According to Fox News’ Jesse Watters, all criticism of President Donald Trump and his administration along with protest against police brutality must stop in the wake of Sunday night’s mass shooting event in Las Vegas.
The co-hosts of The Five, recently demoted back to its 5 p.m. time slot to make room for Sean Hannity in primetime, were discussing the heroic actions of first responders and concertgoers as a deranged sniper’s bullets hailed down, Watters took it upon himself to tie the tragic events to the rest of the news cycle.
“I think the American spirit always rises to the challenge when you have a tragedy like this,” he said. “However much blood is spilled, two times as much blood is donated. However many people died, four times as many people are being saved in a hospital by doctors. Right now, friends helped friends to safety, people helped strangers to safety, and law enforcement was running towards the bullets.”
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Then, he took a hard turn.
“So all those kneelers in the NFL out there, they need to recognize when they’re kneeling during the anthem, they’re kneeling, and we’re supposed to be honoring law enforcement, law enforcement that’s trying to save lives, not take lives,” Watters said. “So I hope next Sunday when the anthem is played, people do kneel — out of respect to law enforcement.”
It is unclear whether Watters intended to say he hoped players “do kneel” during the anthem or whether he misspoke and meant to say he thinks they should stand. NFL players have said they decided to take a knee during the anthem to protest the unjust killings of black Americans by police not “out of respect to law enforcement” as suggested here.
But Watters didn’t stop there, going on say that any and all political attacks on President Trump have to “stop” now that this deadly mass shooting has occurred. That included not only those “making politics” over the administration’s Puerto Rico response, but also Saturday Night Live’s Michael Che, who came down hard on the president this past weekend for failing to treat Puerto Rican hurricane victims the same as those from Texas or Florida.
“Right now a lot of stuff looks really small when people are making politics over San Juan,” Watters continued. “There was a congressman that was trying to impeach the president today. SNL called the president, I think, a ‘cheap cracker.’ That has to stop. And people have to choose the side of good over evil, because I think evil’s always going to lose to good.”
