In a tweet sent Monday morning, the founder and editor-at-large of The Weekly Standard declared that “The United States of America has a Fox News problem.”
The United States of America has a Fox News problem. https://t.co/BkQoZRi7cc
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 29, 2018
Bill Kristol quoted a tweet from NBC’s John Harwood, who had quoted a tweet by CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski linking to an article about Fox Business’s Lou Dobbs. In a segment about the thousands of migrants traveling to the U.S. border with the intention to enter illegally, a guest described the caravan as “highly organized,” and implied they may be getting help from employees who work for the “Soros-occupied State Department,” an obvious reference to government officials being sympathetic towards liberal mega-donor George Soros’s push for open borders.
This has somehow been interpreted to mean something sinister and anti-Semitic, since Soros is Jewish and was targeted by the bomb package-sender last week. The Washington Post blamed right-wing “conspiracy theories” about the caravan organizers for the shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday, where 11 people were killed.
The Soros-caravan conspiracy theory weaves together anti-Semitism, fear of immigrants and the specter of powerful foreign agents controlling major world events in pursuit of a hidden agenda. And it appears to have had real-world consequences on Saturday for Jews attending services, including a baby-naming ceremony, in their synagogue in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood.
In a segment on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” on Sunday, Kristol said Donald Trump has “helped create an environment that made this possible.”
“Fox News and parts of. . . right-wing media has made this much more acceptable,” he said. “Their coverage of the caravan and the dangers of these immigrants.”
No disease any refugee might bring to America is as dangerous as the disease of fear, bigotry and hatred now being spread in America by Fox. https://t.co/aOPWAHDgH4
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) October 29, 2018
Kristol went on to say that the right is “obsessed” with Soros because he is Jewish. He then repeated the theory floated by Talking Points Memo’s John Marshall that the “Soros-occupied State Department” remark was a reference to neo-Nazi conspiracy theory, known as the “Zionist Occupied Government.”
“It’s the Jews, the evil Jews, occupying the U.S. government and bringing in alien invaders in this country,” Kristol said. “I’m blaming the management of Fox and the investors in Fox and some of the other talent, who are decent people, at Fox for saying nothing.”
Kristol did not state whether he would follow his rhetoric to its logical conclusion and prohibit all Weekly Standard writers, many of whom regularly appear on the network, from appearing on Fox News from now on.
