Fox News’ Pete Hegseth just loved Donald Trump’s failure to call out white supremacists after their rally in Charlottesville turned violent yesterday. That’s because, Hegseth suggested, those neo-Nazis deserve all the same love given to Black Lives Matter!
Hegseth called Trump's refusal to denounce white supremacists "a unifying message"
The White House came under siege from left and right because of Trump’s dog-whistling statement yesterday. In it, he described the Charlottesville rally as an “egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” But there were no discouraging words from Trump’s three Curvy Couch Cheerleaders otherwise known as Fox & Friends.
Cohost Hegseth saw nothing not to love. He praised Trump for not "immediately picking a side out the gate." It suggested that there is a legitimate side to neo-Nazism and that the president has an obligation to respect it.
HEGSETH: I think the president nailed it. He condemned, in the strongest possible terms, hatred and bigotry on all sides as opposed to immediately picking a side out the gate. He saluted the police specifically for what they did. That was even before those two officers lost their lives through an accident with the helicopter.
And then, this line to me is so important. He said, “We are all Americans first.” And you hear the slogan, “America first,” but what does that mean if you are America first? It means you’re not a racial identity first. You’re not a class first. You’re not a gender first. You’re not a sexual orientation first. You’re not another country first. It’s not multiculturalism first. It’s America first. And if we see ourselves through that lens, then it unites us as opposed to dividing us, which, frankly, the left and others have done for so long by saying, no, I see you as a gender or a race or a class, and the Balkanization creates division. We love our country. We love our god. We love our flag. And we are proud of our country. That to me is a unifying message that people should be drawn to as opposed to criticize.
Of course, white supremacists, by definition, do see themselves as a "racial identity first." But nobody pointed that out.
Also, while professing love for unity, Hegseth had exploited the issue with a divisive attack on Trump’s usual foes – and with overtly racial dog whistles.
Hegseth thinks Black Lives Matter And white supremacists deserve the same sympathy and respect
Hegseth moved on to draw his equivalency between white supremacists and the Black Lives Matter movement.
HEGSETH: Just putting out that [Anti-Facists], though, also ought be called out. Just like the violent aspects of Black Lives Matter ought be called out.
[...]
You can call that out, and then—but still also listen, say, on Black Lives Matter, to the grievances of young African-American males in urban cores who feel like they are looked at differently by police. That discussion still should be had. Just like young white men who feel like, “Hey, I’m treated differently in this country than I feel like I should have. I’ve become a second-class citizen. None of it—they tell me I have white privilege.” None of that justifies racial preferences or violence at all. But there’s always a grievance underneath it that it’s worth talking about. And we should never live in such a politically correct culture that we can’t at least have a conversation. There’s a reason those people were out there. Some of it is outright racism and needs to be condemned. A lot of it, though, is I feel like my country is slipping away and just because I talk about nationalism—not white nationalism—doesn’t mean I’m talking in code that I’m a racist.
In his eloquent 2008 speech about race, then-candidate Barack Obama said, “[T]o wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding.”
I’ve had the misfortune to know quite a few white bigots and, while I’ve never much liked any of them, I agree 100% with Obama that we need to understand their pain, not just condemn them.
But there’s a world of difference between harboring racial resentment and taking part in a white supremacist rally! Hegseth’s deliberate blurring of those distinctions, coupled with his deliberate suggestions that Black Lives Matter members are just as bigoted and violent, speaks volumes about where he’s really coming from.
Watch it below, from the August 13, 2017 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters. Transcript excerpts above are also via Media Matters.
You know Pete’s lying badly when he’s so uncomfortable with it he makes the little eye contact he made and has all that hesitation in his voice.
But it’s always what the Fox News propaganda factory leaves out that’s the most damning and they neglect to mention Trump was asked for clarification and walked away and our Twitter-In-Chief has been silent about it ever since.
This is like an inverse Sister Souljah moment. Typically, this term references a politician rejecting his party’s extremists to attract centrists. Here our neo-Fascist leader is embracing the most extreme racist elements in America to put at ease the rest of the white identity moment, a majority of his base, that he’s got their backs.
Just an extension of Trump being the first president in many decades to refuse an invitation by the NAACP to speak before them. Comparing Black Lives Matter to white supremacists? I guess we should be grateful Fox didn’t compare the ‘racist’ NAACP to the Klan. I’ve heard cons express that sick s—t in the past. 💩
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