Instead of just praising the police work during the San Bernardino shooting, Fox’s Megyn Kelly and Mark Fuhrman exploited tragedy to demonize #BlackLivesMatter activists and baselessly accuse them of harming law enforcement response to terrorism.
Kelly played a clip of Lt. Mike Madden who responded to the San Bernardino shooting, saying at a press conference, “We’ve taken a lot of hits lately, some justified, some not justified and it takes a toll. …It’s hard being labeled and hard being branded as being rogue.”
What Kelly didn't tell the "We report, you decide" network's viewers is that Fox's own Ted Williams asked the question to prompt that response. If you are familiar with Williams' appearances on On The Record, you can easily recognize his voice at the press conference, asking at about 17 minutes in, "Could you address the pride that you felt with the men and women and the manner in which they acted in that scene yesterday and can you just address how you felt about the men and women that were under your command?" If you don't think Williams was told to ask a question that would elicit something to make #BlackLivesMatter look bad under cover of praising the police, then I've got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
More importantly Madden never said it was harder to do his job as a result of the criticism, just that it felt bad being labeled that way.
Kelly’s only guest for this segment was O.J. Simpson-trial racist Mark Fuhrman, one of Fox’s favorite guests for discussions involving race and police.
It didn’t take long for Fuhrman to suggest that #BlackLivesMatter protesters make everybody more vulnerable to terrorism.
FUHRMAN: I think everybody should realize that I think this shooting in San Bernardino, we realize that we are at war with Islamic jihadists in this country but the special forces, the special ops that are gonna fight that war inside the borders of this United States are cops…
The more you demonize them, the less motivated they’re gonna be able to be, the less sure of their actions, and this is going to be a safety issue for the entire country.
Instead of challenging this evidence-free and inflammatory assertion, Kelly helped validate it – without any actual facts of her own to back it up.
KELLY: Mmhmm. For all we know, this cop was watching “Pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” a couple of weeks ago and “What do we want? Dead cops. When do we want ‘em? Now.” That’s the context for how cops have to go on the job these days.
In case you’re keeping score, Megyn Kelly was a staunch free speech lover when extremist Islamophobe Pamela Geller staged her anti-Islam stunt that provoked violence against a security officer (he got shot). Kelly was also all about free speech when the alleged shooter in the Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood massacre - in which a police officer was killed - echoed right-wing inflammatory rhetoric. But when a #BlackLivesMatter protester peacefully stared at a cop in Chicago, Kelly dismissed the right of free speech in favor of attacking the act as inappropriate. Now, she was back to complaining about free speech again. So that’s two free-speech loves for white extremists where cops were actually hurt and two free-speech hates for #BlackLivesMatter where cops were not hurt.
Sensing a pattern here? Yeah, so do I.
Watch it below, from the December 3 The Kelly File.
If BLM has said something irresponsible and hateful it probably doesn’t go very far. Unless it is picked up and repeated 24/7 by the network that specializes in irresponsible and hateful.
