The remaining members of the migrant caravan traveling north from Central America, the focus of Republicans’ midterm election strategy before this month’s rout, have finally reached the U.S.-Mexico border.
And even though the migrants are unarmed and unable to cross the border, Fox News wants you to be very afraid.
Fox & Friends, President Donald Trump’s favorite morning “news” source, devoted the majority of its three hours of Monday programming to fear-mongering over the migrant caravan and undocumented immigrants.
As Trump threatened to “close the Border permanently if need be” on Twitter, the well-established feedback loop between Fox News and the president of the United States was in full effect.
Any unfortunate soul who happened to be watching Monday’s edition of Fox & Friends at 6 a.m. ET started their day with a clip of Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) advocating for closing the U.S. border due to the migrant caravan.
After Pete Hegseth, whom Trump reportedly considered for secretary of Veterans Affairs, praised Jason Derulo’s “Trumpets” as a “great song,” Fox and its friends awkwardly reverted to scaring its elderly audience.
Fox News reporter Griff Jenkins, who took credit for being the first person to report that the migrant caravan was “coming,” bizarrely said the migrants could only claim asylum “because of a judge’s ruling,” even though claiming asylum at a port of entry is legal under both U.S. and international law. After a few minutes of fear-mongering about the brown people at the border, Jenkins admitted he was “not aware of any of these migrants” actually crossing the border.
Then Fox & Friends defended the U.S. military’s decision to deploy tear gas, which caused migrant mothers to frantically flee the scene with their young children, in response to rocks as “the way the world works,” even though it’s not not actually the way the world works.
At this point, it was likely that someone at the conservative network realized five minutes had passed without mentioning former President Barack Obama or former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so Steve Doocy pointed out that tear gas was also used against migrants at the border in 2013.
However, that incident, involving hundreds of migrants who had reached the border at once, was not expected and hyped by members of the media for weeks before it occurred. Also, conservatives weren’t urging the president for such an unnecessary escalation in 2013.
Co-host Ainsley Earhardt then proclaimed, “They want to throw rocks at our military, our military will fight back!”
With hyperbolic “STORMING THE BORDER” text appearing on the screen, Hegseth then propagandized about Trump’s proposed border wall and said the real victims here were not the migrants escaping violence, natural disasters, and brutal authoritarian crackdowns, but Americans who live near the border.
Once the Friends felt as though sufficient fear of brown people had been established, Fox transitioned to owning the libs and media members who correctly pointed out that the migrant caravan was not a serious threat to Americans.
Earhardt declared the migrant caravan was “not an invented threat” as “MEDIA JABBED CARAVAN AS ‘INVENTED THREAT'” was displayed on-screen below her.
All of this was just in the first 10 minutes of Monday’s Fox & Friends, but the two hours of programming that followed brought more of the same.
Hegseth later compared the migrant caravan to a home invasion before praising Trump.
After claiming the caravan was “supported by outside sources,” had a “sense of entitlement,” and shouldn’t be considered “true refugees,” former U.S. Border Patrol deputy chief Ron Colburn said it was pepper spray being used against unarmed migrants and it was actually part of a balanced diet. “You could actually put it on your nachos and eat it.”
In addition to being an absurd statement, using tear gas on unarmed migrants on Mexican soil was possibly a violation of international law.
Also, the baseless claim that the migrant caravan is being funded or directed by shadowy outside sources is similar to conspiracy theories embraced by both the accused murderer of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue and the suspect in the attempted bombings of around a dozen Democrats who are frequent targets of the president’s incendiary rhetoric.
These caravan conspiracy theories were promoted by Fox News and prominent conservatives like Trump, Vice President Mike Pence (R), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX), and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) before Republicans lost around 40 House seats in this month’s midterm elections.
After a FOX NEWS ALERT, which was about Trump being on Twitter instead of doing his actual job, infamous smedium shirt-wearer Dan Bongino joined the show.
Bongino, who was actually an appropriate guest to discuss the president’s tweets since he has admitted “owning the libs” is the only thing that provides meaning to his life, is notoriously sensitive, and has blocked almost everyone on Twitter, claimed he didn’t “mean to be hyperbolic” about the migrant caravan before hyperbolically saying people were “trying to invade our border.”
Then former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) stopped by to echo white supremacist rhetoric and baselessly blame “leftists” for the migrant caravan, which isn’t a unique development, and “war on the border.”
Fox & Friends also devoted time to fear-mongering about other undocumented immigrants on Monday.
After Fox & Friends interviewed the parents of a teacher who was reportedly killed while crossing a street early on Thanksgiving morning by an undocumented immigrant, Earhardt grossly urged viewers to “think about how it could effect your family” and “think about the first time you hold your child.”
Study after study after study has shown U.S. immigrants, including the undocumented, are less likely to commit violent crimes than native-born American citizens.