Howard Kurtz Defends Fox News From Blame Over Buffalo Massacre: ‘Absurd’
Howard Kurtz defended Fox News from claims the network shares blame for inspiring the racist massacre at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
The alleged shooter, who has been charged with killing 10 shoppers and wounding three more, posted a screed online in which he embraced “replacement theory,” a white nationalist conspiracy that has been prominently espoused by Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
Kurtz called the shooting “utterly heartbreaking” and noted the suspect’s writing “reeks of racism, anti-Semitism, and a twisted mind.”
He continued:
But what I also find troubling, and I have been talking about this for decades, is the knee-jerk partisanship with which pundits and politicians on the left and sometimes the right respond to mass shootings. President Clinton blamed the Oklahoma City bombing in part on Rush Limbaugh. Liberal pundits and later The New York Times, blamed a mass shooting in Tucson on a Sarah Palin political map that the gunman never even saw. But when a liberal Bernie Sanders supporter, a Rachel Maddow fan, wounded Steve Scalise and others five years ago at a Republican congressional baseball practice, the media didn’t blame Maddow or left wing philosophy, and they shouldn’t have. Yet, after mostly Black shoppers were gunned down in that Buffalo supermarket, people who don’t like this network or compete with this network unleashed this constant barrage. It’s partially Fox’s fault.
Kurtz aired a series of comments from Rachel Maddow, Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes blaming Fox News commentary for the shooting.
A chief target has been Tucker Carlson. Now his comments on immigration and politics and those of anyone at this network are, of course, fair game for public debate. But blaming him for the shooting is absurd. The latest case of a blood on your hands approach to finger pointing. Even if you’re Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer trying to score political points by attacking Fox. And by the way, there’s nothing in the suspect’s hundreds of rambling pages that indicates he has ever watched one minute of Fox News.
Kurtz later brought on fellow Fox News hosts Will Cain and Julie Banderas to discuss the network being blamed for the attack. Banderas called replacement theory a “conspiracy theory,” but said it was “disgusting” to blame Fox for the shooting.
Banderas also argued Democrats are in favor of illegal immigration for electoral purposes.
“The Democrats want illegals in this country because those are the ones that are eventually going to be voting them into office,” she said.
Watch above, via Fox News.
