Fox Host Claims Obama Didn't Visit Victims Of Tragedies In 8 Years; She's Wrong
Written by Media Matters Staff
Published
Fox News co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle ignored recent history when she lauded President-elect Donald Trump for visiting victims of the Ohio State University attack and slammed President Obama, claiming the current president has never made these types of visits.
Trump visited victims of the attack at OSU, which injured 11, as well as the officer who killed the attacker and spoke with the university president. During his visit, Trump called the victims “really brave people, amazing people” and called the meeting “an honor.”
Fox News’ The Five reported on the meeting in a laudatory segment praising Trump, in which co-host Kimberly said “this is what leadership looks like” and added President Obama has never gone “directly to the source”:
KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE (CO-HOST): [Trump] doesn’t sit there and talk about ideas, he actually goes out and meets the people, and sees the situation, asses it, talks to them, shakes the hand of the man who was able to save the people at the Ohio State University. This is what leadership looks like. The reason why it seems so shocking is because we didn’t see it in this past 8 years, going directly to the source and taking it to the people.
JUAN WILLIAMS (CO-HOST): Wow, holy smokes you mean President Obama, President [George W.] Bush didn’t go to meet with victims of terror?
GUILFOYLE: I did not say anything about President Bush, I said past eight years.
But President Obama has met with numerous victims both of gun violence and natural disasters, during his eight years in office. Two days after the mass shooting in a Newtown, CT elementary school in December 2012, Obama attended an interfaith vigil and met with both the victims' families and the first responders. In July of 2012, the president flew to Aurora, CO to speak with “each family who had lost someone as well as survivors struggling to recover” after a mass shooting in a movie theater killed 12 and injured 58. More recently, the president visited the flood victims in Baton Rouge, LA, the victims’ families and first responders after the San Bernardino, CA attack, and the victims and survivors of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, FL.
Fox and right-wing media have a history of attacking Obama after a national tragedy claiming that the president hasn't visited quickly enough or claimed that his visit was politicizing the event.