Fox News host Laura Ingraham displayed a graphic of Jewish billionaire investor George Soros clutching banknotes alongside President Joe Biden on her programme on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Social media users were quick to criticise Ingraham and Fox News, with one Twitter user saying it was an example of “incredibly blatant antisemitism” from a “despicable lowlife”.
“While a lot of people like money and fame, the Occam’s razor explanation for those like [Tucker] Carlson and Ingraham is that they are just terrible people. There might be complex psychological reasons for why they’re terrible, but in the end, the ‘why’ doesn’t really matter,” The Atlantic writer Tom Nichols wrote.
Ingraham claimed that Democrats are using “dark money” to control the Supreme Court.
Justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement on Thursday. He will serve the rest of this term and President Biden has pledged to nominate a Black woman to replace him.
The Fox News host said the Democrats will quickly push through a nominee “because that’s what the left’s dark-money trolls want”.
Senate Republicans prevented President Barack Obama from replacing Justice Antonin Scalia following his 2016 death, arguing that no Supreme Court justice should be replaced in an election year.
When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in the autumn of 2020, Republicans put Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the bench in less than two months. The then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that the situation was not similar to 2016, despite both being during election years, because unlike in 2016, Republicans controlled both the White House and the Senate in 2020.
“From the get-go, the push to get Justice Breyer to retire has been spearheaded by a shady network of … dark money groups that are working to subvert — not just to change or add to our judiciary — but to change our entire system of government and frankly, our entire way of life,” Ingraham said.
“It’s a left-wing cartel that we warned you about over a year ago,” she claimed. “Meet the opaquely-funded group called Demand Justice, which is really just a front group for the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Demand Justice is led by former Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon, who yesterday revealed how this group bullied Breyer off the court and how they want the court to help validate a far-left wish list of radical policies from climate to gun control.”
“A year ago, we started publicly calling for Justice Breyer to step down,” Mr Fallon told MSNBC. “What I hope happens is that this opens people’s minds to what’s possible in terms of what the Supreme Court could be, what it could look like, and we start to be a little bit bolder and more imaginative. In reaction to rulings that are going to come down in June on issues from abortion to gun safety to the ability to regulate greenhouse gases ... that’s going to be an occasion for Democrats to see the need to support expansion of the court.”
“Now, remember, they’re not even trying to pretend that this nomination involves complex questions about statutory interpretation, constitutional philosophy or analysis,” Ingraham said. “There’s only one thing that matters to these vulture activists circling Breyer still warm on the site on his spot on the bench: using the court to do what Congress doesn’t have the votes to enact. That’s what they want. The better name for the group Demand Justice would be Demand Revolution.”
The Independent has reached out to Fox News for comment.
According to research group Open Secrets, the term dark money “refers to spending meant to influence political outcomes where the source of the money is not disclosed”.
Mr Soros has publicly donated $125m to the political action committee Democracy PAC ahead of the 2022 midterms, Politico reported.
The investor said in a statement that the funds are meant to boost pro-democracy “causes and candidates, regardless of political party” who support “strengthening the infrastructure of American democracy: voting rights and civic participation, civil rights and liberties, and the rule of law”.
He added that it was a “long-term investment” meant to be used beyond this year.
In a separate statement the president of the PAC, Alexander Soros, the son of Mr Soros, mentioned the Capitol riot on 6 January last year as well as “ongoing efforts to discredit and undermine our electoral process,” which “reveal the magnitude of the threat to our democracy”.
He said that this “is a generational threat that cannot be addressed in just one or two election cycles”.
