Fox News’s Greg Gutfeld has blamed the death of a homeless Black man put into a chokehold by an ex-marine in a New York City subway train, on the murder of George Floyd.
The death of Jordan Neely, who had complained of hunger and thirst, shocked and horrified scores of Americans who blamed the incident on the dehumanisation of not just Black communities but homeless members of society as well.
The death has also evoked comparisons with the murder of Floyd. Gutfeld, however, had a different take on Neely’s ghastly death – that was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner on Wednesday.
“If anybody says this is like George Floyd, no, it’s because of George Floyd,” he said on The Five on Thursday.
“Because since George Floyd, we’ve had the resulting chaos, the defunding, the emasculation of the police – egged on by The Squad, by the media, by different media outlets, except CNN. That created the pathway and a void where you saw fewer police.”
Gutfeld’s two-minute rant on Neely’s death had him seem to excuse vigilantism as a natural response to protests against police brutality as well as calling New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and MSNBC host Chris Hayes “disgusting”.
He also said people “can’t even take the subway anymore” and claimed liberals “didn’t give a s***” about Neely.
Gutfeld, a native of San Mateo, California, hosts a nightly show on the Fox News Channel.
He suggested that he supported the actions of the man who placed Neely in a chokehold. The man has not been arrested, though the Manhattan district attorney’s office is currently investigating the incident.
“They had to make the decision on their own,” Gutfeld said. “There was no police. They were adult men. It was on them: a chance to act. And they chose to act. And I support the fact that they thought people were in trouble.”
Neely, who worked as a notable Michael Jackson impersonator around New York to support himself in the aftermath of the murder of his mother in 2007, had reportedly fallen on hard times and was homeless when he was killed.
His friends remembered him this week as a joyous presence in their lives, with a gift for dancing.
Neely was said to have been acting erratically on the subway before he was placed in the chokehold, but had not attacked anyone and did not appear to be armed.
A number of prominent public officials and groups have labeled Neely’s death a murder. Ms Ocasio-Cortez described the incident as a “public execution”, though New York governer Kathy Hochul and mayor Eric Adams, in their initial comments about the incident, were both unwilling to condemn the passenger who choked Neely.
New York, like many major cities around the country, has dealt with rising rates of homelessness alongside rising rates of income and wealth inequality in the aftermath of the Covid pandemic.
