Joe Scarborough: Why Does Murdoch Still Allow Lou Dobbs to Spew Hatred and Conspiracies on Fox?

Morning Joe focused much of its coverage on Fox News Monday morning, calling out the network for fear mongering about the migrant caravan in Mexico, after a gunman who feared the caravan was being funded by Jews killed 11 in a Pennsylvania synagogue.

Joe Scarborough directed his ire at Lou Dobbs, the Fox Business host: “Unfortunately you look at Lou Dobbs, who was spreading conspiracy theories himself. You really wonder why Rupert Murdoch and his family, immigrants, why they allow Lou Dobbs to continue working on that channel spewing the hatred and the conspiracy theories that he’s spreading.”

Dobbs drew outrage this week when he claimed (in now deleted tweets) that the bombs sent to prominent critics of Trump were “fake.” He also pushed the conspiracy theory on air. On Saturday, his show drew outrage again when its Thursday episode was re-aired, and featured a guest pushing the apparently anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that the “Soros-occupied State Department” was funding the caravan.

Bill Kristol, who was a contributor at Fox News for a decade, noted that he’s a “free speech person,” and doesn’t support being “super fastidious even about calling people to account for what they said in the heat of the moment.”

“At the end of the day though, I think Fox now with its evening lineup, Fox Business with Lou Dobbs, the routine stuff that is said there — people who work at Fox, the management of Fox, the shareholders of Fox, the corporate board of Fox really need to look in the mirror and say, are we comfortable with this?” Kristol asked.

“Are they comfortable with the overall effect that Fox News and Fox Business — and I said this as someone who was on Fox News for ten years, on Fox News Sunday a few years ago — can they defend their effect on the culture?”

Scarborough added that Roger Ailes, the former head of Fox News, shut down Glenn Beck‘s conspiracy theorizing on the network.

“There is a huge difference between what’s going on at Fox News today and what was going on at Fox News five years ago,” Scarborough said. “When you look at Lou Dobbs and some other people, it is completely off the rails.”

Later in the show, Sam Stein, politics editor at the Daily Beast, pointed out that the “lunatic” who carried out the shooting was “fearful that George Soros was funding a caravan of migrants in Honduras to come to the United States.”

“This was his inspiration,” Stein said. “This is what the Republicans have run the election on in the closing weeks.”

He added that Fox News is not pulling back from coverage of the caravan, which remains 1,000 miles away from the U.S. border: “They are not stopping. This morning, reference was made to the stuff on Fox & Friends.

Watch above, via MSNBC.

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