Fox News is already trying to impeach President Obama for action on immigration that he hasn’t taken yet. Fox is arguing that Obama is forcing the Republicans to impeach him.
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On Outnumbered, Fox News’s Jedediah Bila blamed Obama for the Republican desire to impeach him, “I think everyone’s afraid to point out this impeachment issue when it comes to President Obama because everyone thinks it’s totally unrealistic, but the truth is we now have a president that’s not enforcing the law. He’s not enforcing the immigration law. He is getting up every day and deciding which components of this law he thinks should be enforced and which ones shouldn’t. I mean you’re talking about executive amnesty towards millions of people. So if you’re going to talk about who’s forcing the impeachment issue this president is forcing that issue. He’s forcing us to bring that up because he refuses to enforce the laws as they stand.”
The Fox News logic sounds a lot like victim blaming because that is what it is. Abusers blame the people that they abuse for “making them” abuse them. Slave owners blamed misbehavior by slaves for the violence that they inflicted on others.
The argument that impeachment is Obama’s fault, because he is refusing to enforce the law is impossible to believe when George W. Bush blatantly refused to enforce laws by adding 150 signing statements to pieces of legislation that he disagreed with. Republicans didn’t say a peep when Bush announced that he wouldn’t enforce the law, but when President Obama suggests that he may use his constitutional powers to set up new immigration deportation guidelines, Republicans scream impeachment.
The truth is that Fox News and others have spent years using raced based politics against this president. The recent claim by Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) that Obama and Democrats are carrying out a war against white people is the latest in a long line of Republican attempts to exploit the racial divisions in our country. The Fox News claim boils down to the argument that Obama is forcing Republicans to impeach him because the black man in the White House won’t stop doing his job.
Jason is the managing editor. He is also a White House Press Pool and a Congressional correspondent for PoliticusUSA. Jason has a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science. His graduate work focused on public policy, with a specialization in social reform movements.
Awards and Professional Memberships
Member of the Society of Professional Journalists and The American Political Science Association
