Fox News contributor and Trump-adoring Pastor Robert Jeffress assured the Christian Fox & Friends viewers that they should have no worries about the death penalty perhaps killing innocent people because, hey, they can be just like Jesus!
Jeffress described the death penalty, with a straight face and without challenge, as an “affirmation” of life. He argued that society would fall apart without capital punishment and he suggested that innocent people getting killed as a result is just a small price to pay.
JEFFRESS: Contrary to what people think, capitol punishment is not a violation of the sanctity of life, it is an affirmation of it. God is saying human life is so sacred, whoever takes it has to pay the ultimate price.
Cohost Jedediah Bila was such a death penalty cheerleader, it made me wonder if “executioner” isn’t her backup career choice. If not, perhaps she should consider it.
The pretext for the blood lust was a report that Christopher Watts, who killed his pregnant wife and two daughters, will get life in prison. Bila said skeptically that Watts “now says he has found God while serving his life sentence.”
“So is this a legitimate argument for the ban on the death penalty?” cohost Ed Henry asked. When he’s not moonlighting as a Fox & Friends host, Henry’s official title is “chief national correspondent.” In other words, he’s supposed to be a legit news guy.
But what neither Henry nor anyone else bothered to tell Fox viewers is that Watts’ life sentence had nothing to do with his finding God. It was in exchange for pleading guilty to the deaths.
Nevertheless, Bila, “asked,” “How would you ever decide who is telling the truth?” Because, apparently, better to kill a real Christian than to let a fake one stay alive in jail. Just what Jesus would say, I’m sure!
“If [finding God] were to be used as justification for removing the death penalty how would you decide who was being honest and who was just saying this to get out of the death penalty?” Bila asked, continuing the false impression that that’s how Watts got his life sentence.
“You can’t, Jedediah,” Jeffress said approvingly.
“Right!” she said.
By the way, possible prison conversion was not cited in any of the arguments for repealing the death penalty that I found.
Then came Jeffress’ jaw-dropping “be like Jesus” support:
JEFFRESS: Let's admit the death penalty is sometimes inequitably and even mistakenly applied. We know that and we ought to do everything we can to prevent that. But I remind people, the greatest example of an innocent person being executed was Jesus Christ himself. He was totally innocent, and yet in spite of that, the New Testament never calls for an end to the death penalty. Instead, Paul said in Romans 13, God has given government the power of the sword, the ability to execute in order to bring punishment against those who do evil.
Bila was not just on board but ready to weaponize the Christian messaging against liberals. “It’s been said by many on the left that this is just an inhumanity, that the death penalty is an inhumanity and thus they assert that they are actually being superior in a religious sense when they remove the death penalty,” she said haughtily. “So it’s interesting that you have a very different opinion about its historical context within the Bible and how that fares.”
Yes, interesting indeed.
Watch the deceptive, cold-hearted moralizing below, from the April 1, 2019 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters. It should have been an April Fool’s joke but it isn’t.
Republished with permission from NewsHounds.us
