Deneen Borelli, one of Fox News’ most reliable African American black attackers, predictably defended the armed takeover of a federal building in Oregon as an honorable protest at the same time that she slammed the “outrageous” Black Lives Matter protesters in Missouri.
Host Martha MacCallum hosted a discussion about the racial questions around an armed takeover of a federal building at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in protest of an arson sentence for Dwight and Steven Hammond, who are not resisting their incarceration.
MACCALLUM: Some interesting questions raised in a couple editorials that say that news organizations have been so careful in terms of how they present these individuals. And they say that they were not that careful when it came to other cases like Dylann Roof, for example, who clearly had racist intentions when he crazily killed people in a Charleston church. They also point to Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik, and that they were quickly labeled to be Islamic terrorists in the course of their killings in San Bernardino and they claim that we are, some are handling these folks with kid gloves. Deneen, what do you think?
BORELLI: Well, nothing like the left-wing media using an opportunity to really cloud the instance that’s going on in Oregon to confuse people and that’s what the left-wing media does. …What people need to understand, what’s going on in Oregon, it is really an overgrowth of government. Government gone wild is outreach of government. You have these individuals who are trying to save their property, save their ranch because the overrun of government is not doing that. Government owns a substantial amount of property in the west. And these individuals were trying to save their property.
The other guest, Democrat and lawyer Jessica Ehrlich, is another nice, likeable Fox News “liberal” milquetoast who seems more interested in demonstrating how much she agrees with conservatives than in opposing the radical right views that are spewed in front of her.
“Well, you know, I disagree that this is sort of something that’s being pushed by the left media, obviously,” Ehrlich said mildly. “I mean, I think this is a situation. I don’t see that there are racist overtones here.”
No racist overtones? Besides the fact that the armed standoff is headed by the sons of former Fox News lawbreaking, police-threatening, hero Cliven Bundy, whom Fox probably knew was a racist before he was outed as such by the national media, does Ehrlich really think that if a group of armed Muslims or Black Lives Matter protesters occupied a federal building on federal land that the media would be treating them with the same respect? That Fox News would be treating them with this much respect? If she does, then maybe somebody from Black Lives Matter or CAIR could fundraise by selling her a bridge in Brooklyn.
Ehrlich was pretty solid in her condemnation of the takeover, though she continued to miss or ignore the hypocrisy under her nose.
EHRLICH: However, this is never a situation that you want to have in the United States where we have the rule of law, where you have armed people who have taken over a federal building. Now, whether it’s actually defined as terrorism will be up to not only the FBI and the attorney general but in terms of what they’ll be charged. Certainly, the mayor in this area feels that there is political motivation and that the political motivation is that they’re armed and that they want to overthrow the local government.
Later, MacCallum brought up race more explicitly.
MACCALLUM: They raised a question, Deneen, of some of the racial tensions that we’ve seen in Missouri and the fact that in those situations when people are rising up, in that case against the police and against that government institution, that they are always referred to as being a group of black people, a group of, sometimes, thugs. Those kind of names are used and they say, in this case, why aren’t people talking about the fact this is a group of white militiamen? Why is that distinction not made?
Sure enough, Borelli went into Black-Attacking, White-Defending mode:
BORELLI: Well, listen, what happened in Missouri is really outrageous because you had individuals who were very destructive. They destroyed property. They destroyed their communities. We’re looking at Oregon, right now these individuals are being peaceful. They’re outraged about the overgrowth of government, it’s government gone wild. And I tell you, we don’t want to see this happen across the country, but this is an example of something that can happen because of the overgrowth of government and Americans are tired of government intrusion in their everyday lives. And so these individuals, right now, are peaceful. They want to rein in government gone wild. Why is it that federal government owns 47 percent of western states in our country? In Oregon alone, the federal government owns 53 percent of the property. So, it is really outrageous how government is creeping into our everyday lives, no matter what it is you’re doing. And people just want to be left alone.
Ehrlich, an attorney, gave this explanation as to why the Hammonds are being re-sentenced which sounded as though she were another voice defending the militia, just not their tactics:
EHRLICH: There are federal sentencing laws and guidelines which we’ve talked about even on this show that people disagree with that we’re trying to change, that the president wants to change because… the terms of what judges can do, they have a lot less leniency because they’re governed by specific rules.
That may be so but the Hammonds are surely not the poster children for sentence-reform that President Obama or any other sane person has in mind. As Think Progress explains, the Hammonds’ illegal fires endangered other people, including Dwight’s grandson (Steven’s nephew) and firefighters fighting an unrelated nearby wildfire. Furthermore, evidence of the Hammonds’ abuse of Dwight’s grandson was included in the record against the Hammond adults during the arson trial. But if Ehrlich knew that information, she kept it to herself.
Again, Ehrlich was pretty solid in her condemnation of the armed takeover:
EHRLICH: But we do have something in this country called the rule of law. If you’re not happy with what’s going on at the federal level, that’s wonderful, that’s part of being an American. We can disagree all day long as to whether you think they’re overreaching or not but you don’t go and take over in a non-peaceful way. I mean, these people are armed. They’re planning on staying, they’ve put a call out to other people to join them. And that’s not a peaceful demonstration. They’re not even just picketing out front of a courthouse. These are people who are actually taking over an area that is a federal office building and that’s not the way we make change in the United States.
As she ended the discussion, MacCallum put in her own word for the Bundy militia: “They think the rule of law is rigged against them in this case and that they can’t win by going through the normal channels.”
Watch it below, from the January 4 America’s Newsroom via Raw Story: