It is “unjust” for mainstream media members and liberals “to tar all Trump supporters as racists and haters” based on selective instances, Fox News host Laura Ingraham declared Thursday night on “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Empire” actor Jussie Smollett (pictured above right) accused two unknown Trump supporters of attacking him in Chicago in the wee hours of Tuesday morning.
Smollett, who is gay and African-American, claimed the attackers made homophobic and racist remarks to him.
Smollett alleged the men tried to throw a noose around his neck and yelled, “This is MAGA country!”
These hate-crime allegations horrified Americans.
Authorities are investigating the allegations, but so far they have found no video evidence of the attack itself on nearby surveillance cameras. Other questions arose after more details emerged.
“In the initial reports there was no mention of MAGA,” police said in a statement to People. “When detectives [followed] up with [Smollett] later in the day, he recalled the offenders making those comments and detectives completed a supplemental report.”
President Donald Trump condemned the alleged hate-crime attack on Thursday, saying at the White House, “That I can tell you is horrible. I’ve seen it. It doesn’t get worse.”
But it didn’t take long for many liberals and media members to blame the president and lump all of his supporters together as racists.
The same thing happened when media members and Democrats gave Native-American activist Nathan Phillips the benefit of the doubt after a video went viral showing his confrontation with Trump supporters.
The video showed an encounter between Phillips and MAGA hat-wearing teens from Covington Catholic High School in Kentucky — specifically, Nick Sandmann. The incident occurred after the March for Life rally in Washington, D.C., near the Lincoln Memorial.
People on social media at first targeted Sandmann and the other kids, accusing them of racism and assuming they’d approached and surrounded Phillips to mock him. But far more complete videos showed otherwise. Instead, it was Phillips who approached the teenagers while beating a drum and chanting. He got right up in Sandmann’s face and continued chanting for some time. Sandmann merely stood there.
Yet the damage was done — and as a result of messages spread by many in the media and others, the Covington teens received death threats and torrents of verbal abuse on social media targeting their faith, their political affiliation, and their families. Their school received bomb threats and their families were targeted.
“It’s now gotten so bad in America that wearing a Trump hat is basically considered a hate crime,” Ingraham said.
“The goal, my friends, is to brand an entire belief system as immoral, evil, toxic and of course it’s racist,” Ingraham added. “Liberals who used to love discourse … they now prefer the easier route: Just call someone a Nazi or a closet KKK member and you’re done.”
“This is the same hatred, of course, that we saw hurled at those Covington Catholic High School boys,” Ingraham noted. “Like lightning, the media instantly branded them as MAGA-hatted racists, products of an evil religious education who dared to disrespect this Native-American protester. Only later did we learn that it was the kids who had been harassed and confronted by adults.”
Now there’s a “new MAGA incidence” brewing with the Smollett allegations. And again, “the media is rushing in to judgment” without all of the facts and evidence, Ingraham said.
“It is irresponsible and frankly unjust to tar all Trump supporters as racists and haters because you disagree with the president or because some nut-bag did something hateful and awful,” Ingraham warned. “This destructive racial narrative has infected our political life.”
Ingraham asked Project 21 Chairman Horace Cooper why “the resistance” is using a “broad racism brush” applied “so generously to Trump and his supporters.
Cooper replied, “Because it’s effective. It is a very good way to stop people from being able to see how important the policies are, how effective they are, how impactful they are. It is working, and it will keep continuing to occur unless we can call these people out for doing it.”
Liberals and media members are “scouring the news to find little episodes that they can show to create a counter-narrative that’s false,” Cooper argued.
Former Georgia state Rep. Dee Dawkins-Haigler (D) said she doesn’t believe “all Trump supporters are racists.”
“But I do think some racists are Trump supporters,” Dawkins-Haigler added. “And so what we need to do is make sure that we have civil conversations in this country. Because to be honest with you, I kind of like the criminal justice reform” that Trump supported and signed into law, she said.
“But [Trump’s] rhetoric throughout the campaign trail to even now — it turns people off and it has certain bases all worked up,” Dawkins-Haigler said.
The Fox News host urged Republicans to do the following: “Don’t play defense. Don’t apologize for your beliefs. Actively engage in minority communities. Don’t be bullied out of them. Listen to the concerns of the people — even when it’s uncomfortable.
Bruce LeVell, a Trump campaign diversity adviser, told Ingraham that “the Left has always been using the race card — as I call [it], the real voter suppression — to intimidate brown folks like me across the country to keep us from looking at” conservative ideas.
Ingraham said liberals want minority Americans “to be angry and resentful.”
The Fox News host urged Republicans to do the following: “Don’t play defense. Don’t apologize for your beliefs. Actively engage in minority communities. Don’t be bullied out of them. Listen to the concerns of the people — even when it’s uncomfortable, and it will be. Explain your policies without the filter of an unfriendly media.”
“And as for those red hats, well, I’d continue to wear them whenever and wherever you like. And when doing so, be sure to show everyone around you what true tolerance, kindness and inclusiveness looks like,” Ingraham said.
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