Fox News Decides To Push All In On Its Defense Of Donald Trump’s Plan To Ban Muslims

Well, that didn’t take long, did it? Less than three days after Donald Trump made most of America lose its collective shit over his demand that the country no longer allow any Muslims to immigrate or travel to the United States, Fox News has decided that it will go ahead and fully endorse The Donald’s odious and totally bigoted idea. Why would they do that when numerous conservative and Republican leaders have totally denounced Trump’s proposal? Maybe because polls show that GOP voters LOVE The Donald’s statement, and that’s who Fox serves.

While we had seen instances almost immediately after Trump released his call to action of Fox hosts and contributors defending the ban, the real push came Wednesday night, after Bill O’Reilly interviewed the Republican Presidential frontrunner. The O’Reilly Factor host pushed Trump on his remarks, saying that it isn’t smart to “insult a whole religion,” especially since it would likely help ISIS in its recruiting. However, in a discussion after the interview, fellow Fox hosts Stuart Varney and Lou Dobbs both revealed that they liked Trump’s plan and would like to see it implemented.

By Thursday morning, the message was clear — push Trump’s Muslim ban as a very good idea for the country. Starting with Fox & Friends, where Trump was scheduled to appear for an interview, the early part of the day consisted of segment after segment of hosts, pundits and guests declaring a ban on Muslims as necessary and totally not racist/xenophobic/unconstitutional/un-American/odious/etc.

Washington Post columnist and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley showed up on America’s Newsroom and stated that we are in “a holy war” and Trump is letting us know that this is “the Constitution versus the Quran.” She also said that excluding an entire religion from entering the country is “just a common sense statement.”

Below is video of her appearance, courtesy of Media Matters:

Later on the same program, another Fox contributor, the Washington Examiner’s Byron York, showed up to make the spurious claim that the proposal made by a reality TV star to use a religious test on immigration is totally constitutional. Despite many, many, many legal experts saying otherwise, York cited dark moments of America’s past, such as excluding Chinese from entering the country, to make his case that this is totally fine. (As scholars have pointed out, past laws restricting immigration have dealt with countries, regions or races. Also, most of these laws have been reversed and lawmakers have actually publicly apologized for some of them.)

Below is York’s segment, also courtesy of Media Matters:

Moving on, anchor Bill Hemmer did a little fearmongering about radical Islamists and how America and Europe have let way too many into their countries. This then led to a conversation with his guest where they both agreed that we need to have a “pause” in immigration until we can get our heads around the issue. In other words, an endorsement of Trump’s plan.

And the beat just kept going on and on throughout the day. As of publication, it is mid-afternoon on Thursday, You know full well that primetime, minus Megyn Kelly (maybe), we’ll have all of the hosts jumping on board and beating the drums of xenophobic hate even louder than before.