February 20, 2017

UPDATE: The Swedish police interviewed in the video above say that the filmmaker quoted by Fox is a "madman" who edited their interview to make it seem as though they were talking about migrants when they were not. Sounds very Project Veritas to me. Watch Fox deny they knew anything about it.

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Amidst all the hand-wringing over Donald Trump's unhinged comments about Sweden this weekend, I'm grateful that Morning Joe showed a clip this morning from Fox News showing just what it was that made Trump so convinced that Sweden was "terrible."

On the Tucker Carlson show, Ed Henry showed trees! on! fire! while saying with a straight face:

"Migrants, they can't work, but they have time to commit CRIMES!!!"

This race-baiting fear-mongering BALONEY is a regular thing on Fox. No non-white person on Planet Earth wants to work for a living. They are coming for your jobs, though. And they want to kill your children.

And apparently that was an acceptable way to do news, as long as it didn't escape the Fox News Bubble. No one on Morning Joe or anywhere else in the beltway has had to acknowledge that Fox News and their bigoted propaganda even exists, until Donald Trump got elected and started using Fox as his source for foreign and immigration policy.

The thing is, it's not like we haven't been warned. Eric Bohlert wrote this in 2010. 2010, people!

Yes, the bigotry is off the charts. Yes, the purposeful misinformation is almost too plentiful to catalog. And yes, once the again the mainstream press remains mostly mum about the upsetting spectacle being played out for all to see.

The so-called "debate" in the press about the proposed Islamic center for downtown Manhattan is not a serious one. Just like the 'debate' in the press about racism and Shirley Sherrod was not serious. And just like the 'debate' in the press about Michelle Obama's vacation was not serious. They're not debates. They're hate-based witch hunts sponsored by the right wing, and reporters and pundits ought to have the guts to point that fact out.

When is the press going to acknowledge that the rules have changed, and these naked smear campaigns being launched by Fox News and the far-right press have no precedent in our politics and, more importantly, they're changing the way our news agenda is being set?

Fox News and their bigoted lying propaganda IS the story. It would be nice if the mainstream press started covering it.

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