Fox host attacks Jacob Blake: “Should his name be celebrated on the helmets of NFL players?”
Fox hosts lash out at sports figures who are concerned about social justice issues
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From the August 30, 2020, edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends Weekend
WILL CAIN (CO-HOST): I think the NFL needs to tread very lightly here. I think they need to be very careful. There's certainly issues in this country that are needed to be addressed and players have a high desire to address these issues. But if you tell the rest of the country that your country is racist and your police are hunting members of the African American community down in the streets, you are going to turn off a massive portion of your audience.
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PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): I don't care what my quarterback thinks -- You watch how Drew Brees changed his stance on this, totally caved from a stance that he had before. I don't want my athletes kneeling for the national anthem. We don't need two national anthems -- a Black national anthem. Should Jacob Blake’s -- listen, this is a guy who sexually assaulted a woman, had a series of abuse, resisted arrest -- should his name be celebrated on the helmets of NFL players? That’s what’s being discussed right now. Is that what I want to watch? People, it's one-sided view, it's very political.
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JEDEDIAH BILA (CO-HOST): The truth is, they feel that in this moment they have to do more. Many of these athletes say I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines, these issues are too important. Maybe they feel like just playing a game isn't enough right now because of what's going on in the streets.
PETE HEGSETH (CO-HOST): Cause --
BILA: So just looking at it from their perspective, they may not care what we think about it. They may just say, we don't care. We're going to do this, this is what we feel in our hearts and everyone else seems to be doing it. So why not them?
CAIN: Jedediah, while I appreciate that conviction that you lay out, the players may hold, I would suggest you have three different opportunities to turn off your audience. One is simply by injecting politics into your entertainment product. Maybe you're right. Maybe that horse is out of the barn and we will always have politics now in every form of entertainment.
But the second and third layers to me are just as important. Are you telling the truth about these issues? Are you getting to the facts or are you advocating? And then finally, are you only giving a one-sided political point of view --
HEGSETH: That's it.
CAIN: -- that your audience must sign up for in order to watch your product. Every step of the way -- one, two, three -- you are not only turning off an audience, you are telling an audience to leave.
HEGSETH: It's true.
BILA: Yeah -- but it's their truth. They're talking about their truth.