Once again, Fox is trying to deflect blame for the Flint water crisis away from Republican Governor Rick Snyder. This time, the hosts did it with snarky jokes about an American tragedy.

On The Five, Cohost Kimberly Guilfoyle blew the “race card” dog whistle in her teaser: “The water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Democrats have been playing the race card but it turns out the Obama administration may have just admitted they were partly to blame.”

As if to mock the situation, the song “Dirty Water” played in the background as the show went to commercials.

Cohost and resident insult comic, Jesse Watters, wasted little time getting to the liberal bashing as he opened the discussion: “For years, the left has told Americans they are the ones who will keep the water clean. They are the ones who cared about safe drinking water. Remember?”  

Videos were at the ready showing Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and John Kerry talking about the importance of clean drinking water, suggesting that they were the hypocrites responsible for the Flint water and not Governor Snyder or any of his state-appointed emergency managers who are actually in charge.

Watters accused Clinton of having “played the race card” because she said, “We've had a city in the United States of America where the population, which is poor in many ways, and majority African American, has been drinking and bathing in lead-contaminated water. And the governor of that state acted as though he didn't really care.”

It should be noted that the population of Flint, Michigan is majority African American. So is mentioning that really playing the race card?

Instead of discussing Snyder’s actions, Watters went right to blaming the Obama administration: “Well, guess what? It was also the Obama administration who dropped the ball. President Obama’s EPA. How do we know this? The EPA administrator overseeing the water crisis in Flint has just resigned.”

Watters smirked to cohost Dana Perino, “So it’s clear, Dana, the Republicans want polluted water. We want the water to be dirty so everybody drinks it and gets sick. Isn’t that what everybody is saying?” 

Perino snarked, “It makes for a great soundbite in front of a crowd at a Democratic debate. But when you actually put the details of the story out. It’s criminal to talk about it in a political way.”

You mean like FOX was doing right then and there, pointing fingers at Democrats who had nothing to do with the crisis? Perino continued, “You have a failure at every level of government. The city, the state and now the EPA. The federal government, basically, the question is, did the EPA at that regional level… Did they bury the info and did they not step in when they knew that they should have?” She didn’t ask whether the governor or the state buried any info or failed to step in when they should have. Nor did she point out that Flint’s state representative said he warned Snyder about the water crisis a year ago.

Then “It’s criminal to politicize” Perino criticized Obama for speaking in Detroit and not visiting Flint. 

Watters was back for some more Democrat-bashing snark: “It seems like the Environmental Protection Agency is not protecting the environment, they’re actually polluting the environment. I mean, they did this in Colorado. They turned a river there bright orange. Oops that was a mistake. That was an accident and then all of a sudden this Democratic city, no one can drink any water and the EPA sat on this and everyone’s getting sick and the president won’t even go there?”

But it was not the EPA that switched the Flint water supply source to the corrosive Flint River water. 

Cohost Eric Bolling also denied he wanted to "do politics." "It doesn't matter who’s a Republican or who’s Democrat,” he said. But he, too, blamed the EPA, saying there was a “smoking gun e-mail” from the regional EPA manager to the local EPA, saying, "‘Don’t put this information out yet till we’re absolutely certain.’ In the mean time, months, a year goes by before they even alert the governor that there’s a problem with the drinking water.  So it was a failure on so many levels.  Assign blame all across the board and just fix it.” 

After Perino noted that the city of Flint is still demanding residents pay for the contaminated water supply, it was time for another insult "joke" from Watters: “Isn’t Michael Moore a resident there? He could probably pay for some Poland Spring for these people. Don’t you think he should pony up, Eboni?”

Watters was talking to Eboni Williams, the Trump-admiring Clinton hater, sitting in the liberal chair. Williams claimed, “I’m not gonna take the governor off the hook here. I think he was as much a part of this failure as anybody else.” Then Williams immediately began attacking Clinton. “To bait in that way to a base that is slipping through her fingers. I’m talking about the black electorate right now. Look, that’s fine, Mrs. Clinton, but tell us as a community what you have done specifically.” Someone replied that Clinton sent two staffers. Nobody asked what any of the Republicans running for president has done.

Instead, we got more “humor” from Watters. “People are now resigning or getting fired. That’s a big deal in the Obama administration, KG. Usually they get to keep their jobs and their pensions,” he “quipped.”

Guilfoyle “joked” back, “Or a promotion. Switch over to a different agency to screw that up.”

Guilfoyle now pretended, “This is a very important issue. I don’t even want to see it as Democrat or Republican.” That was right before she said, “The people who are pandering and making those comments that are inflammatory, shame on you. You know who you are, HRC.”

Finally, after Perino acknowledged that water is a “basic government responsibility,” Bolling pointed out that if the same thing had happened to a wealthy community, it would have been promptly fixed and Williams asked why it took two years for the information to come out, Watters got in a final, insult-comic word: “It’s turning into Mexico. You can’t drink the water and the government is corrupt.” 

Once they stop mocking this American tragedy, anybody want to bet they start promoting privatization of public water supplies?

Watch it below, from the January 22 The Five.