Fox News’ “Outnumbered” co-host Andrea Tantaros said on Thursday that Eric Holder is “an attorney general for the criminal” while arguing that the Obama administration is at least partially to blame for the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Mo., early Thursday.
“Eric Holder has proven, time again, he is an attorney general for the criminal, by the criminal, and of the criminals in the United States of America,” Tantaros said.
Fox News guest host Lou Dobbs sparked the “Outnumbered” debate by saying that Holder and President Obama have hurt the community of Ferguson. He said that while there are many factors that have contributed to issues in Ferguson, “chief among those, in my opinion, are the president of the United States and the attorney general and the way in which they have handled this community’s crisis.”
“We have seen far more charges and denigration originating from the Justice Department itself, rather than support and help,” Dobbs said.
But co-host Kirsten Powers disagreed.
“I don’t think this has anything to do with the president or Eric Holder. This is a tragedy that happened. Police officers tragically do get shot and they got shot long before Barack Obama was ever in the White House,” she said, adding that she believes the Ferguson Police Department had a lot of problems.
Tantaros jumped in to disagree with Powers.
“But the administration felt like they had to do something,” Tantaros said. “You did say that cops get shot all the time. It is not a coincidence that last night…”
Powers cut Tantaros off to say, “I didn’t say cops get shot all the time.”
After more back and forth, Tantaros launched into her criticism of Holder and the Justice Department.
“Last night, the police chief resigned. This was on the heels of the report that the Department of Justice put out. The Department of Justice has been inflaming this, as Lou points out, for a long time. And they couldn’t bring charges against Darren Wilson because the physical evidence of Darren Wilson’s testimony corroborated and matched up. So they had to do something because they intervened and they flamed the racial tensions,” she said. “They have taken this country back 50 years in terms of race relations.”
“How do you explain police officers who have been shot before Barack Obama was president?” Powers asked in response.
Watch part of the exchange below:
