We wrote about Valentine last week in a post on Eric Metaxas’s claim that “he can spread false information [about the COVID-19 vaccine] all day long.” The New York Times is now covering the story. Here is Hamilton Matthew Masters and Giulia Heyward:
NASHVILLE — Mark Valentine knows that his brother Phil Valentine, a prominent conservative radio host who scoffed at the need to get vaccinated, has had a big impact on how his listeners have viewed the pandemic and their own response to it.
“The fact of the matter is a lot of people didn’t get the vaccine because he didn’t,” Mark Valentine said.
But after Phil Valentine was infected with Covid-19 and was hospitalized in critical condition, and since he issued a statement advising others to get the vaccine, the news has divided his fans and critics — who continue to clash over Mr. Valentine’s culpability in his own illness and his influence on listeners who, like him, waved off the opportunity to get vaccinated.
Phil Valentine, who once wrote that he was not going to get the vaccine because his chances of dying from the virus were “way less than one percent,” is now hospitalized, attached to a ventilator at night, and to an oxygen mask during the day, so he can breathe.
Last month, Mr. Valentine performed a parody version of the Beatles’ song “Taxman,” called “Vaxman,” that seemed to mock vaccines. But then he announced his own diagnosis on July 11, unfazed, saying he planned to return to his show within a day or two.
“Unfortunately for the haters out there, it looks like I’m going to make it,” he wrote.
But, less than two weeks later, his radio station, 99.7 WTN, announced that he had been hospitalized. He remains in critical condition, according to a Sunday afternoon update.
Read the rest here.
Valentine’s station–WWTN–also runs the Mark Levin Show and The Ben Shapiro Show
