Far be it from the run-of-the-mill Fox News host to be grounded in truth, but cohosts on the network’s “The Five” talk show stooped to particularly erroneous lows in defending Goya Foods CEO Bob Unanue and President Donald Trump on Friday.
There have been frequent calls to boycott the Latin food company after Unanue practically pledged his allegiance to Trump despite the president’s many racist comments and policies harming Mexican immigrants. When “The Five” host Juan Williams cited the well-known fact that Trump called Mexican immigrants "rapists" during his speech to announce his presidential campaign in 2015, Fox News pundits Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, and Jeanine Pirro shook their heads. “No he didn’t,” one of the hosts could be heard saying, and Pirro similarly responded. “He didn’t say that,” she said.
Trump’s direct quote was: “When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Pirro, who apparently didn’t remember the president’s remarks, seemed to have a similarly unreliable memory of former President Barack Obama’s time in office. She said to Williams: “The left is so focused on trashing people on the right that they don’t care that the people that they presume to be on the right are helping poor people, hungry people, helping immigrants. Their hate is so dug in. I mean are you comfortable with this? The right doesn’t do this to Obama, and trust me a lot of people on the right didn’t like Obama.”
I’m not sure how Pirro could even pretend that conservatives who have championed locking immigrant children in cages and demanding the birth certificate of the first Black U.S. president serve as commendable moral examples, but Williams did find and answer the question buried in her ridiculous claims.
“I don’t like boycotts if that’s what you’re asking judge, but let me just say we live in politically polarized times,” he said. “And if you’re talking about who likes division, President Trump pushes buttons of division and polarization quite regularly. I think you’ll remember he started his campaign by going after Latin immigrants. He said Mexicans were ‘rapists’ and thieves...”
“There are people who will punch back from the other side,” Williams added, ignoring the moans and groans of his colleagues.
In response, Pirro cut Williams off, seemingly to compare Trump to a battered woman. She said she interrupted Williams “because you used the term that battering men use when they say, ‘she pushed my buttons and therefore I beat her up.’ Enough.”
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