‘Fox News knows of no evidence’ to support Trump’s racist caravan lie

Trump spent his Monday spreading racist lies about a caravan of migrants traveling thousands of miles to seek asylum in the United States.

But this time Trump’s lies were so egregious, a Fox News anchor specifically called them out for being based on “no evidence” whatsoever.

Trump claimed in a Monday morning tweet that “Criminals and unknown Middle Easterners are mixed in” with the migrants traveling from Central America, and labeled the caravan a “National Emergy” (sic).

Trump repeated these baseless claims during a gaggle with reporters Monday afternoon. When reporters asked him for evidence, Trump told them to “go into the middle of the caravan, take your cameras, and search. … You’re going to find MS-13, you’re going to find Middle Eastern (sic), you’re going to find everything.”

Within minutes, Fox News anchor Shepard Smith was destroying Trump’s lies right on Trump’s favorite network.

After reporting Trump’s remarks at the top of his broadcast, Smith added, “An important note: Fox News knows of no evidence to suggest the president is accurate on that matter, and the president has offered no evidence to support what he has said.”

Later in the show, Smith drove the point home even further.

Trump “said some things that aren’t true,” Smith said. “He has no evidence to back them up. There is no evidence to back them up because it doesn’t exist, at least to our knowledge.”

Trump’s request that reporters find this evidence for him, Smith argued, sounds a lot like his invitation to the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails.

“He’s asking the media to go in, take your cameras into the center of the caravan, where he is confident, quote, ‘we will find MS-13, and we will find’ — whatever else the fear of the day is,” Smith said.

At least four other journalists who are traveling with the caravan have also reported seeing no one from the Middle East.

“This is one of [Trump’s] most dishonest weeks in political life,” Toronto Star reporter Daniel Dale — who has been tracking Trump’s lies for two years now — tweeted incredulously after Trump’s gaggle with reporters. “He’s lying about so many different things at once, and in big ways — not exaggerating or stretching, completely making stuff up.”

In addition to being wildly untrue, Dale pointed out, Trump’s lies about the caravan are also despicably racist: “Muslim fearmongering piled upon Latino fearmongering.”

Trump seems desperate to rally his xenophobic base ahead of the midterms — but his lies are getting too desperate even for Fox News.

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.