A day after warning that people had best “use a mask to cover your eyes and ears” if they can’t handle the “truth” contained in his interview with RT, White House adviser Scott Atlas is now claiming that he didn’t know the Russian propaganda outlet is a registered foreign agent.
I recently did an interview with RT and was unaware they are a registered foreign agent. I regret doing the interview and apologize for allowing myself to be taken advantage of. I especially apologize to the national security community who is working hard to defend us.
— Scott W. Atlas (@SWAtlasHoover) November 1, 2020
The Kremlin-backed TV network registered as a foreign agent with the Justice Department back in 2017.
Atlas’ Sunday tone is very different from the one he struck when sharing the interview in a now-deleted tweet.
“New interview,” he wrote Saturday. “Lockdown, facts, frauds … if you can’t handle truth, use a mask to cover your eyes and ears,” he said, adding #FactsMatter and #LockdownsKill.
During the interview itself, Atlas — who is neither an epidemiologist nor a practicing doctor of any kind — pushed his typically specious COVID-19 claims.
“The lockdowns will go down as an epic failure of public policy,” Atlas said. “The argument is undeniable. The lockdowns are killing people.”
He went on to attribute some of the 231,000 American COVID-19 deaths to the lockdown, which real doctors support to slow the spread of the infection.
Senior WH official tells me Doctor Scott Atlas did not have approval from the WH before going on RT. Atlas did it “on his own” without seeking approval from WH. Senior aides have raised concerns that Atlas would appear on the Russian outlet, the official said.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 1, 2020
Atlas caught President Donald Trump’s eye in the first place due to his wildly wrong and over-optimistic COVID-19 predictions, predicting that the disease would peak in April and that the curve had been flattened in May. He has argued a line popular with Trump, that the cure is worse than the disease, and advocated for “herd immunity.”
He made many of those arguments on Fox News, and soon after became an adviser to members of the White House coronavirus task force.
He has whipped up a significant following for his medical bunk, despite being called “an outlier” by the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci.
