Fox News is absolutely in “love” with basketball legend Charles Barkley for slamming San Francisco as a city of “homeless crooks,” seemingly trumpeting the conservative cable giant’s narrative that the liberal-led city is a dystopian haven of crime and filth.
The network’s newfound admiration for the Inside the NBA star and part-time CNN host, meanwhile, comes just months after Fox stars told Barkley to “go to hell” for taking aim at the “assholes” pushing a boycott of Bud Light over its brief ad partnership with a transgender influencer.
During Sunday night’s broadcast of the NBA All-Star Game, Barkley took a shot at San Francisco out of nowhere. Commenting about the icy conditions in Indianapolis, where the game was being played, Barkley wondered: “If you had the chance between being cold or being around a bunch of homeless crooks in San Francisco, which would you take?”
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The Hall of Famer, who has long had a hatred for San Francisco, continued to tear into the city over the objections of his fellow broadcasters. “You can’t even walk around down there,” Barkley said at one point, eventually claiming that one would need a “bulletproof vest” to take a stroll in the Bay Area.
With Barkley railing against one of their favorite targets, the host of Fox News’ The Five fell over each other gushing over his anti-San Francisco opinions. And they made it known that they’ve always liked the opinionated former NBA MVP.
“Charles Barkley, we love him, Dana,” Jesse Watters said to his colleague Dana Perino.“We love him because he has no talking points,” Perino agreed. “It’s impossible for him to just be a talking point guy. He tells it like it is.”
Doubling down on the praise given to Barkley, Judge Jeanine Pirro said that he “tells it straight” and that viewers should “believe Charles Barkley” because he travels across the country and visits different cities.
“He’s seen it all. And he’s a professional athlete,” she continued. “He knows the streets, and he knows what’s going on.”
Besides the fact that the political opinions of professional athletes are fine with Fox News’ conservative hosts as long as they are “good,” as liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov pointed out on Monday, it wasn’t that long ago when Barkley was vilified by the network over his pro-LGBTQ position.
During the height of the right’s transphobic Bud Light boycott last summer, Barkley was filmed encouraging a bar crowd to drink the beer while expressing his support for trans and gay people. “Let me tell you something. All you rednecks or assholes who don’t want to drink Bud Light, fuck y’all,” he exclaimed, adding: “If you’re gay, God bless you. If you’re transgender, God bless you. And if you have a problem with that, fuck you.”
Barkley immediately found himself under attack from MAGA media, including Watters and other Fox News stars.
Fox News weekend host Mark Levin, for instance, told the NBA legend to “go to hell” for backing Bud Light, grumbling that he “used to like this guy” but “not anymore.”
Invoking Barkley’s primetime CNN show, Watters wondered “what happened to Sir Charles” before blaming the cable news network for his supposed change. “The minute he signs with CNN, he turns into Don Lemon? But Bud Light, nothing compared to Disney,” he added.
