Fox & Friends gushed over South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg's return to his Indiana hometown Sunday for a raucous town hall over a recent racially-charged police shooting which occurred while the 2020 presidential candidate was on the campaign trail.
The Monday morning Fox News crew labeled Buttigieg "weak" and "overwhelmed" by the primarily black attendees at a South Bend town hall Sunday. The event revealed intense anger after the June 16 shooting of 53-year-old Eric Jack Logan by white police officer Sgt. Ryan O'Neill, who was responding to reports of car burglaries early Sunday morning. O'Neill claimed Logan approached him with a knife but he failed to turn on his body camera, prompting an already skeptical African-American community to erupt with calls for their city's mayor to return from campaigning for president.
Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade and guest co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy mercilessly ridiculed Buttigieg, labeling him as incompetent and desperately weak Monday morning.
"He looked overwhelmed by the moment, he looked small when he needed to look big. He seemed detached from the community ... he didn't do much talking and The New York Times called his demeanor 'solemn,'" Kilmeade said.
"These people were very angry, he was getting screamed at 'why don't you just go back and campaign?'" Kilmeade added. "We know how smart you are, now let's see what you did ... I could see Bill Clinton in that situation excelling."
Video emerged Sunday after the town hall event showing local residents as well as national NAACP leaders attending the town hall in the city with a population of around 100,000 people. One attendee, John Winston Jr., even performed a dramatic microphone drop after speaking to the roiled crowd.
"They keep begging us to reach out and bridge this gap and whatever else," Winston told the audience Sunday as he recounted trying to host a cookout for police officers several years ago. "And we reached out, and they said no," he added with a mic drop and strut back up the aisle as Buttigieg watched on from behind a desk on a stage.
Campos-Duffy said her husband, Wisconsin Republican congressman Sean Duffy, would never sit behind a desk and seemingly hide from irate town hall attendees. She claimed President Donald Trump would have excelled in putting off the image of a strong leader, but instead she saw some mousy man "writing things down."
"I've never seen my husband hold a town hall like that," she said. "This is a moment for him to prove he's presidential, but even just his body language looked weak and not in control."
Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy noted hecklers were labeling Buttigieg a "traitor" who they believe already sided with police over the shooting.
Kilmeade said "South Bend is not a reclamation story" and added that Buttigieg had left a campaign fish fry event in South Carolina to attend the town hall and had previously fired an "innocent" black police chief in another controversial move in his hometown.
"So far not so good," Kilmeade concluded of Buttigieg's 2020 campaign results.
A previous version of this article referred to Campos-Duffy as a co-host. She was a guest co-host of this specific show.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Benjamin Fearnow is a reporter based out of Newsweek's New York City offices. He was previously at CBS and Mediaite ... Read more
