Let’s be clear: Fox News doesn’t care about solving the baby formula shortage. It’s exploiting a real crisis for the sake of advancing its war on Democrats and immigrants.
If ever there was an issue in which Fox cruelty, hypocrisy and demagoguery were on full display it’s this one.
Media Matters explains the baby formula shortage:
[T]here is currently a major shortage of baby formula in the United States. There are many reasons for this shortage, including the consolidation of formula suppliers, supply chain issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, bacterial contamination that forced a recall of some formula stocks and the shuttering of a major manufacturing plant, U.S. trade policy, and the general disregard U.S. policy has for children. The shortage is a crisis for many parents, who are unable to find the food they need for their babies.
In other words, it's a serious problem. But instead of looking for solutions, Republicans and Fox News seem to have been on the hunt for ways to weaponize the crisis – with a load of bigoted BS. Or, as MSNBC’s Chris Hayes noted in the video below, when faced with a legitimate crisis, the Republicans “sniff[ed] around like a dog after a carcass” looking for a way to demagogue the issue.
More from Media Matters:
After Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) posted a photo of what she described as “shelves and pallets packed with baby formula” at a major border processing and detention center alongside another photo of an almost-empty formula shelf at a U.S. store, her party started running with the angle. “Our children deserve a president who puts their needs and survival first – not one who gives critical supplies to illegal immigrants before the very people he took an oath to serve,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement on Thursday.
Never mind that the amount of baby formula reserved for immigrants is a minuscule amount compared to the need. And never mind that the Biden administration is following the same law Donald Trump did.
More from Hayes, with links added by me to verify his claims:
HAYES: There are at least 20,000 migrants, total, held in U.S. detention facilities on any given day. A very, very small portion of them are infants, like nursing children, OK? We have a legal obligation, under something called the Flores settlement, to give those children in our custody food and water. For babies, that often means formula.
Hayes played a series of clips of Fox News hosts, including the oh-so-Christian adulteress Ainsley Earhardt complaining that “illegal immigrant children are getting formula." We also saw Steve Doocy, Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters on “starve the babies” message.
Of course, Tucker Carlson took part in the action, too:
Tucker Carlson: "Once they get here, the Biden administration will give them food supplies that you can't buy. Those would include baby formula.... How much more of this are people going to take, you wonder? It's too humiliating." pic.twitter.com/CWzvq1SS0L
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 13, 2022
Worse, each and every one of those hosts claims to be pro-life. From the network that loves to accuse Democrats of promoting infanticide.
Hayes continued by noting that depriving immigrants of baby formula would do nothing to solve the problem.
HAYES: How many babies are there at the border? A few hundred? Maybe a thousand? The government doesn’t release the exact number. It’s somewhere in that ballpark.
In the United States, there are about 3.7 million babies, OK? So, clearly, the border babies hogging all othat formula is not the problem here. Not to mention the fact, have you taken leave of your moral senses? It would be a crime against humanity and mass murder to intentionally starve babies that you have in your custody, not to mention blatantly illegal. What is wrong with you?
Sadly, the fact is that Fox lost its moral senses years ago, assuming it ever had any to begin with.
Hayes went on to report that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bring up a bill next week to "grant emergency authority to address supply chain disruptions and recalls of formula." Then he brought on host Stephanie Ruhle to discuss the real problems causing the baby formula shortage (Surprise! Trump contributed to the problem) and some of the solutions.
But Hayes also said this: “Think what would happen if [Republicans] could control this, if they could actually have the levers to cut off the supply of formula to the hundreds of babies in our custody. Would they do it? A question to ask yourself.”
You can watch it below, from MSNBC’s May 13, 2022 All In with Chris Hayes.