Fox News has issued a statement after one of its top hosts, Laura Ingraham, was attacked again by Democrats who want her off television.
It started on Thursday when Ingraham showed a graphic on her program “The Ingraham Angle” that featured prominent people who have been banned from Facebook.
The photo showed many well known people, including a white supremacist, who had been banned from the website, The Washington Post reported.
The controversy stems from a Thursday night episode of “The Ingraham Angle,” in which the host lamented recent comments made by Hillary Clinton and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), criticizing Facebook’s refusal to take down an altered video of Pelosi.
Speaking with conservative activist Candace Owens, Ingraham likened the altered video to a work of satire. Clinton’s and Pelosi’s complaints, she said, were simply a coordinated effort from the left to “silence conservative voices” ahead of next year’s election, a common accusation by conservatives, including President Trump.
“Facebook now, what do they monitor, hate?” Ingraham asked. “That sounds good until you realize hate — and these are some of the people that they’ve shunned.”
Fox then displayed a graphic featuring Owens and seven other “prominent voices censored on social media.” Among those silenced, Ingraham said, were “people who believe in border enforcement, people who believe in national sovereignty.”
But for many, the inclusion of Nehlen — who was banned from Twitter in February 2018 for a racist tweet about Meghan Markle, actress and wife of Britain’s Prince Harry, and is known for espousing anti-Semitic rhetoric — was indefensible. Once a fringe candidate in the Republican congressional primaries in Wisconsin, Nehlen has described himself as “pro-White” and has a documented affiliation with the alt-right movement. He once tweeted a list of his critics on Twitter, writing that of those 81 people, “74 are Jews while only 7 are non-Jews.”
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Ingraham did not give any credit to the white supremacist or say he deserved to be on any website, but Democrats pounced.
And Fox News responded to the controversy in a statement that showed, again, that they are not going to destroy Ingraham’s career.
“It is obscene to suggest that Laura Ingraham was defending Paul Nehlen’s despicable actions especially when some of the names on the graphic were pulled from an Associated Press report on best known political extremists banned from Facebook,” it said.
“Anyone who watches Laura’s show knows that she is a fierce protector of freedom of speech and the intent of the segment was to highlight the growing trend of unilateral censorship in America,” it said.
See how this works?
They don’t actually care about Nehlen coz he’s irrelevant. They care about killing off @IngrahamAngle coz she’s not.
So they move from “defend” to “promote” in a few hours and call all the advertisers to pressure them to pull $$$. https://t.co/LQHGBF9jD6
— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 31, 2019
Mehdi Hasan is a regular guest on CNN.
Cut the shit about @IngrahamAngle who merely defended the principle of free speech.
— Mehdi Hasan says Non-Muslims and Atheists live like Cattle, and Homosexuals are like paedophiles — https://t.co/qFUYvsR9b3
— Mike Cernovich (@Cernovich) May 31, 2019
WOW.
Laura Ingraham just had her first commercial break tonight, the night after she held up white supremacist Paul Nehlen on her show as a victim.
It was bleak. All infomercials and Fox house ads EXCEPT for one ad:@_MintMobile
— jordan (@JordanUhl) June 1, 2019
Laura Ingraham promoted a white supremacist on her show. At least one advertiser is pulling out. https://t.co/6xqImOiFkh
— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) June 1, 2019
Fox News is trying to bully, bluster, and gaslight its way out of potential fallout from advertisers with the ridiculous claim that Laura Ingraham wasn’t actually defending Paul Nehlen. https://t.co/VxoT86TUM4
— Matthew Gertz (@MattGertz) May 31, 2019
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