Retired Navy SEAL Has People Thinking He Wore a Face Mask on Air During Perplexing Fox News Interview

Retired United States Navy SEAL Robert Harward has the internet very confused.

After Harward appeared on Fox News’ America’s Newsroom on Tuesday, May 19, to provide his analysis on the ongoing war with Iran, viewers thought he was wearing a realistic mask on his face because part of his neck appeared to flap as he spoke.

A Reddit thread titled “Fox News guest today appears to be wearing a very realistic face mask” shared a clip of the moment and had users debating whether or not Harward’s face is actually real.

While many users posted photos and GIFs from the 1994 comedy film The Mask, starring Jim Carrey as a man who dons a magical mask, one person simply wrote: “im kinda f**kin tired of everything.”

In response to that comment, one person wrote that making people tired is one of Fox News’ “tactics,” adding: “Make you as exhausted as they can by their antics so you are less likely to act on it.”

Someone then referenced a GIF of Ben Affleck smoking, while another replied: “God, I love the Ben Affleck smoking meme. We are all Ben in this timeline.”

In a viral post shared on X, one user wrote, “Can anyone really explain this? Why does it look like Fox News put a man with a mask in their show?”

“Fox News has claimed it’s a compression artifact (not a mask),” the user wrote. (Compression artifacts, according to Cloudinary.com, are “distortions or imperfections in digital media, such as images, videos, and audio, that occur after the data is compressed to reduce file size for storage or transmission.”)

However, in a statement to National Enquirer, Fox News said, “Vice Admiral Robert Harward appeared on FOX News Channel earlier this week via a remote, mobile camera operated by an outside vendor. During the interview, lighting conditions in the van contrasted with the vice admiral’s jacket, which caused a shadow to appear on his neck.”

Still, the moment had multiple X users weighing in on the matter as well with Meghan McCain writing, “That motherf**ker is NOT real!”

NewsNation broadcaster Chris Cuomo said in an X post, “What a silly thing to focus on (and drive suspicion)…deal with reality, there are plenty of legitimate concerns.”