Megyn Kelly did her part for Fox’s anti-immigration cause by hosting a woman whose son had been killed and allowing her to make inflammatory attacks on Democrats for blocking Fox’s pet anti-immigration bill.
The Kelly File, which airs right after The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, followed Bill O’Reilly’s long hissy fit over the U.S. senate’s failure to pass his anti-immigration “Kate’s Law” bill.
At the beginning of The Kelly File segment, we saw a few seconds of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid blasting the bill. But “straight news anchor” Kelly immediately signaled to viewers what she thought, or made a show of thinking, by giving a loud sigh of hammy impatience. Then she said, with obvious annoyance, “That was Senator Harry Reid today as senate Democrats managed to block a Republican-backed measure that would have cracked down on so-called sanctuary cities.”
“Straight news anchor” Kelly failed to mention that Reid had taken a swipe at Bill O’Reilly over the bill, nor did she mention O’Reilly’s involvement with it. She also didn’t tell the “we report, you decide” viewers that her anti-immigrant guest, Mary Ann Mendoza, was not just a grieving mother but an activist who has spoken at a Donald Trump rally and has previously appeared on Fox.
There’s nothing wrong with someone struck by the tragic, senseless and needless death of a loved one, in this case Mendoza’s son who was killed by an “illegal,” becoming an activist. And I support her efforts to work through her grief by speaking her mind, no matter how much I deplore her politics.
Kelly, on the other hand, has a responsibility to the viewers to put things in perspective, especially given that she likes to present herself as an “independent” and "not an opinion maker."
But Kelly offered no challenge when Mendoza “explained” the opposition to the bill by saying, “A lot of these people who are so against these illegals being deported because they are actually a voter base for the Democrats.”
It was bad enough that Mendoza was accusing Democrats of encouraging people to illegally vote (as well as stay in the country). But it’s even worse when you contrast it with Kelly’s behavior with the attorney for the Freddie Gray family, an unarmed African American who died in police custody. Then, Kelly suggested that the family’s refusal to accept, in advance, any determination of the legal system would undermine their credibility. But here, Kelly held up someone who refused to accept the outcome, after the fact, as a voice of credibility – even as the person spouted extremist, fact-free rhetoric at those who acted entirely properly in our American system.
Watch Kelly’s face remain sympathetic as Mendoza makes her fabricated accusations, below, from the October 20 The Kelly File.
