Ana Navarro, a co-host of ABC’s “The View,” argued that leadership at Fox News’s parent company, advertisers on the network and members of the Republican Party’s donor base should be “replaced” following a mass shooting of mostly Black shoppers at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., over the weekend.
The white teenager accused of carrying out the attack espoused white supremacist ideology in an online manifesto previously posted online, elements of which critics say has gained a mainstream audience through Fox News.
“Listen, if you are an advertiser advertising on that station, you are part of the problem. If you sit on the board and are trying to be a civilized person — Paul Ryan, my friend, I’m talking to you — you are part of the problem,” Navarro said on the show Monday.
“If you’re a Republican donor tweeting about how bad you feel about this but donating to people like [Rep.] Elise Stefanik [R-N.Y.], you are part of the problem. If you are a staffer working for them, you are part of the problem,” she added.
Former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) joined the board of Fox Corp. in 2019.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) blamed current GOP House leadership on Monday for “enabling white nationalism” following the mass killing.
Navarro is one of several pundits who have in recent days tied the deadly attack on Saturday to the viewpoints and opinions expressed on Fox News’s airwaves.
Specifically, several media watchdogs and critics of the network have repeatedly cited comments about immigration and voting demographics from Fox prime-time host Tucker Carlson as a dog whistle to far-right groups that believe in the “great replacement theory,” a racist conspiracy that says members of the white race are being “replaced” by nonwhite immigrants.
“I’ll tell ya what great replacement theory should be,” Navarro said. “We should replace all these people peddling hate and making financial and political gain from spreading racism. We should replace them with people who hold up American values.”
A story published Monday in the New York Post, which is also owned by Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch, highlighted a manifesto the suspected shooter published online before the attack that criticized Murdoch in an antisemitic way. The 18-year-old also espoused the great replacement theory and said he had been radicalized by content he had seen online.
A Fox News spokesperson on Monday pointed to statements before Saturday’s attack from Carlson condemning political violence.