Geraldo Rivera did his part for the Fox News effort to make the midterm elections about “criminal-coddling Democrats” by race baiting Black crime and claiming he’s fighting for “the civil rights issue of our time.”
As Republicans see their chances for a red wave diminishing, Fox host Sean Hannity returned to the GOP playbook of fear mongering about Democrats being soft on crime. He began a discussion on the subject by claiming that “coddling criminals” is “rampant in the Democratic Party.” (His speech sounded slurred again.)
Never mind that Hannity's Bedtime BFF, Donald Trump, was recently revealed to have stolen top secret documents, stored them in an unsecure location and has refused to give them back.
Rivera didn’t seem to think that possible treason by the leader of Republicans was any biggie, either. He certainly didn’t mention it. He did say, “Well, I don’t disagree, basically, with anything you have said,” to Hannity. Then Rivera attacked President Joe Biden for “the most lazy stereotyping with that MAGA Republican nonsense” and claimed “it certainly rebounded against him.” (FACT CHECK: That may be the case on Fox News, but in real life, Biden’s approval rating has been steadily rising since late July.)
No, Rivera’s only disagreement with Hannity “is that you didn’t mention race.”
You may recall Rivera has a thing about Black-on-Black crime. He claims it’s out of concern, but usually, it’s weaponized as an attack against Black Lives Matter and Black celebrities advocating for racial and social justice. Here, it was weaponized against Biden and the Democrats:
RIVERA: You have these cities, Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Cleveland, where I am, Memphis, where two of these horrible crimes have happened, they are majority African-American cities where African-Americans commit most of the murders and the victims of those crimes are also usually African-American. Black people killing Black people.
It's the ghetto civil war I've been talking about, that I've been pleading with people to please do something about.
[…]
RIVERA: [U]nless we recognize that this is the civil rights issue of our time, that we have to recognize what is happening and do something about it, then we will watch the destruction, the waste of lives Black, Brown, White -- that is absolutely intolerable.
How can it be that Joe Biden makes a speech like he did about MAGA Republicans and not mention the crime that plagues the inner city? You know, this is something that we must deal with or we will lose a generation, Sean.
You can watch Rivera’s “concern” for Black Americans below, from the September 8, 2022 Hannity.
How times have changed with the GOP!