'Elections don't work': Fox News host suggests America might have to have another civil war
Fox News commentator Greg Gutfeld suggested on Thursday that America might have no choice but to have another civil war, The Daily Beast reported.
"Gutfeld, whose rhetoric has grown angrier and more extreme in recent years, declared during Thursday’s broadcast of Fox News’ The Five that American democracy was no longer feasible. Instead, because crime has supposedly spun out of control — despite homicide rates falling this year and crime just a fraction of what it was 30 years ago — he suggested a radically violent solution," reported Justin Baragona.
The segment was discussing how some people charged with looting in Philadelphia were let go with only minor punishment, which Gutfeld called a "criminal mulligan" and tried to claim it was a completely different standard than what the January 6 rioters got — despite the fact that those circumstances were entirely different and that in fact many of the January 6 rioters were given light sentences.
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“Criminals get a mulligan, they can steal up to $900 worth of stuff, they can loiter, sleep, and shoot up in public areas, including playgrounds, they can loot and burn and call it social justice,” said Gutfeld. “They can pile up dozens of arrests and never do time. Meanwhile, what about us? Well, we have to change our lives to accommodate risk wherever we go. We have to move out of cities for the sake of the safety of our families and our own safety. That’s what’s happening.”
He went on to say that, "I return to my imperfect analogy from yesterday. We had a war over slavery. We knew slavery was inhumane and immoral, but somehow we couldn’t solve slavery peacefully." He added that "It leaves you with ‘you need to make war to bring peace’ because you have a side that cannot change. Because then that means the admission that their beliefs have been corrupt all the time. So in a way, you have to force them to surrender." When one of his co-hosts pointed out we can resolve our differences through an election, he shot back, “No, elections don’t work. We know that. We know they don’t work!”
Gutfeld, known as one of the more joke-cracking hosts at Fox, has come under fire for controversial statements several times in the past; in June, he suggested, half-jokingly, that conspiracy theorist presidential candidate RFK Jr. is right that there are "substances in the water" that turn men gender-nonbinary. In July, he was condemned by the Auschwitz Memorial for claiming that some Jews had survived the Holocaust by being "useful."