Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner declared on Monday that President Joe Biden had not only attacked “at least half” of the U.S. by denouncing MAGA Republicans as “semi-fascist,” but that he actually “hates” the majority of Americans.
Ever since the president described former President Donald Trump’s “extreme MAGA philosophy” as “semi-fascism” because they “don’t believe in democracy” and “embrace political violence,” Fox News personalities have been in full meltdown mode, as one might expect.
While the network’s news anchors have sought to contrast Biden’s remarks with Hillary Clinton’s infamous “basket of deplorables,” Fox’s right-wing opinion hosts have disingenuously accused Biden of labeling every single Republican a fascist. (Notably, as they’ve railed against Biden, Trump has demanded he be re-installed as president as his allies vaguely warn of “riots in the streets.”)
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While the White House has made it clear that Biden was drawing a line between “mainstream Republicans” and those who refuse to accept Trump’s 2020 election loss, Faulkner—one of the faces of Fox’s vaunted “straight news” division—asserted during back-to-back programs on Monday that the president outright hates more than 50 percent of the country.
Speaking with right-wing radio host Jason Rantz, the veteran Fox anchor took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris for recently defending the president’s remarks. Harris applauded Biden for “rais[ing] the alarm” and calling out those who are “not defending our democracy” in a Sunday interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Faulkner, however, wanted to know if this meant the Biden administration tacitly supported antifa, the decentralized left-wing political movement that sees itself as anti-fascist and has long served as a bogeyman for Fox News.
“But if they’re anti-semi-fascist, which is how they see more than half the country now... are they pro-antifa?” Faulkner asked Rantz. “They’ve been rather violent. These are fair things that you can ask if you can get one of them to sit down again.”
Faulkner circled back to this train of thought in the next hour. During a segment on the possibility of a plea deal for five Guantanamo Bay prisoners accused of plotting the 9/11 terror attacks, she somehow shoehorned Biden’s remarks into the discussion.
“I know I can’t speak for every military family out there, but I will speak for mine,” Faulkner lamented. “I’m truly sorry to all of them that we as a sovereign nation can’t continue to act like one.”
She then added: “Are we then really a sovereign nation? Do we really, really love the citizens of this great nation? We have a president who hates at least half of them. How do we know? Because he keeps telling us.”
After alleging that the commander-in-chief despises more than half of America, Faulkner served up a mini-monologue about what it would mean if five accused 9/11 terrorists were not executed.
“So what about those military families? The families whose children went to war because of what happened, who willingly went and gave their lives, after we were hit?” Faulkner wondered. “They will never be the same. Those families who lost their children, and those men and women who are forever damaged from serving that war.”
She concluded: “What do we say to them when we say we will make a deal for these guys who took more than 3,000 lives of Americans in this country? On American soil? What do we say to those military families? We gave up? We got tired? We like liberalism in our justice system better than we love you? I’m dying to know.”
