Fox News host Jesse Watters suggested that Chris Hayes is a traitor for criticizing Rep. Lauren Boebert (QAnon-CO) using a slew of guns as a backdrop during a Zoom call in to a Congressional hearing.
Hayes’ supposed treason was noting – with examples that included Osama bin Laden – that posing with guns is “the aesthetic of armed struggle, of revolution or insurrection” and not “the normal rhetoric of elected democratic politics."
So, for sounding the alarm on Boebert’s threatening message, Hayes was labeled as anti-American.
On Fox’s The Five, cohost Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery got the treason talk going with her wildly exaggerated and distorted description of Hayes’ remarks: “If you support the Second Amendment or any part of the Constitution, well, apparently you’re a terrorist,” she said. She claimed to have “pity” for Hayes, saying, “someone like that would never survive in the wild.”
Cohost Greg Gutfeld laughed.
A lower-third banner misleadingly announced that Hayes “LIKENS PRO-GUN REPUBLICANS TO BIN LADEN.”
Watters made the treason accusation more explicit. “I have no pity on that guy,” he began. Then he suggested that real Americans own guns. Without saying whether or not he owned one or hunts, he claimed, “Every single American president has hunted, shot skeet or displayed a weapon prominently in their home” and that “a majority of the House and Senate today owns firearms. I would also hazard a guess that if you go from the mid-Atlantic down through the south and then all the way out to - right until you get to California that every single statewide Democrat elected official owns a gun.”
Therefore, Hayes must be a traitor, according to Watters’ logic.
WATTERS: I would say that that guy, the host on MSNBC, he would probably be a loyalist during the Revolutionary War. He would’ve sided with the British. He would’ve been a traitor, and you can’t trust a guy like that. It’s fine to have a weapon and display it prominently. It’s your Second Amendment, and the Second Amendment shall not be infringed.
Cohost Dana Perino said, “Oh, jeez.” But she did not push back against this outrageous attack.
Cohost Greg Gutfeld had the nerve to accuse the rest of the media of trying to end “oppositional speech,” in order to get in a plug for the Big Lie about the election, but said nothing to challenge the attempt to criminalize Hayes’ free speech moments before:
GUTFELD: When you see the media advocating the end to oppositional speech, if you dare think that there was something wrong with the election or you think that your rights are being imposed, the Second Amendment is there to protect your First Amendment.
Is Fox feeling the heat because of falling ratings?
Whatever the reason, there is no excuse for this kind of inflammatory talk that could incite a nut job.
You can watch Fox’s assault on political speech (while posing as Constitution lovers) below, from the February 25, 2021 The Five. Above it is the Hayes commentary that triggered them, from MSNBC’s February 23, 2021 All In with Chris Hayes.