There is an apparent and dangerous double standard at Fox News, cable television’s most-watched network. Inflammatory rhetoric, and even the incitement and praise of violence, is simply laughed off under the auspices of humor and pushed aside by a brief or private apology.
“There is nothing funny or ironic in calling for the bombing, the gassing, the destruction of this building,” United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric explained to reporters after Fox News host Jesse Watters said the United Nations building in New York should be “bombed” or “gassed” after President Donald Trump experienced technical problems — a malfunctioning escalator and teleprompter that Watters called sabotage and an “insurrection” — during his General Assembly address last week.
“What we need to do is either leave the UN or we need to bomb it,” Watters stated on the Sept. 23 episode of “The Five.” He continued: “Maybe gas it?…We need to destroy it.”
Barely containing her laughter, co-host Dana Perino, a former White House spokesperson for former President George W. Bush, responded, “Let’s not do that.”
Watters then pivoted. “Don’t gas it. Okay, but we need to destroy it. Maybe we can demolish the building? Have everybody leave, and then we’ll demolish the building.” He blamed UN staffers for sabotaging Trump’s appearance and jeopardizing his safety, a sentiment echoed by the White House. “I hope they get to the bottom of it,” the Fox News host said. “And I hope they really injure, emotionally, the people that did it.”
But, as the UN made clear, the escalator suddenly stopped after a White House videographer accidentally triggered a safety mechanism. Regarding the teleprompter issues, UN officials stated that the White House was operating it.
Dujarric confirmed that Watters issued a private apology to Melissa Fleming, the UN global communications chief, after the body lodged a complaint with Fox News about the remarks. He did not, however, apologize on air or publicly in a broadcast, so the audience who heard his remarks may not have seen or heard the apology.
If you make a public statement, a private apology is not enough.
Neither did Watters display any acknowledgement of the potential harm of such rhetoric. As Dujarric explained to reporters, “We know painfully the reality of what happens when threats are made against the UN. We lost friends in Baghdad. I personally walked through the rubble of the building in Algiers where the UN was bombed, our colleagues in Abuja were also bombed.”
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While a call for violence against a global institution is apparently not enough to warrant public contrition or reprimand, a call to euthanize innocent people is a bridge too far, as Fox host Brian Kilmeade found out the not-so-hard way.
Discussing the stabbing death of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska, who was killed in August on a light rail train in Charlotte, N.C., Kilmeade railed against public spending on homeless and mentally ill individuals who decline help or reject services. The alleged assailant was homeless and had mental health issues. When co-host Lawrence Jones suggested that those refusing these programs could be jailed, Kilmeade escalated his rhetoric: “Or involuntary lethal injection, or something. Just kill ’em.”
Kilmeade’s initial comments came hours before the Sept. 10 assassination of Charlie Kirk. The host’s apology, however, was issued days later, and came on the heels of intense public pressure and criticism following the firing of MSNBC pundit Matthew Dowd for his insensitive remarks about Kirk’s life.
“Now, during that discussion, I wrongly said that [homeless people] should get lethal injections,” Kilmeade later acknowledged after widespread backlash. “I apologize for that extremely callous remark.”
But unlike Dowd or ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, neither Kilmeade nor Watters was taken off air for their remarks. To the contrary, Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently praised an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who was caught on tape throwing a Democratic congressional candidate to the ground during a protest in a suburb of Chicago. “Good work,” the host said.
When Fox News figures casually invoke mass violence, whether through forced lethal injections or bombing international institutions, it’s not just reckless rhetoric. It’s a flirtation with incitement. These aren’t fringe voices. They’re amplified on one of the most-watched networks in the country, shaping public sentiment and policy discourse.
But don’t expect Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr to make much of a fuss about the network’s dangerous musings. He is still denying the pressure campaign he publicly mounted against Kimmel for his comments following Kirk’s killing. “There was no threat made or suggested that if Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get fired, that someone was going to lose their license,” Carr said on Tuesday.
In a media landscape dotted with double standards, where the head enforcer is a partisan operative and fierce MAGA supporter, a “kind of, sort of” apology is perhaps the best we can hope for from Fox News.
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