DeRay Mckesson, the renowned Black Lives Matter activist, certainly wasn’t expecting any help from Fox News in his run for mayor of his hometown of Baltimore. But the speed with which they attacked him was impressive.
Mckesson announced late Wednesday that he will seek the office. Just a few hours later in a segment on Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade said Mckesson has “only proved that he could burn things down.”
Fox, of course, is no friend of the black activists who emerged after the 2013 acquittal of George Zimmerman in the slaying of teenager Trayvon Martin four years ago this month. The activists have since brought the issue of racist police violence across the nation to the forefront of public consciousness, focusing on the slayings of several unarmed black men and women, but also raising related matters.
Throughout 2015, several of Fox’s leading lights have demonized the Black Lives Matter movement, spewing racist canards and doing all they can to characterize the movement as militants plotting race war instead of working to bring attention to, and getting something done about, racial disparities in the U.S. criminal-justice system, including the plethora of police killings. One group with links to Black Lives Matter, Campaign Zero—of which Mckesson is also a leader—has proposed a 10-part plan for dealing with police violence.
In return, several of the heavies at Fox—Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly—have done what they can to discredit the movement. They have called Black Lives Matter a radical threat to public order and likened them to hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. O’Reilly linked them to "the rise of fascism on American college campuses" which he said has been "no doubt encouraged by groups like Black Lives Matter and other radical concerns."
So, no surprise that Fox would go after Mckesson in the Thursday segment. A guest on the show, Rod Wheeler, claimed:
[Mckesson] actually said that he supported and he validated the rioting and the looting that took place in Baltimore. Now, if you want to vote for a person like that, all that person is going to do is continue to, you know, lead to the demise of this city. And I'll tell you one other thing this guy said. He said he had recently met with Hillary Clinton and he had recently met with Bernie Sanders. Well, let me tell you something. If you're getting into politics you're off on the wrong foot if you're going to start off talking to Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton. Why hasn't this guy talked to John Kasich, why hasn't this guy talked to Chris Christie? [...]
Brian Kilmeade: Well, the primaries are April 26, so he gets in on the deadline. His name is DeRay McKesson. And if he gets in there, he's going have to answer for that. Because when you become a mayor, you can't just throw out the Democrat or Republican. You have to get things done in that city. And so far at 30 years old, he only proved that he could burn things down.
In fact, when he was interviewed on Wolf Blitzer about whether he condoned the rioting in Baltimore that arose last April over the police slaying of Freddie Gray, Mckesson said:
"I don't have to condone it to understand it, right? The pain that people feel is real. And you are making a comparison. You are suggesting this idea that broken windows are worse than broken spines, right? And what we know to be true is that the police are killing people everywhere. They're killing people here."
Mckesson will face 28 other candidates in the mayor’s race, including 13 Democrats. Expect Fox to be doing a lot more racist trash talk before that contest is over.