Just two weeks after Fox & Friends adored Donald Trump’s demand that four American Congresswomen of color leave the country for not loving America enough, they found nothing wrong with his attack on American city Baltimore as “a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live.”
In case you missed Trump’s Twitter tirade of hating on America, he spent the last two days spewing against Baltimore and its Congressman Elijah Cummings. Trump called Cummings a bully and a racist and baselessly accused his district of misusing funds.
When Trump attacked the four Congresswomen of color known as “The Squad” with his “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” tweets two weeks ago, the Fox & Friends Sunday cohosts praised his sense of humor while cohost Jedediah Bila also lauded the “important point” behind it. “If you don’t like what this country stands for … leave and go set up camp somewhere else,” she said.
So you probably won’t be shocked to know that the same Fox & Friends hosts gaslighted Trump’s latest display of hatred for America as some kind of love for country.
Not surprisingly, Trump was probably inspired to go on this latest round of America-hating by a Fox & Friends segment yesterday.
In a report before today’s discussion, Fox correspondent Mark Meredith thoughtfully left out Trump’s tweets describing Baltimore as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” as well as a “very dangerous & filthy place.” Instead, Meredith highlighted a far less offensive tweet in which Trump said, “So sad that Elijah Cummings has been able to do so little for the people of Baltimore. Statistically, Baltimore ranks last in almost every major category.”
Also not surprisingly, Meredith said nothing about how Trump has a predilection for smearing places where people of color live as “infested.” In addition to his "go back" tweet about The Squad, Trump has called African American John Lewis’ district “crime infested." Just a coincidence, I'm sure.
Meredith also played a clip from the Fox segment attacking Baltimore that likely set Trump off.
Cohost and informal Trump adviser Pete Hegseth went first. Although Trump said nothing about ways he’d like to help Baltimore, Hegseth laughably claimed Trump was showing his concern for the “forgotten men and women” there. “If you've represented that district ten, 20 years, I don’t know exactly how long it’s been, and you're not doing everything outside of the box to make it better there, are you doing enough?” Hegseth said accusingly.
Cohost Griff Jenkins suggested Trump had properly depicted Baltimore by adding, “the homicide rate is up 18 percent,” non-fatal shootings increased by 31 percent and “You have 184 homicides so far this year compared to 156 last year.”
Cohost Bila credited Trump’s meaning, just not the way he said it. “Obviously, there are parts of Elijah Cummings’ district that are beautiful, that this doesn’t apply, to but there are parts that this does apply to,” she said. However, now, the woman who two weeks thought Trump’s “go back” tweets were “very comedic,” said, “I’ve said this since Day One, is that when you try to engage issues like this on Twitter, which President Trump often does, I know he feels like he’s reaching sort of the heart of the people but sometimes you have to be really careful with how you word stuff.”
“You have to be sensitive,” Bila now said. But that doesn’t mean she had any criticism for the substance of Trump’s attack, his racism or his hatred for America or U.S. congresspeople. No, she gently couched her criticism by saying, “Even if you are well intentioned and you’re trying to draw attention to the fact that – listen, there are people that feel like they’re left behind, that they are forgotten and you feel like you’re being a voice in a sense for those people when those elected people have in a sense abandoned those areas and not really given the due diligence that they should to those areas, I understand that intention but sometimes it doesn’t read necessarily that way,.”
Come on, Ms. Bila, if you truly think that Trump had any benign intention in his tweets attacking Cummings and Baltimore, then I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Bila did go on to note that maybe there are residents of Baltimore who can’t leave or don’t want to leave and are fighting to make things better.
But that wasn’t enough Trump love for Hegseth. “He brings attention to it in his own way,” Hegseth said approvingly. As he spoke, b-roll footage showed boarded up and abandoned buildings, presumably in Baltimore. “He believes giving voice to people who have been voiceless for a long time,” Hegseth added.
And that wasn’t enough Democrat-hating for Jenkins. We saw a 2015 headline saying that President Obama called Baltimore rioters “criminals and thugs.” That’s a far cry from what Trump said. But, of course none of the cohosts noted that. Instead, Jenkins went on and cited Bernie Sanders likening West Baltimore to a “Third World country.” The clip of Sanders clearly demonstrated he was talking about Baltimore with concern, not disgust and disdain, as Trump did.
But, of course, the three hosts suggested there was no difference in sentiment.
Watch the three sycophants defend the indefensible below, from the July 28, 2019 Fox & Friends.