Following an attack on Fox News meteorologist Adam Klotz in the New York City subway, the network’s flagship morning show Fox & Friends has repeatedly blamed the beating on one man: Liberal financier and right-wing catch-all boogeyman George Soros.
Over the weekend, Klotz was left with two black eyes, bruised ribs and cuts across his face following an altercation with a group of teens on the 1 train. According to the weatherman, he attempted to stop the young men from hassling an older gentleman, only for the teenagers to attack him instead.
After the group of teens beat up Klotz and ran off, three of them were detained by New York Police Department officers—only to be released from custody soon after. “Juvenile reports were prepared, and their parents were called to pick them up,” an NYPD representative said. Klotz has since noted that police have told him he would need to file charges.
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Fox News, which has framed New York City as a dystopian “hellhole” where violent crime is rampant, has used the harrowing attack to go after “soft-on-crime” Democrats and liberal criminal-justice policies. Klotz himself has appeared multiple times on the network to discuss the beating and criticize the city’s mayor over subway violence.
“I want there to be something done,” he said on Monday’s broadcast of Fox & Friends. “Why is the weather guy on the train trying to stop crime in the middle of the night? Like, where is Eric Adams? Where’s the city? Why am I doing this? Why is it up to me?”
The hosts of the morning program, however, have gone further than that.
Largely spurred on by The New York Post—a fellow Murdoch media outlet—including an anti-Soros article alongside Klotz’s bruised face on its front cover Monday morning, the curvy couch trio has gone all-in on fear-mongering about the liberal philanthropist.
Towards the end of his Monday appearance on Fox & Friends, Klotz—holding up the Post cover—joked that he is “the least dangerous man in America” following the beating he took. Co-host Brian Kilmeade, who is no stranger to Soros conspiracies, quickly followed up by invoking the Post article’s claim that the billionaire is the “most dangerous man” in the nation.
“George Soros is as responsible as these guys,” Kilmeade exclaimed. “Because he is financing the, umm, make criminals first—great again, financing of all the DAs in every city in the country.”While Soros has reportedly spent upwards of $40 million to help elect dozens of district attorneys and prosecutors across the country, he hasn’t financed “all the DAs” in American cities.
The Fox & Friends crew was back at it on Tuesday morning. After discussing Klotz’s attack again and grousing about crime in New York City, co-host Steve Doocy once more invoked the Post’s article about “The Soros Web” and how the 92-year-old businessman had donated to local races.
“They did a big takeout on how George Soros has spent $40 million of his money trying to elect lefty DAs all over the country, backing prosecutors who won’t prosecute,” Doocy declared. “So far, he has got 75 prosecutors nationwide backed by Soros!”
Kilmeade, meanwhile, called on the Republican National Committee to dump money into district attorney races in order to counter Soros’ donations, adding that they could “run with these victims of crime” in order to be more “effective.” He then turned to podcaster and Intellectual Dark Web member Joe Rogan, playing a clip from Rogan’s show featuring him calling Soros an “evil person” and akin to a Batman villain.
“And it’s fucking terrifying that he donates money to a very progressive, very leftist— whether it’s a DA or whatever, politician, and then funds someone who’s even further left than them to go against them,” Rogan exclaimed. “And just keeps moving it along. So he’s playing like a global game. And that he enjoys doing it.”
Notably, Rogan’s guest was ex-CIA officer and Fox regular Mike Baker, who invoked a common antisemitic trope while criticizing Soros.
“He likes being the puppet master,” Baker told Rogan. “Right? He likes pulling strings, and he likes having that influence and that impact.”
Fox News deleted a Soros “Puppet Master” cartoon from its social media accounts in late 2021 after the Anti-Defamation League called the network out for contributing “to the normalization of antisemitism” by pushing the longstanding trope about Jewish power and manipulation.
While the network has previously stopped booking certain guests who peddled antisemitic conspiracy theories about Soros, prompting at least one to say Fox is beholden to the billionaire, Fox News has gone out of its way to allow its commentators and stars to dog whistle about the Jewish philanthropist.
