INGRAHAM ANGER: See Fox host HUMILIATED by own guest
In the wake of the Damar Hamlin on-air heart attack, Steve Almond went on Laura Ingraham’s Ingraham Angle to discuss his book, Against Football: One Fan’s Reluctant Manifesto, and the responsible changes the NFL could make to keep players safer.
But when he didn’t back down to the known racist provocateur, a rather heated scene unfolded.
A link to the entire interview is below.
It started off friendly enough, with Almond pointing out that the NFL had settled the class-action lawsuit from 4500 players some years back due to public pressure that made the organization realize that it was in its economic interests to address the matter.
The author’s view is that fans should be applying similar pressure today.
Ingraham’s response was essentially to show a short clip of some players, including Aaron Rodgers, discussing their love of their teams and the camaraderie brought about by the game – really something that has nothing to do with safety.
Her contention was that players are playing at their own risk.
Almond made clear that he was not blaming the players and understood their decisions to opt to play, despite the dangers.
Ingraham then tried to push the idea that Almond believes that all football fans are racist and enjoy seeing violence:
“You say fans are in effect perpetuating a culture of violence and racism,” she said. “How the heck does that work? You say you’re a football fan. Do you see a lot racism in the stands?”
Almond shot back that, while he’s not accusing all the fans of being racist, he feels that they can do more to provide the economic influence the NFL needs to initiate change, offering that the NFL “could change its behavior tomorrow” and take greater safety measures, such as limiting weight gain or putting monitors in helmets to inform teams about the seriousness of concussions, yet it does not do so.
Ingraham tried to make it appear as if Almond’s position is that football should be banned.
“I’m focused on the fans,” he replied, “and what I believe is not that any government ban is going to make football safer, and not some mythic woke mob that you mentioned to try to scare your viewers.”
That stoked Ingraham’s ire, and she denied it, but Almond stuck to his guns, adding, “I think that’s your entire economic model.”
“WHAT?” Ingraham cried, feigning shock.
“Your entire economic model is to scare your viewers,” Almond noted, “that’s your whole gig.”
“You want football to be banned!” Ingraham rejoined.
“No, I don’t,” Almond said. “This is what you do” – referring to Ingraham’s tendency to stoke anger.
He went on to accuse her of not truly caring about the players.
The right-wing pundit fired back that, despite his denials, Almond truly was accusing all fans of being racist.
But Almond deftly shot that down too, clarifying:
“I don’t think the fans celebrate violence….I think they tolerate the violence.”
To prove his point about economic incentives, he then brought up the fact that Ingraham had been forced to apologize in 2018 after she taunted a Parkland shooting survivor (David Hogg) after advertisers began pulling out, creating economic pressure.
Here is the tweet that caused it all:
David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA…totally predictable given acceptance rates.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) March 28, 2018
But Ingraham was having none of it.
She cut Almond off without a goodbye, declaring, “This is what they always do” – the “they” being liberals.
She added, without any sense of irony, “We’re going to welcome all points of view on this show” – even though she had literally just cut someone off for offering a view she did not like.
In case you could use a reminder, by the way, Stephanie Ruhle once did an excellent job of breaking down Ingraham’s racism:
The full video of the interview can be found here, from Media Matters.
Follow Ross on Twitter for more on the lies and the lying liars who tell them (as Al Franken would say): @RossRosenfeld
