Fox News – the network that championed Cliven Bundy’s armed threats to Nevada law enforcers – is now blaming President Obama for having criticized police and CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield's poor choice of words – for a gunman’s attack on the Dallas police department.
Saturday, Whitfield stunningly said, “It was very courageous and brave, if not crazy as well, to open fire on the police headquarters, and now you have this scene, this standoff.”
Whitfield retracted her comment yesterday, saying, “I misspoke, and in no way believe the gunman was courageous, nor brave.”
But not before FOX & Friends ridiculously tried to connect Whitfield’s remark to their narrative that anti-police rhetoric from political leaders and the media has caused attacks on the police.
Host Ainsley Earhardt opened the segment.
EARHARDT: It is a shocking reaction from the media after the Dallas police department comes under attack. …Dallas officials say the suspect planned to kill cops, so is this what happens at a time when so many leaders and members of the media, as you just heard, are spewing anti-police rhetoric?
She then opened a discussion with former FBI agent Carl Rowan with a leading question: “So you hear the media spewing this anti-police rhetoric, you see all these protests around the country. Is this what happens now?”
Rowan took the bait. “Those words were absolutely reprehensible and she should be embarrassed but words have meaning and when you have our national political leaders and entertainment leaders and now people in the media making reckless comments that are just virulently anti-police – those types of words can inspire disturbed people to do bad things.”
Rowan continued, “We’ve already seen that in the case of the gentleman who traveled from Baltimore to New York to assassinate Officers Lu and Ramos. We’ve seen random attacks on police across the country and when the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are putting out bulletins warning police that they may be attacked at random by people inspired by this anti-police rhetoric, to have our national leaders making reckless comments is really, really troubling.”
“I agree,” Earhardt said. Then she asked, “Carl, you have those three officers in New York that are dead. Two shot in St. Louis. You have the Garland incident with the ISIS-type situation there. You have Boston, the guy who wants to behead police officers. We’re hearing more and more of these stories so in your experience in law enforcement, are other departments around the country, are they changing how they are training the cops?”
Rowan said police departments are changing the training. He added, “Keep in mind that these incidents, while they may be local to certain communities, they’re now national stories on cable TV so other departments are seeing this and they understand that they are under attack right now.”
Earhardt made sure to blame Obama as she ended the segment by citing one of Fox’s favorite black attackers, Sheriff David Clarke: “Yeah, Milwaukee County sheriff says there is no urgency from the administration, from the president. It starts from the top he says.”
It’s ironic for Fox News to be attacking people for speaking out against the police given their support for Cliven Bundy – who actually threatened law enforcers. It’s especially ironic given that Megyn Kelly has so vociferously defended Pamela Geller’s anti-Islam event as free speech. And that event really did endanger the lives of police officers.
