Being a fan of Fox News apparently gets you a one way ticket to threatening to publicly defecate on a road you might never actually see in person because you don’t like who it’s named after. That’s what went down in the comments section of a news story Fox put up this weekend about Los Angeles renaming a stretch of road after former President Barack Obama. Their website users offered literally thousands of comments, the vast majority of which incorporated familiar lies about the former president into pejorative jabs at a stretch of asphalt. Yup, move over wind turbines — the Trump camp’s latest target is a road.
To cover the bases of some of the main points the comments hit — no, Obama was not born in Kenya, he’s not Muslim, and he committed no apparent crimes while in office, not even via daring to implement policy that eventual Trumpers didn’t like. That targeted policy includes steps like the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as ObamaCare, which as has been established ironically provides for the health coverage of plenty of Trump supporters even as they rant and rave against it. Although they have no replacement plan on the table, the Trump administration has taken recently to pushing against the legislation in court, moving from declining to defend a few provisions of the law against a GOP state-led lawsuit to actively joining the side calling for dumping the whole thing. If they’re successful, millions of Americans could lose their life-saving health coverage.
That’s not all. The Trump team also itself reflects and parrots some of the other muddy conspiracy theories finding their way into Fox News comment threads. Remember — it’s the guy currently occupying the White House who helped lead the charge of claims that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, despite a lack of evidence for the claim. The element making Obama’s case different enough to warrant Trump’s scrutiny is pretty clear — he’s black. It’s not like there was some conservative uprising against whether other recent presidents have been really eligible to serve in the White House.
Trump went from stumping for that nonsense to occupying the White House himself. Ironically, while there, it’s worth remembering that half a dozen of his associates have faced criminal charges although it’s the Obama legacy Trump’s supporters are endlessly attempting to deride as criminal. Those charges cover some behavior that Donald himself participated in, like the hush money scheme targeting women with whom he had affairs that’s sending his former fixer Michael Cohen to prison.
So in other words — there’s really no tangible basis on which Trump fans can distinguish their dear leader’s tenure as some kind of moral step up from Obama’s time in office. It’s just racism.
Meanwhile, Trump continues to distinguish himself in office by leading the charge of such behavior, going from namecalling on Twitter like a wannabe mob leader to offering blatant lies about crime rates associated with minority communities that he hopes will stick.
Check out some screenshots of Fox commenters:
Featured Image via screenshot
