A Fox News talk show host has implied that the Black Lives Matter movement should be declared a hate-group, in response to the recent murder of a Texas police officer.
During an interview with conservative African-American writer Kevin Jackson, Fox and Friends host Elisabeth Hasselbeck discussed on Monday the fatal shooting of Darren Goforth, a white sheriff’s deputy from Houston, Texas. The suspected killer, 30-year-old Shannon Miles, is black.
“Why has the Black Lives Matter movement not been classified yet as a hate group?” Hasselbeck asked in response to the killing. “I mean, how much more has to go in this direction before someone actually labels it as such?”
The Fox News segment included footage of a Black Lives Matter protest at the Minnesota State Fair on Saturday, in which marchers chanted “fry like bacon, pigs in a blanket.”
“Well, they should do it,” Jackson told Hasselbeck, supporting her assertion that the protesters be labelled as a hate group. “But unfortunately it’s being financed by the leftists,” he said, adding: “Ironically, it’s people that have nothing, really no concern at all about black lives.”
At a hearing on Monday, a prosecutor said Miles shot Goforth 15 times with a 40-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun. Investigators said they were unsure on Monday what motivated Miles to open fire at Deputy Goforth, a father of two and 10-year veteran of the Harris County Sheriff’s Office.
At a weekend press conference, Sheriff Ron Hickman said that he believes Goforth was targeted because of his uniform. “We’ve heard Black Lives Matter, All Lives Matter. Well, cops’ lives matter, too,” he said.
Aren’t the police supposed to do investigations before making supposed statements of fact? Or nah? https://t.co/PXomVzMW9G
— deray (@deray) August 31, 2015
Deray McKesson, a lead organizer of the Black Lives Matter movement, called Hickman’s comments “prejudicial” on Twitter, and said it suggests “his department is incapable of conducting a thorough, fact driven investigation.”
In earlier statement, McKesson told the Houston Chronicle that Hickman was politicizing a tragedy “to attribute the officer’s death to a movement that seeks to end violence.”
Update 11:15pm CT, Sept. 2: Hasselbeck sought to clarify her comments on Tuesday via Twitter:
My question was NOT my opinion it was for my guest & was @ the St Paul group (NOT entire BLM) calling for cops to be “fried like bacon”.
— elisabeth hasselbeck (@ehasselbeck) September 1, 2015
Photo via Annette Bernhardt/Flickr (CC BY 2.0) | Remix by Max Fleishman
