In this clip, Larry Wilmore absolutely obliterates FOX News and the Republican presidential candidates who have been attempting to twist and distort the motives behind the appalling racist murders that occurred late Wednesday in Charleston, South Carolina.
He sets up a montage of FOX News correspondents like Elizabeth Hasselback, Steve Doocy, and numerous other talking heads who are desperately trying to hide the sheer, unrepentant racism that permeates this entire case, rewriting the narrative to make it about an attack on Christianity and “religious freedom”, which is a deeply offensive and ignorant mischaracterization of a traumatic event.
Wilmore loses it: “I know you guys don’t want to admit that racial stuff is going on, but how can there be any doubt when it came out of the gunman’s mouth? Let me remind you what he said: ‘I want to shoot black people…they rape our women and are taking over our country…Not Christians. Nobody thinks Christians are going around raping everybody and taking over the country. That’s not a thing – unless you’re a Duggar. Then it’s a thing.”
Then he tears into the talking head pastors that FOX brings on to defend their own statements and presidential candidates like Rick Santorum, who also had the poor taste to try to play this as an attack on religion. It’s a poignant critique that is badly needed, given the atrocious amount of time that the right-wing has spent trying to turn the latest tragedy in America’s racial conversation about themselves.
Watch it here: