Fox News' most beloved law enforcement officer, Sheriff David Clarke, asserted on Wednesday that Hillary Clinton's comment to a black radio show about her love of hot sauce was as racist as telling them that her favorite fruit was "watermelon."
During a conversation with Power 105.1's The Breakfast Club this week, Clinton was asked what one thing she always carried with her.
Her answer of hot sauced surprised the hosts because Beyonce's latest song "Formation" mentions "hot sauce in my bag, swag."
And although many news outlets have noted that Clinton has had a long-documented obsession with hot sauce, conservative media seized on the comments as evidence that she was pandering.
On Thursday, the hosts of Fox & Friends asked Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who is black, to weigh in.
"I'm surprised she didn't say watermelon," Clarke opined, referring to a racist stereotype. "Just go all the way."
"You know, this stuff is dehumanizing," he argued. "It's embarrassing, it's disgusting."
According to Clarke, black voters would be supporting Republicans if they were aware that Democrats were once the more racist of the two political parties.
"No Republican is legitimately going for the black vote," Fox News host Brian Kilmeade pointed out. "That's also an insult, isn't it?"
"There's a strategy to make that happen. It's going to take some time," Clarke insisted. "First of all, you have to reconnect black people to their history. That's what the Democrats have done over the last, I would say 30-40 years, is they have gone into these area and erased the history books about who really supported the move to abolish slavery as an institution in America."
"Lincoln freed the slaves," the sheriff continued. "And then the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it's was Democrats that were standing in the way. And it took a yeomen's effort by Republicans to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964. That's why I say if we reconnect black people with their history, they'll open their eyes and they'll know what to do."
Clarke, however, did not mention that his party had been largely seen as turning its back on African-Americans after the Civil Rights Act was passed.
"When Republicans talk about Democrats being the party that opposed civil rights, they never acknowledge that those Democrats who were in opposition became Republicans," Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart explained in response to a conservative ad in 2012. "There’s a reason the ad narrator’s history lesson ends with the Civil Rights Act. The GOP hasn’t done anything that historic, that meaningful for black Americans since then."
