Fox News hosts reflected on their former colleague-turned-Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday by bringing up a stomach-churning story of when he ate food off the floor.
The hosts of “Outnumbered,” toward the end of Wednesday’s program, weighed in on a viral TikTok clip where microbiologist Nicholas Aicher put the “five-second rule” to the test. He found that once he let his petri dish hit the ground, it collected evidence of bacterial spots.
After host Joe Concha dropped an unpeeled banana on the ground for five seconds and ate it on the air, his co-host, Rachel Campos-Duffy, remarked that he was “definitely auditioning for the Pete Hegseth seat.”
Host Ainsley Earhardt swiftly jumped in, recalling that Hegseth once dropped a bagel with cream cheese on the floor.
“He would drop it, it would land upside down, the cream cheese on the floor, and he would pick it up,” Earhardt recalled.
“I’m like, ‘Wait, is there any hair on there?’ It was so gross, and he would just pop it in his mouth.”
Concha then referred to Hegseth’s 2019 on-air claim that he hadn’t washed his hands for a decade.
“Really, I don’t really wash my hands, ever,” he said on “Fox & Friends” at the time.
“I inoculate myself. It’s just not — germs are not a real thing. I can’t see them therefore they’re not real.”
He’d later take to X, then Twitter, to claim that he was joking.
Earhardt, after Concha’s nod to Hegseth’s hand-washing comments, said of her former colleague, “He’s tough, he’s like an Army guy, you know, he’s tough.”
Social media users couldn’t help but wince at the nauseating bagel story.