Fox’s Outnumbered show devoted an entire segment to digging up reasons to blame President Obama for the unrest in Ferguson last night. Co-host Andrea Tantaros demonstrated special powers of creativity when she blamed Ferguson’s faulty police response on Obama, too.
Tantaros is really in no position to be pointing fingers at anyone else for inciting violence. We have not forgotten how she overtly promoted violence when she urged her radio show listeners to “do me a favor” and “punch” an Obama supporter “in the face.”
But now, Tantaros was a vision of concern trolling as she fixated on Obama as though he were the central figure in the Ferguson matter:
TANTAROS: It made for a very jarring image when President Obama spoke to the nation after the grand jury’s decision. Now, millions of Americans watched scenes of the violence and the chaos on the streets of Ferguson on the split screen as the president urged calm. And he appeared to be walking a very fine line as he expressed sympathy for the protesters…
…I have to say, the president interjects him(self) in these local issues and at times, it seemed, made it worse. I mean, watching the side-by-side of the president talking last night, I don’t know if he’s just so irrelevant that people aren’t listening or he’s making it worse because his comments really were on the one hand, ‘peaceful protests’ but on the other hand, he didn’t help when he came to inflaming racial tensions.
The #OneLuckyGuy for the segment was GOP candidate turned Fox News contributor, turned GOP candidate, now a Fox News contributor again, Scott Brown. And I have to say, in his response, Brown sounded like he’s mulling over a presidential run next. Brown said about Obama: “Well, he’s in a tough place, obviously. …The fact that he was there in a calming effort, it would have been nice if he could have come out a little bit earlier. …We have a black president, we have black Supreme Court justices, in Massachusetts, a black governor. We have made amazing strides. We can always do better. But it’s not going to be done by dividing us. And the president has been known as a divider in this country right now.”
It’s hard to think of anybody or anything that could be more divisive than Fox News. But Brown either hasn’t noticed or doesn’t care.
But blaming Obama for the violence wasn’t enough for “Punch” Tantaros. She decided to finger him for the police’s failure to stop the looting and violence last night, too. Speaking to co-host Harris Faulkner, Tantaros “asked” the following:
From the start, Harris. He came out, remember, initially, this summer: He came off the golf course, President Obama, when he weighed in on Ferguson and he did put blame on the cops. He was lecturing the police officers. And I brought up earlier, people were saying this morning, “Oh, where are the cops?” The cops have been yelled at and scolded by this administration a number of times so they’re in a pretty precarious position, wouldn’t you say?
Faulkner agreed with Brown that Obama is in a “no win situation.” But it’s his own fault, Harris suggested. She continued, “When you look at statistically, he is one of the most polarizing, politically polarizing figures in American history. So he was going to have a difficult time bringing people together anyway.”
Just like on Fox & Friends, Faulkner read an abridged and distorted quote of Obama’s from his This Week interview to suggest that he had blamed the police. In a stern tone, Faulkner said, “We need the truth. We need to be honest with each other before we can bring about change. The truth. And if we’re not getting it from the president, from whom will it come?”
Maybe you should start your truth search right in your own backyard, Ms. Faulkner. Because we're not getting so much of it on Fox.