On Tuesday morning, CNN’s Brian Stelter, appearing as a guest with CNN hosts Alisyn Camerota and John Berman, ripped Fox News’ hosts and President Trump as the cause of the massacre at the Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, asserting that their language helped trigger the shooter who committed the most deadly attack on Jews in America’s history. Stelter called for Fox News hosts to do some “soul-searching.”
Referencing the Pittsburgh shooter calling migrants “invaders,” Stelter said the shooter was “using the same dehumanizing language that’s been saturating right-wing radio and TV.” Stelter played clips of Fox News’ Laura Ingraham calling the caravan “this invading horde,” Fox News commentator Newt Gingrich saying, “This is an invasion,” and another voice on a Fox News show echoing, “This is an invasion.”
Stelter continued, “We may never know where the suspect heard these ideas or why he believed them. But we do know that the hate crime coincided with a rise in hateful language, from the Infowars fringe to Fox’s primetime lineup. Almost as soon as the migrant caravan formed in Central America, Fox News, talking heads, and President Trump made it out to be a major threat.”
Stelter then turned to people who commented on videos showing commentators stating the caravan was an invasion. He said, “Scroll down any of these videos on YouTube and the fire was raging, with commenters screaming about an ‘invading army’ even though the migrants were 1,000 miles away and fleeing danger.”
Stelter spoke of how some people in the right-wing media said leftists were behind the invasion, and one guest on Fox had referred to the “Soros-run State Department.” Stelter claimed that because George Soros is Jewish, the guest had meant the comment as a reference to a Jewish conspiracy. Then he noted the shooter’s final comment on Gab blaming a Jewish refugee group for bringing in “invaders.”
Stelter brought in left-wing media sites to buttress his case: The Washington Post “arguing that the conspiracy theory about Soros and the caravan inspired the horror of in Pittsburgh,” and Adam Serwer of The Atlantic writing, “Trump’s caravan hysteria led to this.”
Host Alisyn Camerota asserted that up until 2016, the president’s words mattered. She said that Trump and White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders had claimed that Trump’s words don’t have any impact. She patronized. “He can say whatever he wants and people are not listening? I don’t understand the logic.”
Stelter replied, “I think that dodge, because it’s illogical, it’s specifically because Trump and his aides know he’s vulnerable. They recognize that he’s lit a fire and added more and more fuel every day and is not able to control it. By the way, he doesn’t want to control it, he doesn’t seem interested in controlling it, but even if he wanted to I’m not sure he could. He has unleashed forces in this country, and so what do they do? They have to attack the press; they have to change the subject because they’re vulnerable on this problem.”
Stelter concluded, “We can talk about fear-mongering; we can talk about the ridiculousness of this rhetoric; it is effective among some people. I sure hope some of those Fox hosts, some of those commentators take a moment, take a minute to think about their role in this environment. Hopefully there is some soul-searching right now in the wake of this massacre in Pittsburgh.”
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