Fox News has responded to the growing crisis over baby formula shortages in the U.S. by doing what it does best: demonizing migrants and directing its viewers’ outrage to the border.
Based on a combination of several factors—namely pandemic-related supply chain issues, a recall due to bacterial infections that closed down a large manufacturing plant, and U.S. trade policy—upwards of 40 percent of formula is currently out of stock nationwide. By comparison, the out-of-stock rate for the first half of 2021 was between just 2 percent and 8 percent.
The shortage has impacted families across the country and sparked widespread concerns that mothers won’t be able to give their infants proper nutrition. The story has garnered front-page coverage and led off national news broadcasts. Under intense pressure, the White House said it would address the shortage by pushing efforts to speed up manufacturing and increase imports.
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Conservatives, determined to politically damage the Biden administration over the crisis, soon found a ready-made, xenophobic talking point. Posting a photo of what she claimed were “shelves and pallets packed with baby formula” at a migrant processing center near the southern U.S. border, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) sparked a right-wing outrage cycle around the belief that the president has purposely withheld formula from American families while giving it to “illegal” babies.
“This is what America last looks like,” Cammack added in her Thursday morning tweet.
“While mothers and fathers stare at empty grocery store shelves in a panic, the Biden administration is happy to provide baby formula to illegal immigrants coming across our southern border,” GOP Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and National Border Patrol Council Brandon Judd said in a joint statement on Thursday. “This is yet another one in a long line of reckless, out-of-touch priorities from the Biden administration when it comes to securing our border and protecting Americans.”
It didn’t take long for Fox News to fully embrace and amplify this message to its millions of loyal viewers.
The network’s highly rated late-afternoon panel program The Five led off with the Republican messaging around the baby formula shortage and took it to its predictably ridiculous lengths.
“Do you know how fired up I am that they’ve got these on pallets at the border? I mean, what about our kids?” MAGA-boosting host Jeanine Pirro exclaimed.
“It is not America last, it is a specific number of Americans last,” Pirro’s co-host Greg Gutfeld reacted. “Permission to go off? The government doesn’t like half of the people they’ve governed. Actually, it might even be higher. It is not just Trumpers or Republicans—whites, straights, males, suburban moms. This is the party for the oppressed. Even if you are a mom with a baby, let’s face it, you are an oppressor.”
Two hours later, and kicking off Fox News’ ultra-conservative primetime opinion programming, Jesse Watters was even more straightforward with this “grotesque talking point,” as Media Matters’ Matt Gertz described it.
“Apparently, there is no shortage of baby formula for illegal aliens,” Watters fumed. “Why are we feeding illegal babies ahead of American babies?”
Additionally, during an interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Watters’ production crew flashed an on-air graphic that blared: “AMERICAN BABIES FIRST!”
The rest of Fox’s primetime crew, fresh off of a weeklong “pro-life” news cycle, dutifully parroted the anti-immigration narrative straight from the GOP. Tucker Carlson, for instance, suggested that providing baby formula to detained migrant infants will result in a revolution in the streets.
“Once they get here, the Biden administration will give them food supplies that you can't buy. Those would include baby formula,” the far-right nationalist host grumbled. “How much more of this are people going to take, you wonder? It's too humiliating.”
Interviewing Cammack—who, unsurprisingly, was all over Fox on Thursday night and Friday morning—Sean Hannity wondered why didn’t “all of the pallets go to American families first” instead of people that have not “respected our borders, our laws, and our sovereignty.” And declaring that the images of pallets “alone should win the election for Republicans in November,” Laura Ingraham added that this is “something that will infuriate you.”
The network’s flagship morning show Fox & Friends made sure to keep the rage flowing on Friday morning, helping set the narrative for another full day of outrage.
“Border children, illegal immigrant children, are getting formula,” co-host Ainsley Earhardt groused at the top of the show.
“American families, there’s a shortage, but if you’re a migrant, don’t worry, because Uncle Sam has a stash of that,” Steve Doocy responded.
The Washington Post’s resident fact-checker, meanwhile, gave Republicans pushing this “ridiculous faux outrage” a rating of “four Pinocchios,” noting that while the shortage is a “serious issue that the administration is seeking to address” the White House “cannot be faulted for following the law and providing baby formula to undocumented immigrants.”
The Post pointed out that the Flores consent decree requires the government to provide proper treatment for migrant children. “Food must be appropriate for at-risk detainees’ age and capabilities (such as formula and baby food),” a Customs and Border Protection document states, laying out national standards in compliance with Flores.
On Friday morning, however, the Fox & Friends crew glibly dismissed the WaPo fact-check during an interview with Cammack, who said that “the fact-checkers need to be fact-checked.”
Later on in the show, co-host Brian Kilmeade blasted the Post, saying the Biden administration’s policies are going to cause an overflow of migrants into the country while fearmongering about how those children will be fed.
“You know how much formula we’re going to need then?” Kilmeade huffed. “How many unaccompanied minors that we’re dealing with that need that? His policies did lead to this situation and it is terrible optics.”
