Shepard Smith Contradicts His Network on Migrant Caravan: ‘There Is No Invasion’
“No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about,” Smith tells Fox News viewers
Jon Levine | October 30, 2018 @ 6:19 AM
Last Updated: October 30, 2018 @ 6:25 AM
Fox News anchor Shepard Smith used his Monday show to broadly contradict many of the claims coming from his own network, telling viewers that the migrant caravan that has obsessed Fox News and Fox Business primetime hosts was a big nothingburger.
“Tomorrow the migrants — according to Fox News reporting — are more than two months away if any of them actually come here. But tomorrow is one week before the mid-term election, which is what all of this is about,” said Smith in a calming southern monotone. “There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you. There is nothing at all to worry about.”
“They got us all riled up in April, remember?” he added, alluding to an earlier migrant caravan story. “The result was 14 arrests. We’re America, we can handle it.”
The Shep pep talk was dramatically at odds with other Fox News programing that has regularly railed against the caravan. Hosts from morning to primetime have warned of “hordes” and an “invasion.” Diseases like “polio,” “smallpox” and even “leprosy” have also made cameo appearances on the network’s airwaves.
“What about diseases? I mean, there’s a reason you can’t bring a kid to school unless he’s inoculated,” said Brian Kilmeade on “Fox & Friends” earlier this week. “Is it too much to say that we just can’t have countries, entire populations come in here without being looked at as hard-hearted?”
It’s not the first time Smith has given liberals something to cheer about at the conservative-leaning network. He has previously rebutted Fox News and Trump on the caravan, most recently about a week ago.
“President Trump is calling the caravan a national emergency,” Smith said. “And he’s claiming criminals and unknown alleged Middle Easterners are mixed in with the crowd. 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.”
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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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.
