Fox News host Laura Ingraham recently criticized Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas) with a common MAGA-esque line of attack that’s often used against women and people of color.
On Friday, Ingraham reposted a video interview that featured Crockett on X, formerly Twitter. The representative had delivered remarks at a press briefing addressing the GOP’s redistricting efforts that same day. “Another reminder that having a law degree doesn’t mean you’re smart,” Ingraham wrote about Crockett on X.
The Fox News host has leveled disparaging remarks about Crockett before. In April, Ingraham and Fox News contributor Raymond Arroyo both criticized the Texas Democrat, who’s Black, by spewing racial tropes and stereotypes.
During a segment of “The Ingraham Angle,” Arroyo called Crockett the “Madea of Capitol Hill,” while Ingraham scrutinized the way the congresswoman speaks. She charged that Crockett speaks in a “very different” way than how she did in the past.
“And now she’s going very … street,” Ingraham said at the time, as she swayed her head side-to-side.
Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor of political science and human development and social policy at Northwestern University, previously told HuffPost in response to that segment of “The Ingraham Angle,” that the labels Arroyo and Ingraham used for Crockett felt “overtly racist.”
“Dog whistles tend to be subtle — you only understand them if you know what to listen for,” she said, emphasizing that their remarks weren’t “subtle references.”
President Donald Trump has a long history of questioning the intelligence of women and people of color. Among the criticisms he’s received for disparaging people of color over their intelligence — and for using phrases like “low IQ” — is the demeaning language he’s used toward Black female journalists. He infamously told CNN’s Abby Phillip during his first term as president that she asked “stupid” questions.
And as it relates to Ingraham’s recent attack on Crockett, Kari J. Winter, a professor of American studies at the University at Buffalo whose expertise includes gender, feminism, race and class, said that the Fox News host “carries water for a president who does not know the difference between an IQ test and a basic cognitive screening for dementia.”
“The way that both of them constantly disparage the intelligence of exceptionally bright, genuinely accomplished people like Jasmine Crockett reveals, I think, a deep insecurity about their own mental capacity,” she said. “Trump in particular demonstrates the wisdom of the adage my grandma told me as a child: ‘When you point a finger, three fingers are pointing back at you.’”
Trump and his MAGA base are “growing a culture of cruelty,” Winter said. And it’s concerning.
“I’m confident that Crockett easily shrugs off Ingraham’s insults, considering the source,” Winter said. “What is more concerning is the way that Ingraham, Trump and their ilk are aggressively growing a culture of cruelty, conjuring up the ugliest roots of American history.”
“Like a toxic red tide, Trump and right-wing media are deliberately propagating forms of hate and sadism that have deep roots in racism, xenophobia and misogyny,” she continued.
Winter emphasized that history is proof that a political leader can “feed an appetite for cruelty,” and that it can “grow and spread to the point where no one is safe.”
“An addiction to hate is arguably the most contagious and deadly of all human diseases. No one is safe when a society celebrates violence,” she said.
Crockett is often the target of right-wing, racist and anti-Black attacks online. She’s often ridiculed for the way she speaks and her use of African American Vernacular English (AAVE). Last month, comments she made about first lady Melania Trump’s immigration history during a hearing on Capitol Hill spurred racist attacks on social media, with some X users calling her “ghetto trash,” among other derogatory statements.
Ingraham’s recent tweet about Crockett’s intelligence spurred similar disturbing responses. Winter said that Ingraham and “other rage machines” are “masters of clickbait.”
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“They are determined to mesmerize their audience with nonstop spectacles of insults, cruelties and jeers,” she said.
