Fox Business Network will no longer book a guest who blamed the latest migrant caravan on the “Soros-occupied State Department.”
“We condemn the rhetoric by the guest on Lou Dobbs Tonight,” Gary Schreier, senior vice president of programming for Fox Business, said in a statement, according to CNN. “This episode was a repeat which has now been pulled from all future airings.”
A Fox News spokesperson told CNN that the guest, Judicial Watch head Chris Farrell, will no longer be booked on Fox Business Network or Fox News.
Farrell made the comments on Dobbs’s show while discussing the caravan of migrants making their way through Central America toward the U.S.-Mexico border. Farrell has contributed to The Hill.
“This is a criminal involvement on the part of these leftist mobs. It’s a highly organized, very elaborate sophisticated operation,” Farrell said of the caravan. “I have that from the highest levels of the Guatemalan government.”
“A lot of these folks also have affiliates who are getting money from the Soros-occupied State Department, and that is a great, great concern,” he continued.
Straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just moments ago, Lou Dobbs guest Chris Farrell (head of Judicial Watch) says Caravan is being funded/directed by the "Soros-occupied State Department". pic.twitter.com/QBSong7uk1
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 27, 2018
George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist, has recently been the target of a conspiracy theory suggesting that he has funded the migrant caravan. GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz
Matthew (Matt) GaetzHouse approves Democrat-backed bill ending mandatory arbitration Lewandowski, Democrats tangle at testy hearing State probes of Google, Facebook to test century-old antitrust laws MORE (Fla.) spread that theory in a tweet last week, days before Soros was sent a pipe bomb.
Farrell’s comments were reportedly first aired Thursday night, but replayed on the network Saturday, hours after 11 people were killed in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Members of the media and other Twitter users harshly criticized Farrell, Dobbs and the network over the comments.
You know, when the likes of Lou Dobbs takes to broadcast a jeremiad about violent “leftist mobs” on the very day that Jews are mowed down in a synagogue by a right-wight xenophobe — it is, by omission, an anti-Semitic performance, a purposed inversion of victims and victimizers.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) October 28, 2018
"Soros-occupied State Department" ? Hey @SecPompeo , maybe time to weigh in with some facts. In light of recent real attacks on Americans, this obsession with the scary, leftist, "Soros-backed" , Middle Eastern invested caravan is grotesque. https://t.co/3Yf73DIO6Q
— Michael McFaul (@McFaul) October 28, 2018
FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver pointed out that Farrell’s comments are “a version of the same conspiracy that the Pittsburgh shooter evidently believed in and which may have helped trigger the murders he committed.”
Thread. A guest on Lou Dobbs's show on Fox News is pushing a version of the same conspiracy that the Pittsburgh shooter evidently believed in and which may have helped trigger the murders he committed. Been trying not to weigh in on events of the day but this is really dangerous. https://t.co/Dlt4bknm6t
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) October 27, 2018
The suspected shooter, Robert Bowers, posted anti-Semitic messages on social media and reportedly yelled “all Jews must die” before he opened fire in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday.
The shooting is believed to be the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
