Shepard Smith and Other Fox News Hosts Criticize Trump's 'Go Back' Tweet: 'Xenophobic Eruption of Distraction'
Shepard Smith and a few other Fox News hosts on Monday criticized President Donald Trump for telling four progressive Democratic congresswomen to "go back" to where they came from in a tweet posted over the weekend.
Trump, on Sunday, referenced an ongoing feud between four progressive lawmakers and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and urged the congresswomen involved "who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe" to "go back" and "help fix" those "totally broken and crime infested placed."
The president did not name the progressive congresswomen he was referring to, however, most agree that his remarks were directed at the four members of the so-called "Squad," consisting of freshmen Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.). Despite Trump's claims that they were all foreign-born, all but one were born in America. Omar came to the U.S. as a child after her family fled her home nation of Somalia. She became a U.S. citizen at age 17.
Smith began his opening monologue on Monday's Shepard Smith Reporting with a heavy rebuke of the president's remarks.
"Our reporting begins this Monday with President Trump's latest misleading and xenophobic eruption of distraction and division, directed this time at a group of minority women in the United States Congress," the host said. "Go back to where you came from. That's what the president wrote on Twitter just yesterday, and today he called them haters of America and Jews."
Although many Fox News personalities have often expressed support for Trump, Smith is among the few with the network that has repeatedly denounced the president's actions.
Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade has stated that he thought Trump's tweets were "a mistake." Although Kilmeade also suggested that the president's tactic was to merely highlight the congresswomen as the controversial leaders of the Democrat party. "In one way, the president saying 'Why did he weigh in the way he did?' It makes him the story. The other thing is he is underlying it. He's saying 'Democrats, these are your leaders, these are your rock stars, good luck,'" the host explained on Outnumbered Monday.
Harris Faulkner, a co-panelist on the show, criticized Trump for using "an old trope that has been used against people of color," while also noting that the four freshman progressives knowingly "pick[ed] on a man who likes to fight."
"Those women have picked on a man who likes to fight. That man has leaned on some less-than-presidential rhetoric and all of it is toxic, none of it furthers the conversation, and what is the conversation we are trying to have right now?" she said. "That some people are more American than other people? Is that what we're arguing about right now?"
