth spoke with, who claimed to a nurse, told him that the pandemic has already been defeated.
"The virus is over. We're over. We need to step away from the fear and we need to educate ourselves on how to get healthy."
"And I think that's a big part of this presidential election right now."
It wasn't clear whom the "we" that the so-called nurse considered to be "over" referred to.
Other people Hegseth spoke to accused the Democratic Party of trying to commit election fraud by promoting mail-in ballots.
On Twitter, the response to the segment was one giant collective eyeroll.
Of all the people Hegseth spoke with, none wore a mask or made any attempt to socially distance. Here's hoping that diner has plenty of bleach.
