George Soros’ Foundation Calls On Fox News To Ban Commentator Joe diGenova For “McCarthyite” Claim
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Many conservative and right-wing media outlets covered the first day of the impeachment hearings by characterizing the process as a sham, a bust or boring.
But one pundit’s comment stood out: It came from Joe diGenova, who has been featured as a commentator on Fox News and Fox Business.
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In an appearance with Lou Dobbs, diGenova said “there’s no doubt that George Soros controls a very large part of the career foreign service of the United States State Department. He also controls the activities of FBI agents overseas who work for NGOs — work with NGOs. That was very evident in Ukraine.” He also said that Soros “wants to run Ukraine and he’s doing everything he can to use every lever of the United States government to make that happen, for business interests, not for good government business.”
The comment was condemned by the CEO of the Anti Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, as “trafficking in some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes.” Soros is Jewish, and has been a frequent target of the right.
Patrick Gaspard, the president of The Open Society Foundations, the philanthropy founded by Soros, fired off a letter to Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, calling diGenova’s claims “beyond rhetorical ugliness, beyond fiction, beyond ludicrous.”
“It’s patently untrue, it’s not even possible. This is McCarthyite,” he wrote.
Gaspard called on the network to bar diGenova from further appearances and to issue an on-air retraction, as well as an apology to the State Department and the FBI.
Last night, yet again, Fox gave air time to McCarthyism. This has to stop. My letter to @FoxNews:
cc @ErikWemple @brianstelter pic.twitter.com/qMdSfE94Xk— Patrick Gaspard (@patrickgaspard) November 14, 2019
Gaspard noted that Fox News banned Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch from appearances after he claimed last year that the migrant caravan at the Southern border was being funded by the “Soros-occupied State Department.” Greenblatt also called on Fox News to ban diGenova.
A Fox News spokeswoman did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Asked for a response, DiGenova referred reporters to a series of opinion pieces by John Solomon posted on the website The Hill. He also cited Solomon’s work in his appearance with Dobbs.
In his letter, Gaspard wrote that Solomon’s work has been discredited and “debunked by the U.S. State Department and recanted by Mr. Solomon’s main source.”
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