Before it became pretty clear that the El Paso gunman was a white, right-wing terrorist, Fox fanned the anti-immigrant flames a bit further by baselessly speculating he was a member of ISIS who came into the country through our “open border.”
After the shooting but before the shooter’s identify was known, Fox News anchor Jon Scott prodded guest Dr. Rebecca Grant, identified as a national security and military analyst, to tell viewers that we should all immediately fear ISIS crossing the border. Grant was clearly on board with the right-wing, anti-immigrant messaging.
SCOTT: So when something like this breaks out, the first thing that pops into your mind is the possibility of some kind of organized terrorism, not necessarily domestic.
GRANT: It’s more – first, it’s the tragedy, of course that’s first, but yes, as a national security analyst, there’s part of my brain that always goes, “Bam. Is that something to do with ISIS?” and then I wait and watch, like we all are tonight, to learn more about the motives. But the fact is, the world we live in, we know that although the physical caliphate of ISIS has been defeated … the terrorist and extremist groups continually say they want to target the west, they want to attack American and Europe and this is the kind of thing that we see.
As far as I know, we have never seen ISIS cross into the U.S. via Mexico. But instead of challenging Grant on that point, Scott validated and expanded on it.
SCOTT: And especially with El Paso sitting right on what is obviously a very porous border, you have to wonder about those things.
GRANT: A very porous border and again, we don’t know the identity, we don’t know the motive but we do know that we have a very large flow of undocumented people coming across that border. The vast majority probably aren’t terrorists but if you are a foreign terrorist group, there’s at least going to be chatter about that open border. And so again, from a national security perspective, I go a little bit on alert, thinking about that possibility, too.
I highly recommend the article on Media Matters that includes this clip. Author John Whitehouse noted that Fox larded its news coverage of the El Paso massacre with propaganda that included blaming video games and, of course, claiming that it was not the time to "politicize" the incident with talk about gun control. That clip is included below.
See how Fox thought the immediate aftermath of the tragedy a perfect time to politicize the incident with fear mongering about immigration below, from the August 3, 2019 Fox Report.
https://poll.fm/10379784
Fox News anchor and guest suggest there may be an ISIS connection to El Paso shooting, especially given the proximity to the "very porous" border. pic.twitter.com/qtJuoVCijw
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) August 3, 2019
Unfortunately for host Howie, there was a Hispanic journalist on his panel, Cathy Areu, who followed Spanish speaking media covering the breaking story. They were able to interview Spanish speaking and other witnesses who heard the shooter shouting pro-Trump garbage and anti-immigrant garbage which was unreported by American English speaking media.
Of course this left Howie and his right-wing guest in a complete lather desperately trying to separate the shooter from their overseer Trump. Meanwhile the liberal(?) kept repeating over and over what media outlets like Telemundo were reporting. Unfortunately, like most people making points counter to right-wing Fox News memes, she was unwilling (wants a return visit?) to take her argument to the next logical step: Trump was the jet fuel for racist acts of violence.
See it here (starts around 24:15):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDq1PorZ-xw