Jones then incorrectly reported that a Border Patrol agent stormed the shooter “without any backup.” Jones explicitly framed the heroic, and false, story as evidence of the bravery of law enforcement more generally.
“In a climate where they are often demonized, I think this is a moment that we should really be appreciating law enforcement – what they did,” Jones said. “Because there could have been more people dead today if it wasn't for that special operations law enforcement officer.”
The following day, as The Associated Press and other outlets began to cast doubt on the police response, Jones went on air to defend them.
“It's so personal to suggest they didn't go into danger,” Jones said, later adding, “The suggestion that the AP would put out this report saying that they didn't run toward the danger is just simply ridiculous.”
He continued to claim without evidence that the police response had in fact saved people that day.
“Unfortunately, we lost 21 innocent lives in the process, but they did everything that they could – and it's important to note that if law enforcement didn't get there when they did this killer could have killed more people in that classroom as well as go to other classrooms,” Jones said, incorrectly.
As criticism of the police response mounted, Jones continued to urge deference to law enforcement’s narrative.
“I would tell people don't rush to speculation,” Jones said, after claiming, “They were doing everything they could to respond to the situation,” and stating, incorrectly, that there’s “no textbook definition of how to deal with this.” In fact, police protocols were updated after the 1999 Columbine school shooting, providing officers with a clear and immediate response to active shootings: Confront the attacker immediately.
Jones is hardly alone at Fox in his commitment to praising cops as a matter of habit and ideology. The network repeatedly gave airtime to a police spokesperson to lie about the facts of the case. During other segments, on-air talent opined wildly about how the heroic law enforcement response saved countless lives, or dismissed early reports calling the police response into question.
“We hear about police officers, law enforcement officers being demonized daily. And we see here the best of law enforcement officers,” Fox News contributor Ted Williams said the day after the shooting. “These law enforcement officers ran toward the danger. They ran into that classroom.”
Former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Fox contributor Tom Homan similarly used the occasion to criticize criminal justice reformers. “Even though they have been beaten up, even though they’ve been thrown under the bridge many times and attacked by the left and attacked by the media,” Homan said, getting the idiom wrong, “when there is a need, they are there and they don't hesitate to respond despite the hatred they have taken the last two years.”
Early the following morning, Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt continued to push that narrative, even as it was beginning to fall apart. “Fortunately, you have great law enforcement down there in the state of Texas that was there to respond and prevent other children from dying,” Earhardt said in an interview with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.
Earhardt’s co-host Pete Hegseth said almost the same thing. “The police did everything they could,” Hegseth claimed, “to act as fast as they could to save lives.”
“God bless the law enforcement that, as this started to happen, rushed to the sound of the guns and confronted the kid,” Fox contributor Karl Rove said later that day.
By the late afternoon, as the narrative began to shift, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld called for restraint from publishing any information at all, lest it paint the police in a negative light. “I just would rather just pull back instead of start condemning people and what they should have done and what they should not have done because the facts always end up changing in this stuff,” Gutfeld said. “So, I don't think there's any benefit to pushing out information, whether it is inaccurate or not, because frankly, what the hell do we know?”
In the month since the shooting, the police response has been almost universally recognized as a failure. Responding to the new revelations, Fox News contributor Jimmy Failla reacted by agreeing the police response wasn’t adequate, only to immediately underscore his pro-cop bona fides. “I’m embarrassingly supportive of police,” he said.
Reporting on mass shootings is difficult, traumatizing work, and diligent, honest professionals often get details wrong not out of malice, but legitimate confusion. Fox News’ coverage is something else entirely. It is reflexively deferential to police claims, even when they are called into question in real time. The network doesn’t attempt to inform its viewers, but rather to comfort them with fantasies of police heroism against an always-present risk of disorder and violence.
As Fox’s own pundits admit, that analysis is embarrassing.
