Fox hosts turn crazy up to 11 with avalanche of dangerous fearmongering against Biden
The conservative media apparatus has learned nothing from the last four years. Outlets like Fox News and OAN praised Donald Trump as he weakened our democracy in every way imaginable, emboldening him up until the very end when he ended up inciting a deadly capitol insurrection after refusing to accept that he had been legitimately defeated in the election by Joe Biden.
Anyone at these right-wing media companies with something even vaguely resembling a conscience would look at what happened and see it as a call for them to reaccess their rhetoric. Instead, they’re diving in with more of the same as the Biden administration picks up steam.
Matthew Gertz of Media Matters for America tweeted today to call attention to the manner in which Fox’s Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity have been running their shows in recent days. The three worst offenders of the Trump era are peddling more of the same hate that helped make the former president’s tenure so deeply toxic and racist.
Carlson called Biden’s immigration policy—which aims to cut back on the horrifyingly cruel policies of the Trump administration by reuniting separated families and increasing the number of refugees allowed into the United States—as an “act of aggression” created “to punish you.” Carlson’s rhetorical “you” in this case is of course conservative white people who love to get themselves heated up over the idea of people of color sharing the same country as them.
Even more egregiously, Carlson claimed that President Biden will be unleashing bloodthirsty MS-13 gang members into his viewers’ communities, a preposterous suggestion that would be laughable if it didn’t stand such a good chance of convincing right-wingers to in turn lash out violently in fear.
Ingraham defended Trump’s insurrection and insisted that what Americans should really be angry about isn’t the attempt by a sitting president to overthrow an election but rather the Democrats’ efforts to get “illegals” to “bust through our borders” and “exploit our resources.” Similarly, Hannity told his audience that they should be deeply afraid of how Biden’s immigration policies will affect their families.
This kind of fearmongering would have been utterly reprehensible at any point in history but now, after the insurrection showed us that Republicans can be stirred to acts of shocking violence by this kind of rhetoric, it’s downright criminally negligent. Any companies that continue to advertise on these shows are making it known that they care far more about turning a profit than protecting American lives.
How do these people think this will end? pic.twitter.com/ipfnVcVSAQ
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 9, 2021
Last time, it ended with a mass shooter murdering 20 people in El Paso after releasing a manifesto whose “Hispanic invasion” rhetoric was indistinguishable from Fox primetime commentary. https://t.co/5pRI90UueX https://t.co/309xn7QatX
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) February 9, 2021
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