Fox News hosts on The Five were in agreement on Thanksgiving eve: their celebration of the holiday has no room for a “history lesson” from those who “don’t like America.”
“Like clockwork, furious progressives and the media are trying to ensure that your Thanksgiving becomes a battleground,” The Five co-host Joey Jones said, leading off the segment. “They want to turn your humble turkey talk into a full-fledged political smackdown.”
Jones cited two recent op-eds in The New York Times and The Nation. In the former, a Cornell University organizational psychologist argues that there are health drawbacks of declining to speak up about a family member’s opposing political views at the dinner table due to “insinuation anxiety.” In the latter, a Native American activist and attorney supports “dropping the lie of Thanksgiving and begin[ing] a Truthsgiving.”
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But the Fox hosts weren’t having it.
“In this country, we’re kind of unique in that we can celebrate Christmas with Santa Claus and also remember the reason. Does Thanksgiving have to be a history lesson?” Jones said skeptically.
Jones asked colleague Greg Gutfeld if he would celebrate “Truthsgiving,” which he framed as a time when “basically you sit around and talk about how horrible America is.”
Gutfeld responded by claiming that doing so is already popular.
“Isn’t that what we do now? I believe this is now part of the Thanksgiving tradition, which is to protest the Thanksgiving tradition. It’s a new layer of customs we can discuss as opposed to the food, the family, the weather patterns,” said Gutfeld, who acknowledged during The Five’s segment last year on the very same subject how the show’s response to such articles is basically a tradition as well.
Dana Perino piggybacked on that point.
“Every year, we see these same stories from liberal publications,” she said. “God meant for us to be joyful, and one of the things we’ve done is we’ve figured out traditions that give you a chance. Here is the key to having a wonderful Thanksgiving: do not invite anyone who works for The Nation.”
Harold Ford, Jr., a former Democratic congressman, likewise was dismissive of the authors’ arguments.
“People who sit around your table and want to have these kinds of conversations, just say ‘bless your heart’ and move on.”
Jeanine Pirro, meanwhile, took a characteristically more blunt approach.
“If people want to come to my house and they don’t like America, I’m not cooking for you. You can leave,” she declared, as a Fox News chyron blared: “Liberals Trying to Ruin Thanksgiving.”
“They say that we shouldn’t be thankful for Thanksgiving because we’re all colonizers and we should tell the truth of what we have done. Does anyone in this country not think the Native Americans… weren’t here first? We all know that. We all admit to it. They were here first,” she said.
“The unfair part of it is that a lot of them live on tribal lands which are not as nice as they should be. I mean, no one has lied about that. So get over it!”
