The hosts of The View on Monday tore into Republicans and Fox News hosts for peddling the racist “Great Replacement Theory” ahead of this weekend’s horrific mass shooting in Buffalo.
Companies that advertise on Fox News are “part of the problem,” co-host Ana Navarro declared, adding that it is time to “name names and point fingers.”
In what law authorities have deemed a “straight-up racially motivated hate crime,” an 18-year-old alleged gunman traveled hours to shoot up a grocery store in a mostly Black neighborhood, leaving 10 dead. Among the suspects 13 victims, 11 were Black.
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Besides broadcasting the shooting live on social media, the suspected shooter also left behind a hate-filled 180-page manifesto that paid tribute to the Christchurch killer while embracing the notorious “Great Replacement Theory,” which claims liberals and Jews are using immigrants to “replace” white cultural and political power in the United States.
Considering that a New York Times investigation recently found that Fox News star Tucker Carlson has espoused a version of the racist theory at least 400 times on-air, it didn’t take long for Fox and other conservatives to face backlash over their rhetoric in the wake of the shooting. And the women of The View did not hold back on Monday.
Navarro, for instance, said the massacre reminded her of the 2019 El Paso shooting in which a white-supremacist gunman killed 23 people while deliberately hunting down Latino individuals at a Walmart.
“It’s absolutely the same thing replaying itself over and over again in places that are supposed to be safe, in places where we all go,” she exclaimed.
“I think it’s time to name names and point fingers,” Navarro further declared, noting Carlson’s repeated endorsement of the far-right conspiracy theory. She also took aim at Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third-ranking Republican in the House who has embraced the theory in political ads.
“And it's not just them. It’s other hosts of Fox News. It’s other Republican leaders, and they need to be called out,” the “Never Trump” Republican pundit continued before turning her attention to Fox’s sponsors.
“If you are an advertiser advertising on that station, you are part of the problem,” Navarro fumed. “If you sit on the board and are trying to be a civilized person—Paul Ryan and my friends, I'm talking to you—you are part of the problem! If you are a Republican donor tweeting about how bad you feel about this, but you're donating to people like Elise Stefanik, you are part of the problem!”
She added: “If you are a staffer working for them, you are part of the problem. if you are voting for them, you are part of the problem. I'll tell you what ‘Great Replacement Theory’ should be—we should replace all these people peddling hate and making financial and political gain from spreading racism. We should replace them with the people who hold up American values.”
Liberal co-host Joy Behar piggybacked on Navarro’s rant, warning Stefanik’s staff to “quit now” because “it’s only going to get worse” moving forward.
“We need to point fingers,” Sunny Hostin agreed before reading a “legal note” from Stefanik’s senior adviser and Fox News insisting that Carlson and the congresswoman haven’t advocated for the racist theory.
“We have the receipts! Pay for them,” Navarro pushed back on the explanations.
Whoopi Goldberg, meanwhile, took issue with conservatives and Fox hosts using “code” to “hide behind” their possible racist intent while invoking the theory before also agreeing with Navarro.
“They're allowed to hide behind the First Amendment,” she concluded. “But they shouldn't be allowed to hide their hateful, racist rhetoric, and to Ana's point, we need to be able to point it out.”
