Fox News contributor Brit Hume speculated that some of the resistance to bringing some portions of the economy back online could be a result of animosity toward President Donald Trump.

On Monday night, Republican Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick expressed his desire to get America working again despite the risks posed to himself as an older American.

“What I’m living in fear of is what’s happening in this country,” Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson last night. “No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in.”

Appearing on Tuesday night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight” to react, Hume noted that the “circumstance as we try to beat this virus is not sustainable.”

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“I think he’s essentially saying something that’s not terribly different from what the president and governor Cuomo have been saying, which is this is what we are living in now, this circumstance as we try to beat this virus is not sustainable,” Hume told Carlson. “The utter collapse of the country’s economy, which many think will happen if this goes on much longer, is an intolerable result, and that he is saying for his own part that he would be willing to take a risk of getting the disease if that’s what it took to allow the economy to move forward, and he said that because he is late in life, that he would be perhaps more willing then he would have been at a younger age.”

While Hume called it a “reasonable viewpoint,” he also contrasted it with others who believe that risking any life is “intolerable.” Yet, Hume contended, society risks lives every year when “thousands upon thousands die” from the seasonal flu.

“But we do not, as has been pointed out, shut down the economy to combat it,” Hume said. “Now look, the mortality rate is high enough that it makes it alarming. It’s obviously a special kind of case. But there we are. You know, we don’t shut down the economy to save every single life that’s threatened by a wide-spread disease. We just don’t.”

“Just stating that out loud, why do you think that enrages so many people?” asked the Fox News host. (RELATED: Brit Hume Describes A Coronavirus Scenario That Could Be ‘Quite Good News’ For President Trump)

“Well, I can’t know that,” Hume responded. “I can’t read the minds of people I don’t know. But there’s one thing I do suspect in all of this in terms of the reactions to it. We are living in a country in which people’s reactions to nearly everything have something to do when you drill down with how they feel about Donald Trump, and to the extent that what the lieutenant governor set on the air last night is similar to the overall message to what Donald Trump has been saying. I think some of the reaction to it may flow from that.”