Fox News has found a new way to politicize the terrorism threat and, predictably, it involves smearing President Obama. But substitute host David Webb and Andrea Tantaros also used the occasion to whip up some Islamophobia, with a little help from Bob Beckel.

Sitting in front of a huge graphic backdrop that read: WORLDWIDE TERROR ALERT, Bob Beckel first “asked” if anybody has heard of a leader of a Muslim country “who has stood up for the United States in the course of all these terrorist attacks?”

“There are none,” Andrea “Punch” Tantaros said, and Webb quickly agreed. But Perino pointed out that there had been some in the wake of 9/11. In fact, History.com notes:

Even leaders of countries that did not tend to get along terribly well with the American government expressed their sorrow and dismay. The Cuban foreign minister offered airspace and airports to American planes. Chinese and Iranian officials sent their condolences. And the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, visibly dismayed, told reporters in Gaza that the attacks were “unbelievable, unbelievable, unbelievable.” “We completely condemn this very dangerous attack,” he said, “and I convey my condolences to the American people, to the American president and to the American administration.”

Nobody mentioned that a little thing like using 9/11 to gin up support for an invasion of Iraq and, at the same time, making false accusations that it had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction, might have helped turn the tide against us.

But “Punch” Tantaros kept up the fear mongering:

They (Muslims) have been fighting us since the days of Benjamin Franklin. …They want to kill us. They’re not going to stop until everybody in this country is a Muslim or is ruled by Muslims. No matter how nice we are. …They want a Caliphate.

Webb took it a step further by suggesting there had been some kind of stealth infiltration into the White House:

This is a militancy and a militancy does not want to stay within borders. They want that Caliphate. They have different strategies. They have the urban strategy. They have the terrorist strategy. They have the political strategy. They have the Council on American Islamic Relations. They have influence in the White House. They have influence in White Houses along the way. They have a strategy to a win. …If only 10% of Muslims are radicalized, it is the largest standing army in the globe’s history.

Video available at Mediaite.



