Screenshot : Fox News ( Twitter )

Despite the fact that the accused shooter who killed at least 50 Muslim worshipers in Christchurch, NZ, explicitly cited the same sort of ultra-nationalist—and specifically, anti-Muslim—garbage Donald Trump routinely spews, the hosts of Fox & Friends think it would be, like, totally crazy to try to connect the president’s rhetoric to the killings.




Shooting suspect Brenton Tarrant even called Trump “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose” in his manifesto, but nope, nothing to see here.

“Regardless of political ideology, you cannot link the actions of a maniac and the workings of a maniac to any politician, left or right,” Fox & Friends co-host Jedediah Bila insisted on Monday morning’s broadcast, in response to the extremely valid criticisms that Trump’s time in the Oval Office has contributed to a growing surge of white nationalist violence.


“That is insane,” Bila added.

Let’s not forget that Trump couldn’t even wait a full 24 hours after the Christchurch shooting to fall back on his typical anti-immigrant rhetoric, warning of an “invasion” (the same phrase used by the alleged New Zealand gunman) during an Oval Office event on Friday.

In any case, speaking of “insane,” f ollowing Bila, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade chimed in on Monday to claim that:

If they put Barack Obama’s name in the manifesto, I would think it would be unfair to put Barack Obama on the griddle and say his policies during his years, or Clinton or Bush—I just don’t think that it’s possible in one category to say “he’s a lunatic, he’s nuts, he’s a cold-blooded killer” at the same time just go “well, if it wasn’t for such-and-such’s language and verbiage it wouldn’t have happened.”


Does anybody really think that if a mass murderer directly cited a former Democratic president—especially Barack Obama—Fox News wouldn’t have made that their banner headline for at least a week?