This morning, Fox & Friends’ otherwise hilarious swooning over Donald Trump’s State of the Union address turned serious as an alignment with David Duke when the Trump lapdogs gushed over the same line that white nationalists loved, too.
Fox & Friends replaced its usual theme music with presidential-sounding music, followed by “Best Day of My Life,” as it opened the discussion.
After some small talk, the three cohosts got down to business.
AINSLEY EARHARDT: I think the big story is America, America, America this morning. Would you agree?
BRIAN KILMEADE: In what respect? Do you mean the speech that lasted an hour and 20 minutes and had 115 applause lines? Are you referring to the beginning of Year Two of the Trump administration?
EARHARDT: Do you know how many times the word “America” was used in that speech? 82 times!
DOOCY: That’s fantastic. I thought the line of the night was “Americans are dreamers, too.”
EARHARDT: I thought so, too.
As Think Progress noted, that line, a dog-whistle to anti-immigration hardliners, “was quickly embraced by white nationalists, who paired the phrase with stock photos of white people. Prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, for instance, posted this image on Twitter during Trump’s speech:
“Americans are dreamers, too.”
— Richard 🐉 Spencer (@RichardBSpencer) January 31, 2018
~Donald Trump pic.twitter.com/nZmUFBWMCE
Think Progress also noted that former KKK grand wizard David Duke, whose Twitter feed blares, “It’s OK To Be White,” immediately praised the line:
Thank you President Trump. Americans are "Dreamers" too.
— David Duke (@DrDavidDuke) January 31, 2018
Also noted by Think Progress is Fox host Laura Ingraham’s use of the “Americans are Dreamers, too” line on Fox & Friends last September when she defended Trump’s decision to cancel DACA, the program that protects Dreamers. “But the use of the phrase pre-dates Ingraham. It was embraced at a grassroots level by anti-immigrant racists online early in the Trump presidency,” the site noted.
And now it has been embraced by both Trump and Trump TV.
Watch Doocy and Earhardt cheer a line they almost certainly knew was a shout-out to white nationalists below, from the January 31, 2018 Fox & Friends.
