With the world on edge after Hamas’ horrific attacks in Israel, Fox News deliberately tried to scare the heck out of Americans - with a dollop of white nationalism to go with!
The segment on The Five opened with cohost Dana Perino framing the fear mongering.
PERINO: Republicans warning terrorists could be infiltrating America's wide-open border after the horrific attacks in Israel. Over 150 people on the FBI's Terror Watchlist had been arrested crossing into the U.S. so far this year. And that has Kevin McCarthy sounding this alarm.
A clip played of Rep. Kevin McCarthy, maybe looking to get his Speakership back:
MCCARTHY: Just in this year alone, there's 151 from 160 different countries. In my own state, we caught two coming from Yemen, on the Terrorist Watchlist, from China and others.
Why are they coming to America? What do they have planned? And who are they communicating with? President Biden has said, previously, that he believes the number one threat to America is facing climate change. The number one threat killing Americans is terrorism. The number one threat is an open border.
Perino followed up, saying, “A shocking new congressional report finding that the Biden administration has failed to remove 99 percent of illegal immigrants released into the country. And new Border Patrol data shows thousands of special interest aliens from places like Syria, Yemen, Iran and Afghanistan have come into the U.S. illegally.”
She tossed to civil-war advocate Greg Gutfeld. Not surprisingly, he wasted little time getting to inflammatory extremism:
GUTFELD: Yes, I mean, the non-border is actually a symptom of absolute weakness for we've -- in this country, I don't know why, but in the last, I'd say 20 years, we've demonized strength as a characteristic of the oppressor. So, anytime you exercise any kind of strength, discipline, or will, that's somehow wrong. It's the same way that we handcuff the police during the riots or commerce in response to shoplifting or any kind of crime.
[…]
GUTFELD [referring to Biden saying the biggest domestic threat is white supremacists]: Think of the opportunity cost there, what we lost in safety and security because Joe preferred to indulge the left-wing drug called identity politics because you know, it made those faculty lounges like him. We are now in a state of weakness where we are at our most vulnerable. We are -- we -- never at a time have we had such a weak administration and such a huge threat to coincide at the same time.
As Gutfeld spoke, a lower-third banner read: “GOP WARNS: TODAY IT’S ISRAEL, TOMORROW IT’S US”
Perino followed up by saying to Jeanine Pirro that people on the terror watch list are coming across the border and not staying in one place. “They could be anywhere in the country,” she said. “And how do you track them?”
Pirro was all in. You may recall she once made such anti-Muslim attacks on Rep. Ilhan Omar that Pirro seemed to get suspended for two weeks. That did not stand in the way of Pirro getting promoted from that weekend show to her current five-day a week gig on The Five. Nor did it stand in the way of her hideous rant here:
PIRRO: If anybody thinks that Hamas is not already in this country, I think they're naive, because when you think about it, that what happened in Israel is about the extinction of the Jewish race. It's not about territory. And if Hamas hates Jews, you know that they're in this country as well.
And what the Biden Administration has done is he has allowed a wholesale entrance. He's made this country nothing more than a global landing spot with benefits, no questions, no DNA, no nothing. And even if they do tell you, you have to go to court, you don't have to go for another six or seven years.
“Right,” Perino responded.
Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal, acknowledged that while it’s possible a terrorist could get in through the border, statistics indicate it’s unlikely.
TARLOV: I went back and looked at a testimony from someone who works at the Cato Institute. He went before the Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement in September. He said zero Americans have been injured and killed in terrorist attacks by illegal immigrants or asylum seekers who enter through the Southern Border.
And over the period from 1975 to 2022, the chance of being murdered in an attack by a foreign-born terrorist was one in 4.3 million per annum. That's just important to consider in all of this.
…
But do keep that in the back of your mind as you say that now, like Kevin McCarthy, you know, this is the number one threat. Based on the data, it absolutely isn't.
Tarlov was supposed to get the last word. But, apparently, Pirro could not allow the audience to be left with calming reason and facts going into a break. “Until it is,” Perino said. Tarlov again acknowledged such a thing possible, saying, “until it is.”
This was not a one off. Later in the evening, Oliver Darcy’s Reliable Sources newsletter revealed the meme was repeated on The Ingraham Angle.
You can watch both segments below, from Fox News’ October 10, 2023 poison.