Fox News host Jeanine Pirro is being called out on social media for a racist rant in which she accused immigrants and asylum-seekers of “bringing all kinds of diseases” into the country.
The moment came during a heated debate on “Hannity” with fellow Fox News personality Geraldo Rivera in which she railed against undocumented immigrants.
Even children, she said, were part of a “chain migration” plot to bring in “a whole new family” and displace Americans.
“People can’t afford to live. They’re losing their businesses. They’re losing their hopes and dreams and ambitions,” she railed, waving her hands around as she spoke. “We’ve got people being released at the border right now who’ve got COVID.”
Rivera tried to interject, but Pirro wasn’t having it.
“I’ve listened to you. You listen to me: They’ve got COVID. They’ve got all kinds of diseases. They are being released into the United States,” she said, adding:
“Now you’re not going to tell me that a governor is going to shut me down and not allow me to do my job and let in illegals because we’ve got a heart? Mexico oughta have a heart.”
And it only got worse from there when Rivera tried to point out the contributions of immigrant essential workers throughout the pandemic.
“We need them to pick the lettuce?” she taunted. “What are you talking about, Geraldo?”
A number of critics on social media pointed out that Pirro’s rant is in line with Nazi rhetoric.
“A recurrent theme in Nazi antisemitic propaganda was that Jews spread diseases,” notes the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Pirro’s rant is also reminiscent of one her fellow Fox News host Tucker Carlson launched in 2018, which caused advertisers to flee the network.
“We have a moral obligation to admit the world’s poor, they tell us, even if it makes our own country poorer, and dirtier and more divided,” Carlson said at the time.
Fox News stuck with Carlson, who was and remains one of its top-rated hosts, even as more than 20 advertisers abandoned the show amid pressure from social media.
Now Twitter users are calling out both Pirro and the network over her latest comments: