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A lot of hay has been made about the viability of Democratic presidential hopefuls deciding to or not to go on a Fox News town hall-style event. One of the fundamental issues with doing anything on Fox News is that it is a very transparent state-propaganda apparatus at this point. This means that any and all information coming out of Fox News on-air personalities, any and all video edits and news packages, are tailored to serve the agenda of the Republican Party and Donald Trump himself. This is not simply right-wing analysis of today’s events, it is a very strategically manipulated “reporting” of reality. There are no depths too dark or too deep that Fox News will go.
Mayor Pete Buttigieg felt that right-wing misinformation machine when something he said was chopped up by conservative media outlets and regurgitated with headlines like “Buttigieg backs far-left idea of erasing Thomas Jefferson's name: 'It's the right thing to do.'” Buttigieg was on a local radio show as he campaigned through Indiana and was asked about the possible renaming of Jefferson-Jackson dinners, a yearly Democratic Party fundraising event. He gave a very diplomatic and well-articulated answer—arguably the very reason why people like Pete Buttigieg as a candidate.
Buttigieg: Yeah we're doing that in Indiana, and I think it's the right thing to do. You know, over time you develop and evolve on the things you choose to honor and I think we know now, especially Jackson, you know, you just look at what basically must be genocide that happened here. Jefferson's more problematic, you know. There's a lot to of course admire in his thinking and his philosophy. Then again if you plunge into his writings, especially the notes on the state of Virginia, you know that he knew that slavery was wrong. And yet he did it.
Now we're all morally conflicted human beings. It's not like we're blotting him out of the history books or deleting him from being the founding fathers, but naming something after somebody confers a certain amount of honor and at a time I mean the real reason I think there's a lot of pressure on this is the relationship between the past and the president that we're finding in a million different ways that racism isn't some curiosity out of the past that we're embarrassed about but moved on from. It’s alive, it’s well, it's hurting people and it's one of the main reasons to be in politics today is to try to change or reverse the harms that went along with that. We better look for ways to live out and honor that principle.
Mayor Pete
Buttigieg decided to go on a Fox News’ sponsored town hall event, hosted by the child of an actual reporter, Chris Wallace. Toward the end of the town hall, Wallace asked Buttigieg about those “comments.” Buttigieg said it was a good example of right-wing news outlets misrepresenting the facts and that his comments were about racial injustice and nobody was saying that Jefferson should be
erased from anything in our history. The
Fox & Friends team of two blond asshats and one brunette prick decided that nothing Buttigieg could say would atone for the other things he didn’t say that Fox News misreported he did say.
Showing the clip of Buttigieg talking with Wallace on Fox News, Steve Doocy led into the clip saying “Here’s Mayor Pete Buttigieg clarifying his comments after going after our founding fathers.” After the clip runs, where Buttigieg once again does not call for the rewriting of history, Brian Kilmeade has this to say as they throw to commercial.
Kilmeade: What a clown. Should we really be trying to erase our country’s history? Would we even be a country without those men we are trying to erase?
Kilmeade went on to re-litigate this thing that Buttigieg never said again with another Fox News “expert,” later in the program. You can listen to Buttigieg’s original statement here.
And watch his follow-up with Chris Wallace on Fox News, here.