Fox News seized on a report that the Ferguson police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown feared for his life as an excuse to race bait and trot out the racially disgraced Mark Fuhrman to declare Brown guilty and the officer not guilty. No need for a trial here!
As I have previously reported, Fox has repeatedly presented Fuhrman as a neutral analyst in the Ferguson case without disclosing his own racially compromised history. They did the same with the Trayvon Martin shooting. It’s a blatant slap in the face of African Americans and it’s hard to believe it's not deliberate.
Before bringing on Fuhrman to The Kelly File last night, Fox set the stage for viewers to think of black people behaving badly (a favorite Fox theme) by playing a clip of a black woman screaming and spitting at a white man over the case and then that woman or another black woman shoving a white man at a St. Louis Rams game over the weekend. It had nothing to do with the grand jury investigation into the shooting.
MacCallum introduced Fuhrman by saying, “Federal officials, unnamed, telling the New York Times that (Officer) Wilson feared for his life as he struggled for his gun with Michael Brown. Mark Fuhrman is a former L.A. police detective and Fox News contributor and he joins me now.”
As the Times suggested, the struggle Wilson says occurred in the car (reportedly corroborated by forensic tests), may well be “influential” but does not ultimately answer the question as to whether Wilson was justified in shooting Brown several times after leaving the police car. Furthermore, the Times noted, eyewitness accounts contradict Wilson’s account that Brown was the aggressor.
But Fuhrman assumed that Wilson’s statements were accurate and then concluded that it proved he was justified in shooting and killing Brown:
FUHRMAN: Somebody has to imagine this: If somebody reaches into a vehicle and the person in the vehicle outstretches their left arm to keep that person away, who is actually pulling and who is pushing? …That is going to be an issue that comes down to the evidence that the officer actually has supporting his story.
Now, that whole situation there actually shows one thing to me. That Brown is the aggressor, the officer is the victim. After this initial contact and those first two rounds, Brown could have walked away and there is little doubt in my mind that if he just walked away or ran away, that he’d probably still be alive today.
MacCallum said she thought that the case will come down to “what happened outside the car and how those next four shots were fired and what happened between these two people that made that happen.”
But Fuhrman had already arrived at a verdict:
FURHMAN: Darren Wilson already established his fear for his life and great bodily injury. He is already being overpowered by a man that is greatly superior in size and strength than him.
…Neither Johnson or Brown had been searched and this officer does not know if they are armed or not. Now, until that point that you know that they’re unarmed or they surrender or follow your commands, they are a suspect that has already attempted to kill the officer and now he keeps advancing. Whether his hands are up and he keeps advancing, trying to close that distance, this officer knows that he will never be able to withstand a fight with this man outside of the vehicle and he will probably lose his gun and his life.
Rather than challenge such certitude, MacCallum said, “Mark, thank you very much… Mark Fuhrman, good to have him with us tonight.”
Watch it below, from last night's The Kelly File.