In tandem with Donald Trump, Fox News hosts and other influential conservatives spent the weekend egging on a small number of mask-less protesters flouting social distancing guidelines by crowding state capitols and demanding that closure orders be lifted. These “Give me liberty and give me death!” rallies, as a Washington Post satire piece put it, represent the opinions of a decided minority: A Politico–Morning Consult poll released last week found that 81% of Americans support maintaining social distancing measures “for as long as is needed to curb the spread of coronavirus, even if it means continued damage to the economy,” while nearly 60% of respondents in a similar NBC–Wall Street Journal survey voiced concerns over the U.S. lifting mitigation efforts too soon. But perhaps out of wishful thinking, members of the right-wing media are nonetheless framing protests as the Tea Party movement reincarnated.

“A lot of people are very proud of you,” said Fox News host Jeanine Pirro during a Saturday night interview with Meshawn Maddock, an organizer behind the so-called “Operation Gridlock” protest in Lansing, Michigan. “Peaceful protests, civil liberties, it’s what we’re all about. Keep going.” The segment aired after Pirro’s colleagues had spent days praising the protests. Last week Tucker Carlson hosted Maddock and thanked the Michigan Conservative Coalition activist for her service. On Saturday morning Fox & Friends prominently displayed the locations of future rallies on a map of the country—exactly what the network did years prior to promote the anti-Obama Tea Party protests. An article published on Fox’s website took the effort a step further, embedding a tweet with contact information for those who wished to join the Wisconsin Freedom Rally. On Friday conservative talk radio giant Rush Limbaugh cheered on the protesters by citing historic examples of American bravery and sacrifice, including U.S. involvement “in World War II,” adding, “This shutdown, and hunkering down in total fear, is not a hallmark of American history.”

Moving in lockstep with his media allies, the president has personally incited the protests, writing in three separate tweets on Friday, “LIBERATE MINNESOTA,” “LIBERATE MICHIGAN,” and “LIBERATE VIRGINIA...save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!” Speaking at the White House’s coronavirus task force briefing on Sunday, Trump doubled down, calling the protesters “a very orderly group of people,” despite the fact that some flew Confederate flags and flashed signs with swastikas, and falsely claiming that protesters “were all six feet apart,” despite an abundance of photo and video evidence to the contrary. “Their life was taken away from them. They want their life back,” he concluded. Responding to a question on the protesters’ use of Nazi symbolism, the president delivered a remark reminiscent of his infamous “very fine people on both sides” line following a 2017 white nationalist rally: “Well that, I totally would say, no way. But I didn’t see that.”

Trump’s outspoken support marks the latest flashpoint in the White House’s ongoing war with states amid the pandemic. A number of governors aired their opposition to Trump’s comments throughout Sunday, including Virginia governor Ralph Northam, who asserted that now is “not the time for protests, this is not the time for divisiveness”; and Washington governor Jay Inslee, who condemned Trump’s fostering of “illegal activity” and said, “It is dangerous because it can inspire people to ignore things that actually can save their lives.” Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, the right’s primary target in their justification of the rallies, did not directly address them, but she did explain why some in Michigan are failing to grok the reasoning behind social distancing policies. “The hard part of public health is when you’re doing a good job, you’re saving lives, and it’s hard to quantify precisely what that looks like,” she told CNN. And Maryland governor Larry Hogan noted that it is not “helpful to encourage demonstrations and encourage people to go against the president’s own policy.… You can’t start to reopen under his plan until you have declining numbers for 14 days, which those states and my state do not have.”