Fox News’ early-afternoon gabfest Outnumbered went completely off the rails Wednesday as lone liberal panelist Jessica Tarlov tangled with her conservative colleagues over whether or not it is fair to describe President Trump as racist.
Discussing the president’s days-long attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) and Baltimore, things quickly heated up when co-host Dagen McDowell was openly miffed when fellow panelist Lisa Marie Boothe continued to correct her as she tried to make a point.
Responding to a recent poll showing 51 percent of Americans and 86 percent of Democrats believing the president is racist, McDowell attempted to counter a point that Boothe made earlier that Democratic politicians are allegedly pandering to the left.
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“Here’s the problem—all those people you mention, Lisa, they’re not running for re-election next year,” McDowell said, prompting Boothe to note that Bernie Sanders is running for president. As McDowell conceded that point, Boothe further mentioned a member of Congress was also up for re-election, causing McDowell to snap.
“I said president,” the Fox Business host sneered. “You corrected me once and you were right. Let’s move on.”
That strange confrontation merely set the stage for an even more combative blow-up involving Boothe.
After McDowell noted that a large number of black voters who voted for Obama stayed home in 2016, and that Trump’s race-baiting could come back to bite him, Boothe contended that Trump could simply argue that black unemployment is at an all-time low and tout criminal justice reform.
This prompted Tarlov, the lone liberal, to jump in and insist that such a strategy wouldn’t erase Trump’s history of racism.
“He could make those arguments but it won’t change the fact that he is a racist and he does racist things,” Tarlov declared as anchor Harris Faulkner said those were “two different things” and Boothe claimed she was “weaponizing words.”
The liberal co-host, however, pushed forward.
“A birther means that you’re a racist,” Tarlov said. “Telling women of color who are congressional representatives to go back to where they came from—when three of them are Americans from birth, one a refugee who is now a citizen—is racist. Thinking that the Central Park Five is still guilty even though they’ve been exonerated, is racist.”
Moments later, after going back and forth with Faulkner over whether the so-called “Squad” was right to suggest Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is racist—even though Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) has specifically said she doesn’t believe Pelosi is racist—Tarlov then found herself in a battle with Boothe.
Having already noted that she’s been in countless Fox debates over whether Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are anti-Semitic or bigoted, Tarlov said they “need to be honest” that it was racist for Trump to describe Baltimore as a place where “no human would want to live.”
“That’s what Bernie Sanders said as well—that it was a third world country,” Boothe responded, prompting Tarlov to bury her head in her hands and exclaim: “This is insane!”
As Boothe insisted Tarlov was “playing a semantics game,” the liberal co-host said she would remember all of this the next time they had a discussion on Louis Farrakhan or Omar’s controversial “all about the Benjamins” tweet and they demand that she talk about that.
The two would continue to argue a little bit longer over which political party was more racist until Faulkner stepped in.
“I appreciate the passion, and I know we will go back and forth, but it’s a conversation,” the anchor said. “Okay? When you put your hands in the air and you roll your eyes and we kind of go back and forth, it feels less like a conversation. But that’s where we need to be.”
