Didn’t you just know that Fox would find a way to use the assault on an Iraq war veteran by some black teens as an excuse to smear President Obama?
On what’s supposed to be a business news show, a segment began with a “News Alert” that had nothing to do with breaking news. Host Stuart Varney said, “Here’s a story that likely you have not read about in what I’m gonna call the establishment media. A decorated Marine - former Marine I should say, beaten by four African American teens at a McDonalds in Washington, D.C. They asked him him, ‘Do black lives matter?’ They beat him up. Unconscious.”
Instead of having a representative to speak on behalf of Black Lives Matter, Varney hosted Crystal Wright. You may recall Wright recently helped Fox News kick off Black History Month by accusing African Americans of being too stupid to vote Republican. She more recently likened Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders to the KKK because they don’t lecture blacks about their Bad Behavior.
Varney immediately worked to implicate Obama by saying, “That’s a shocking story because the very next day after that happened Black Lives Matter people were in the White House meeting with President Obama.”
There’s no proof that any of the people who attacked the Marine were actually part of Black Lives Matter. In fact, Fox News’ Rod Wheeler said last week that the Marine’s story was being questioned by law enforcers. Not even Varney said that any of the Black Lives Matter leaders who met with Obama had anything to do with the attack.
But he suggested that they must all be complicit. Varney continued, “Obama singled out one of the Black Lives Matter leaders for praise. What’s going on here?”
Wright first promoted a conspiracy theory for the lack of TV coverage. “Why haven’t we heard about this young man being beat by four black thugs, four black, teen thugs? It should be all over the liberal news but it’s not because the liberal media, like Democrats, want to pander to the Black Lives movement lies.”
Next she downplayed the killing of African Americans by police with a very questionable statistic: “The lie is that black young men are being gunned down by cops. Well guess what, Stuart? According to the FBI data, police officers in this county are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by a black person than blacks being killed by cops”
In fact, nobody knows exactly how many Americans are killed by the police but we do know that more Americans are killed by the police than kill the police. But Varney did not challenge a word.
Then Wright turned the veteran attack into an Obama issue: “I think it’s outrageous that the president of The United States, the first black president of The United States, would have people from the Black Lives Matter movement at the White House. He said they’re working really hard to bring about justice and equality. They’re working as hard as the Black Panthers did.”
Varney noted that it was not just Black Lives Matter members who were at the White House meeting – and used that as “evidence” for an election conspiracy theory: “I think the president wanted to know who you gonna support? Hillary or Bernie? I think that was the real question that was asked there, wasn’t it?”
Wright launched into a smear of liberals. “I think the pandering and the talking down to black people, like we can only vote for Democrats, which I talk about in [her book] is not only insulting, it really neglects the record that Democrats have had with blacks for the last 50 years,” she said, “and this president which has done nothing to help race relations or black wealth or black education. I mean, we’re worse off than when President Obama took office seven years ago in black America.”
Varney then smeared African Americans by asking, “So why don’t more black people support Republicans or just the idea of growing the economy? Why not?” As if voting Democratic means people don’t want to grow the economy.
Wright responded by once again characterizing African Americans as too stupid to vote Republican. “Black Americans, my people, have become willfully ignorant. They don’t do their homework. They buy into these lies. They see a ‘D’ next to the name and they just check the box.”
Not once did Varney push back on Wright’s slurs.
Watch it below, from the February 19 Varney & Co., on Fox Business Network.
When does he leave office again??
Oh, come on. That’s not fair and it’s not nice, either.
#BlackLivesMatter, according to Fox, is an anti-white racist hate group promoting violence towards and hatred of police officers. This is the same Fox News which is crickets on many stories of police targeting blacks with excessive force and disproportionate arrest (those stories Fox can’t whitewash). Not that anyone can see a pattern here. Yeah, right!
It’s sad that right-wing white America is still terrified of racial equality. Is anything #BlackLivesMatter asking for all that outrageous?
Their guiding principles on their website are certainly liberal and a departure from some traditional values but that’s the level conservatives should debate things. Not some ugly, race-baiting smear campaign like Fox News is pursuing.