Fox Business Interviews Hate Group Leader With Past Ties To White Supremacists About Baton Rouge Shooting

Written by Media Matters Staff

Published

Fox Business hosted Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council (FRC) to comment on the July 17 fatal shooting of three law enforcement officers in Baton Rouge, LA, and President Obama’s response to recent attacks on police. Cavuto: Coast to Coast guest host Charles Payne failed to disclose the fact that FRC is a hate group, and also ignored Perkins’ past ties to the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens, even as Perkins blamed the president for the country’s “racial division.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has designated FRC as an anti-LGBT “hate group” since 2010 due to the organization's known propagation of extreme falsehoods about LGBT people. Additionally, SPLC has detailed Perkins’ ties to white supremacist groups -- in 1996 Perkins reportedly paid $82,500 to use the mailing list of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke for a Senate campaign he was managing. As SPLC explained, “The campaign was fined $3,000 for filing false disclosure forms in a bid to hide the payment to Duke.” In 2001, Perkins also “gave a speech to the Louisiana chapter of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white supremacist group that has described black people as a ‘retrograde species of humanity.’”

From the July 18 edition of Fox Business’ Cavuto: Coast to Coast:

CHARLES PAYNE (Host): Tony Perkins is an evangelical leader and a former Baton Rouge police officer. First and foremost Tony our prayers go out to you and the Baton Rouge police family. Another horrific scene of violence in America. I think we all know that social media certainly has its downsides, particularly the spread of evil and hatred. But what is President Obama getting wrong with respect to maybe the buck stopping at his desk as well?

TONY PERKINS: Well Charles, we have seen more of a polarized society. I look back at when I was on the street -- it’s been about 25 years ago. I was both with the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's office and city police at different times. And we have seen -- I talked to some officers yesterday who were on the scene, in fact I was in Baton Rouge yesterday. And there is a great concern and there is a concern that this president has sown these seeds of distrust and division. I mean, we go back to 2009 after his first year, back to Harvard, where there was the arrest of a professor there who was entering a house, 9-1-1 call, and remember that led to the “beer summit” where the president sat down with the police. But there was an assumption made that there was a racially motivated arrest. That has played out over and over again. When the facts are made clear, we realize that was not the case. This has sown more racial division in this country. And as a result, as we have seen from Ferguson and elsewhere, we’re putting the lives of people -- we’re dividing the citizens from the police, and that’s dangerous.

PAYNE: Tony, a lot of people say it would be cynical at this point. Nevertheless, if you had President Obama's ear, what could he do and the amount of time that he has left in office to change this. Do you think just coming up and perhaps having one serious day of recognizing police officers without throwing anything else in the mix, talking about how they step out there for us, how they protect us, really honoring the men and women in blue. Could that go a step toward fixing some of this?

PERKINS: Well it certainly couldn't hurt. But what I think has been created here has become so large and it’s spread across the country as a cancer. Yesterday I was actually in Baton Rouge because I was ready to do a -- leading a church service I was preaching. And I got the word of the shooting of these officers just as I was about to baptize the son of a city police officer. And I’ll have to tell you, Charles, where we stand as a nation today, I think the one thing that can bring us together is our common faith in the God who created us. And I think if anything, the president needs to call the nation to pray, and pray to the God that our forefathers prayed to. We need unity right now more than we need anything. We've got to put aside these racial divides, these ethnic divides. Even the political divides. If we are going to be a nation that abides by the law, we have to uphold the law. And that starts all the way at the top. And that was reflected in the platform that’s going to be adopted this afternoon. I put language in there last week not knowing that this would happen in Baton Rouge, but it has. It’s time to stop it.

PAYNE: Tell us more about the language, Tony, because I hadn't heard anything about it.

PERKINS: Well, I put language into the platform last week that will be adopted formally today, this afternoon, on the convention floor that calls on the next president to stop sowing these seeds of discord and distrust between the police and the people that they are sworn to protect and to serve. And that starts with being law abiders. We have seen from this administration lawlessness, which has sown this distrust of authority. And then we’ve seen the president again and his administration jumped to conclusions before the facts were known and has made the police the bad guys. I've spoken to the officers that were tracking the case in Baton Rouge -- most recent case. When this is all said and done, the investigation is clear and the evidence is seen by the public, the shooting was justified. Tragic, but justified. It is unreasonable for the president of the United States to interject himself into issues like this and inflame the divide in our communities.