“Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhardt had a bit of historical amnesia on Thursday as she recalled great moments in U.S. history like our defeat of “communist Japan” in World War II.
“We defeated communist Japan, radical Islamists. We ask our men and our women to go overseas to fight for our country and sacrifice so much for this great country so we can be the land of the free, the land of the brave,” she said.
“We’re the most generous country in all of the world. Yes, we have our faults, but because of this country, our world is definitely a better place. We are great.”
Unfortunately for Earhardt, her classification of Japan is incorrect. World War II Japan was not a Communist country but was a fascist military dictatorship presided over by Emperor Hirohito. In fact, to defeat Japan and its allies in Nazi Germany, the United States famously joined forces with the Soviet Union, a communist country.
Earhardt’s co-host Steve Doocy did his best to gloss over the moment.
“Yep,” he said. “Communism and Japan and so many other things as well.”
The conversation of America’s greatness came after remarks from New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo that questioned America’s greatness in the world.
“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great,” Cuomo told an audience earlier this week. “We have not reached greatness. We will reach greatness when every American is fully engaged.”
“We will reach greatness when discrimination and stereotyping of women, 51 percent of our population, is gone, and every woman’s full potential is realized and unleashed and every woman is making her full contribution,” he added.
It’s been a busy week of Earhardt flubs. On Wednesday, the host was forced to apologize after calling Vermont’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christine Hallquist “that transgender.”
Hallquist became the first trans woman to ever receive a gubernatorial nomination from a major party after she won her primary on Tuesday.
“I was responding to the reporter’s comments when I moved too quickly and couldn’t recall Christine Hallquist’s name,” said Earhardt in an exclusive statement to TheWrap. “As a person of faith, I sincerely promise I never ever meant anything derogatory and I am sorry it may have come off that way.”
Watch above.
Fox News' Jesse Watters: His 10 Most Offensive Moments (Videos)
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
Watters' recurring segment on "The O'Reilly Factor" involved sending the host out to various events and locations across the country for man-on-the-street style interviews that mock various cultural subgroups in their own communities. In a 2016 segment, Watters went after Italian Americans at the Feast of San Gennaro festival.
One of Watters' most controversial segments came in the form of a 2016 venture into New York's Chinatown. In the heavily criticized piece, Watters turned his signature schtick on Chinese Americans, resulting in a blatantly racist segment that played on Asian stereotypes and openly mocked its subjects.
Watters' October 2016 venture to the Amish community in Pennsylvania was turned into one recurring punchline -- over the fact that the Amish don't vote or pay much attention to presidential politics. "Lucky you," he tells several people.
In 2007, O'Reilly sent Watters to ambush Bill Moyers in the street after the PBS host released a documentary criticizing the Bush administration for the Iraq War. Bill O'Reilly would later go on to call that segment a contributing factor in Moyers' decision to retire.
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
In 2015, Watters went to Penn Station to criticize the "rise of homelessness" in New York City, pointedly asking those sleeping at the station about their drug habits and what they did to make money on the streets.
On the anniversary of 9/11, Watters went to a convention for Muslim Americans to ask them about terrorism and Islamic radicals. When a woman criticized the media for linking terrorism to the Islamic religion, Watters and O'Reilly both balked at the suggestion that "Christian terrorism" could even exist.
In 2009, Amanda Terkel, then the managing editor of Think Progress, wrote a column in which she said she was "followed, harassed, and ambushed" by Watters while on vacation after she ran a column criticizing Bill O'Reilly for his comments toward rape survivors.
Watters was caught on video getting into a fight at the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner afterparty with The Huffington Post's Ryan Grim. It was later reported that Grim approached Watters with a camera asking him to apologize to Terkel for his behavior in 2009.
O'Reilly sent Watters to Philadelphia for a tone-deaf segment about racism in which he mocked the Black Lives Matter movement, criticized political correctness and generally failed to elevate the conversation surrounding race relations in America.
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Bill O’Reilly protégé will have permanent seat on network when ”The Five“ moves to primetime
Shortly after O'Reilly was ousted from Fox News, Watters took his own vacation from the network after coming under fire for making a comment about First Daughter Ivanka Trump, which some interpreted as inappropriate sexual innuendo.
