JOY REID (HOST): So, we played a very sort of contained version of that, Eric. But, essentially, it was Sean Hannity kind of browbeating his own reporter, demanding that he ask these Black Lives Matter protesters if they are chanting vile things about police, and sort of wanting the conversation to go there. While the protesters were like, “I've never heard that. That's not why we're here.” What is going on here?
ERIC BOEHLERT: Well, there is a narrative that Fox News and the conservative media have been pumping for eight years really, right? It began with “Obama is going to take away your guns,” which never happened. It's been creating this fear, kind of this, almost a race war in America that has not transpired until now. So this is Sean Hannity, who has compared Black Lives Matter to the Ku Klux Klan. Rush Limbaugh last week was calling them a terrorist group. There is obviously nothing -- there is no facts to support that. And then we have the New York Post headline talking about a civil war and things. This is beyond sort of trying to score partisan points off a national tragedy. This is fanning really ugly and deadly paranoia rhetoric at a time when you should not be doing that.
REID: Yeah, I mean you look at the New York Post headline -- I mean sorry, you look at the Drudge Report headline, which is “Black Lives Kill.” That's what Drudge, who is one of the most-trafficked websites in the country, put on the headline, and it's designed to stoke fear not just of a probably deranged killer, which you should be afraid of, but of Black Lives Matter itself, which is a peaceful movement that has been holding marches with 40,000 people in them in major cities all over the country since 2013.
