Firing back at Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib for her public outrage at the “hate agenda” of President Donald Trump, Fox News host Pete Hegseth lobbed an incendiary charge at the Congresswoman, equating her media criticism of the New York Times’ coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with supporting a “Hamas agenda.”

Appearing on a Fox News Hannity segment that launched several rhetorical volleys against “the Squad” of freshmen Democratic Congresswomen, Hegseth tried to defend Trump’s not-so-subtle prejudicial attacks on Rep. Elijah Cummings and Baltimore by tying her to the Palestinian terror organization.

“If you look at how Rashida Tlaib talked about President Trump having a ‘hate agenda,’ I can therefore look at her and say that she has a Hamas agenda,” Hegseth claimed, before mounting a defense for a newspaper that his network routinely condemns. “She criticized the New York Times, because they, in her mind, favored Israel when Hamas was launching rockets from the Gaza strip. She said that it didn’t reflect well enough on the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip when we know it’s controlled by Hamas. If she wants to throw around labels, we can too.”

In fact, Tlaib’s critique of a Times story centered on the lack of context in its headline, which failed to note the dozens of unarmed Palestinians protestors who had been shot by Israeli forces just prior to the latest rocket barrage being launched into Israel from the Gaza Strip.

When will the world stop dehumanizing our Palestinian people who just want to be free? Headlines like this & framing it in this way just feeds into the continued lack of responsibility on Israel who unjustly oppress & target Palestinian children and families. #FreePalestine https://t.co/p3X3j8WtwM

— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) May 5, 2019

 Just prior to Hegseth’s comments, host Sean Hannity dismissed the long-term political efficacy of “the Squad,” saying: “They are going to help in the end, because to me, it seems like everyone is afraid of them. They are so radical, so extreme. I don’t think it’s going to work very well to call America a garbage country.” Hannity did not address whether the president calling Baltimore a “rodent and rat infested mess” where “no human would want to live” was also “so radical” or “so extreme.”

Watch the video above, via Fox News.

from Mediaite https://ift.tt/2MmcgdU