Fox News host Martha MacCallum didn’t get the gotcha moments she clearly planned when she hosted Black Lives Matter’s Hawk Newsom tonight. Instead, he masterfully seized control of the conversation and, as the pièce de résistance, declared his reverence for a Black Jesus.
Let me say that while I think I understand Newsom’s point about the effectiveness of violence – and even MacCallum seemed to concede it – I do not endorse it under any circumstances. I believe that disruption is a better course; it worked for the AIDS activists and a lot of civil rights activists.
Putting that aside, Newsom aced this appearance in that he refused to allow himself to be interrupted and went on offense, calling out Fox News bias while he was at it. If anything, it was MacCallum on defense.
But for me, the best moments came when Newsom floored MacCallum by declaring Jesus was a Black radical and revolutionary.
It started when MacCallum thought she’d have a gotcha by quoting Martin Luther King Jr.: “Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White Power!’ when nobody will shout ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.”
“Do you agree with that?” MacCallum asked pointedly.
I think Newsom saw exactly where she was trying to go with that. And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, he disrupted her agenda.
NEWSOM: I love the Lord and my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is the most famous black radical revolutionary in history. And he was treated just like Dr. King. He was arrested on occasion and he was also crucified or assassinated.
This is what happens to black activists. We are killed by the government. Well, and if you need context, if you read your Bible, it will say that Jesus had feet like burnt brass and hair like wool. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but our hair seems to be more like wool and we seem to be likened to that color than anyone else. And, you know, it’s just the hypocrisy and the white supremacy in America and in the world that would show us portraits of pasty, white Jesus. Jesus was not white. We all know this.
MacCallum was obviously flummoxed. On the one hand, she couldn’t let her 90% white, conservative viewers think she saw a connection between Jesus and Black Lives Matter and, on the other hand, she almost certainly didn’t want the kind of furor created when Megyn Kelly claimed Jesus was white.
MACCALLUM: OK, you know, I, I mean, I think Jesus is, uh, Jesus to all Christians and people interpret him in imagery in different ways. Um, obviously, he was from the Middle East. We all know that. That’s obvious so, um –
NEWSOM: So, he wasn’t a white man. We all know that, right?
MACCALLUM: I don’t know – I don’t see – he was Middle Eastern.
Then she quickly wrapped up the interview.
You can watch it below, from the June 24, 2020 The Story with Martha MacCallum.