Pete Hegseth's Fox & Friends Weekend cohosts are very upset that former NAACP lawyer Sherrilyn Ifill called Hegseth a white supremacist on MSNBC.
As we and others have already discussed, there's a long list of reasons why Fox host Pete Hegseth is completely unqualified to serve as Defense Secretary, the accusations of sexual misconduct, his inexperience, the ties to Christian nationalism and overt racism just being a few of them.
Here are Hegseth's buddies, Will Cain, Rachel Campos-Duffy and Joey Jones coming to Hegseth's defense this Saturday, and insisting Hegseth should sue Ifill for defamation, along with MSNBC, which should come as a surprise to no one, since the race-baiting is a feature and not a bug over on Fox "news."
CAIN: The attacks are coming fast and furious and ugly and defamatory. This is Sherrilyn ifill by the way, former NAACP legal defense fund president on MSNBC.
IFILL: This is someone who, you know, is known to be a white supremacist, known to be an extremist, whose platform and book basically about his opposition to the advancement of Black officers to the top brass. And the military is a important area for Black advancement. And so, him selecting that particular person, and by the way the Department of Defense has 3 million employees. There's no evidence this man has run anything. The fact he's a veteran is simply insufficient.
HAYES: I would say that Hegseth would say, that he would deny he was a white supremacist. I want to put that in the record.
IFILL: So did Trump.
CAIN: Defamatory and not somebody making the case, it's somebody making a completely unfounded accusation against somebody we all know very well. And the only thing they can try to offer up as evidence of their accusation is the fact he's not opposed to DEI non-merit based initiatives, and tattoos that they show complete historical illiteracy and bigotry towards Christianity to suggest are somehow white supremacist.
It's nothing short of ready to be sued for defamation. Good luck, MSNBC.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: I really hope Pete is considering this. This is absolutely outrageous and again, I don't even feel like it's worth defending and obviously we all know him the best. We've sat on this couch for hours and hours. If Pete Hegseth was a white supremacist, I think this Hispanic woman would know that. He is not.
He is the least racist person, and he is a patriot to the core and he was a good choice. And shame on MSNBC for not pushing back harder on this guest. Maybe they're liable as well.
JONES: You know, I think you really, I think that we don't have the ability to understand what she's saying. Let me explain this. When we hear the word white supremacist or term and think Aryan Brotherhood, you know, the worst of racism, maybe even militant, wanting to get rid of minorities when we think of what is white supremacy, but for people like her being against DEI is white supremacy. That's where they've taken this. Being pro-Christian anything is white supremacy. This idea, this anti-colonizer, anti-anything, I mean, people like her say that good grammar is white supremacy. You shouldn't expect someone to --
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Showing up on time for work.
JONES: Exactly. When you think about how radical people like her truly are, really what it does is it weakens completely for everyone, this argument or this attack because then you learn that she doesn't know what the hell white supremacy is, and she's using it as this blanket term because Pete might turn the military into something that's more of a meritocracy.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: She's threatened and you talked earlier, Will, about all the different entities in our government, who have been threatened by so many of these picks. That woman right there feeds at the trough of a cottage industry that's based on race and racializing everything, and so obviously, Pete Hegseth and his insistence that our military be merit based and mission focused, not a jobs program for minorities. It's a mission-focused agency, meant to keep us safe and he's willing to do and say whatever it takes to do that, and he's the right pick and that's why they're going after him.
They're going after him because he's dangerous, unqualified and a racist, religious extremist on top of that. They're still trying to pretend the racist dog whistles aren't blow horns at this point.
