Fox Business News host Charles Payne said Monday that he made a “mistake” in tweeting a fake, racist photo to denounce people participating in “#blackbrunch,” but he stood by his criticism of the protesters.
“Listen, it was a mistake on my part, the picture. But everything I said was right,” Payne said on his show “Making Money.”
Payne argued that the “#blackbrunch” protests were not carried out in the spirit of nonviolence and were instead an act of intimidation. He also suggested that there were people “behind the scenes” unconnected to the larger “#blacklivesmatter” protest movement who were using the brunch stunt to push an alternate agenda.
“This whole hashtag protest has a single goal from the beginning,” he said. “There’s a rich person pulling the strings. It’s anarchy, not about black lives.”
One of the first “#blackbrunch” protesters in Oakland, California told the Los Angeles Times that he and others were inspired by civil rights-era acts of civil disobedience like lunch counter sit-ins. But the Fox host drew a bright line between these present-day protesters and their predecessors.
“The whole thing is that the notion that this is somehow related to what Rosa Parks went through in the Montgomery bus boycott, or those sit-ins at Woolworth’s, is just preposterous. Those were fights that underscored basic human dignity,” Payne said. “I mean, we’re talking about where a person could sit on a bus or being illegal to eat in a certain area or certain public restaurants.”
Watch below via Fox Business News:
