Geraldo Rivera Blames Orlando Victims For Own Deaths, Says They Should’ve Fought Back

In the wake of the deadliest mass shooting in American history, a tragedy that was at both a hate crime targeting the LGBT community and a terrorist attack committed by a deranged madman, Fox News has quickly made sure to remind the American people that it is the absolute worst. Mere hours after 49 people were killed and 53 wounded at a gay nightclub in Orlando, the network was already pushing the narrative that Obama and his political correctness were solely to blame.

Come Monday morning, we were further subjected to another idiotic trope that has become popular among right-wingers when it comes to mass shootings. And that is, blame the victims for getting shot because they didn’t fight back hard enough. (Ben Carson pushed this crap after the Oregon shooting months back.) Speaking from Orlando, Geraldo Rivera told Fox & Friends viewers that the club-goers who were heinously killed had an opportunity to save their own lives because Omar Mateen had to reload.

From Media Matters’ transcript:

GERALDO RIVERA: When you’re in that situation and you have no weapons, you have two choices. If you can’t hide and you can’t run, you have two choices. You stay and die, or you fight. For God’s sakes, fight back. Fight back. There’s 100 people that he murdered with one weapon that he reloaded. When he reloaded they must, people must, America must understand, we are at war with Islamic terror, with these terrorists. We’ve got to stop them in Raqqa, we’ve got to stop them in Mosul, and we’ve got to stop them in the Pulse, Orlando.

Good to see fierce brave warrior Geraldo, who was kicked out of Iraq while on assignment for giving away military positions on live TV, shaming the dead for not doing more to stay alive. It is always easy to Monday morning quarterback a situation that you haven’t faced, stating what YOU would do, knowing full well that wouldn’t be the case. Especially considering Mateen was armed with an AR-15 and a semi-automatic pistol, and had already gotten into a shootout with a cop working security at the club.

But, this is the media we get, because this is the media we deserve.