Yesterday, the violence in Baltimore had barely started when two of Fox’s favorite African Americans jumped at the chance to use the tragedy as a springboard for attacking Baltimore’s African American mayor.
The sole topic on yesterday’s Your World was the Baltimore riots. On Your World, guests David Clarke and Alveda King wasted no time pointing fingers. Host Neil Cavuto did not reveal Clarke’s Republican political aspirations and falsely suggested King represented the views of Martin Luther King.
Cavuto merely described Clarke as “Milwaukee County Sheriff.” But, as we've previously noted, Clarke is a likely candidate for Milwaukee mayor (Republican, natch) who has all but taken up residence at Fox News. In turn, Fox has worked so hard to promote Clarke’s cred, I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t a Roger Ailes in-law.
Cavuto introduced King by saying she is, “of course, the niece of Martin Luther King.” However, he failed to mention that Alveda King is hardly walking in her uncle’s footsteps, though Fox likes to pretend otherwise. For example, immediately after President Obama’s widely-praised Selma commemoration speech last month, King (who is estranged from MLK’s immediate family) complained on Fox News that Obama didn’t talk about “the little babies in the womb” who have been denied the right to vote because of abortion.
Without presenting any facts to back up her claim, King told the Your World viewers that the protesters who threw rocks were “stirred on, probably by outside agitators.” She went on to attack Baltimore’s mayor, Stephanie Rawlings-Blake: “And then the mayor gives an invitation to destroy, and economically and morally that’s disaster, and I don’t know, if she’s a head of a city she should be thinking and I don’t believe she is.”
Clarke joined in. He said, “When I first heard this comment by the mayor I thought, has this mayor lost her mind? She basically sanctioned a riot.”
Mayor Rawlings-Blake may well have made some serious missteps in handling the violence. But Fox should have made clear the other causes for the violence, such as police brutality and poverty.
There isn’t a trouble in the world that Fox won’t use to politically scapegoat their usual foes.
Watch it below, from yesterday’s Your World.