Ann Kirkpatrick was invited via a contact on file for her, but Massachusetts state senator Barbara L’Italien appeared instead

Desiree Dunne, executive producer of Fox & Friends First, has spoken after the network mistakenly interviewed an anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) Democrat, instead of former Democratic congresswoman Ann Kirkpatrick.

Dunne said they invited Kirkpatrick to appear through the press contact they had on file for her: Joe Katz, who accepted the invitation on Kirkpatrick’s behalf. “Katz followed with an email confirming the segment, which also included background information and a campaign logo for Ann Kirkpatrick,” Dunne said.

Katz didn’t deny that he used his old email to respond, but in a statement to the Guardian said: “Fox News reached out to our staff believing they were reaching the Kirkpatrick office due to their own failure of due diligence. Over the process of getting the interview scheduled, they repeatedly showed very little grasp on the facts, down to whether or not Ann Kirkpatrick was still in Congress.”

He says the blame lays purely with Fox News for the mistake, adding: “This would not have happened to an actual news station. Fox’s lack of attention to the facts normally is a disaster for the country, it just so happened that today it was embarrassing for them.”

It was supposed to be straightforward: early morning Fox News hosts would interview Kirkpatrick about her support for Ice, the controversial agency responsible for enforcing American immigration policy.

Kirkpatrick had been booed at a congressional primary in Arizona the previous day for speaking in support of Ice. The conservative, pro-Trump news network has a long history of interviewing Democrats who share parts of their agenda to give the impression of bipartisanship.



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But when the hosts threw her a softball question about her support for Ice, they got a surprising response. “Good morning. I’m actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump,” began the interviewee. “I feel that what’s happening at the border is wrong. I’m a mother of four, and I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane.”



The hosts looked confused, but soon realized what was going on – they had booked the wrong guest.

“I’m actually Barbara L’Italien. I’m a state senator representing a large immigrant community,” the woman they thought was Kirkpatrick said. L’Italien is a Democrat and outspoken critic of Ice who is running for Congress in Massachusetts.

The hosts, unsure of how to handle the situation, let L’Italien continue unimpeded. “I keep thinking about what we’re putting parents through,” she said. “Imagining how terrifying that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not knowing if I’d ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents’ arms, stop putting kids in cages and stop making three-year-olds defend themselves in court.

At this point, the hosts tried to push back against L’Italien. “That practice has ended now,” said host Rob Schmitt. “Kids have been reunited with their families,” his colleague Jillian Mele claimed.

As L’Italien began her response, reiterating that she wasn’t Ann Kirkpatrick, Schmitt began talking over her. “Who is this? Who is this?” he can be heard saying. Seconds later, L’Italien’s feed was cut.

“That didn’t go as planned,” Schmitt said, before the show moved to a commercial break.

L’Italien later posted a video of what she planned to have said, had she not been cut off.

On a 24-hour news channel where hundreds of guests appear each day, there is always the possibility that the wrong guest might end up in the studio. BBC News memorably interviewed taxi driver Guy Goma, who was waiting in reception for a job interview, about legal issues at Apple. It emerged he had been mistaken for Guy Kewney, a legal expert. The same channel also once introduced the journalist Michael Wolff as Ben Walker, the baseball editor of the Associated Press.