The hosts of “Fox & Friends” were not amused on Friday by President Obama’s reminder to Christians that the Muslim world has not been the only corner of the globe to deal with deadly religious extremism.
“How shocked were you,” Brian Kilmeade asked viewers, “about the President’s remarks yesterday at that prayer breakfast, equating the Crusades in the year 1095 to what we’re experiencing today and witnessing with ISIS and their brutality?”
The three co-hosts then angrily talked over each other while introducing the clip of Obama speaking on Thursday at the National Prayer Breakfast.
The footage showed Obama discussing the Islamic State terror group and religious violence more broadly by mentioning the Crusades, initiated by Pope Urban II. The President said Christians should not get on a “high horse” about religious barbarism.
Back in the studio, co-host Elizabeth Hasselbeck was visibly agitated.
“Christians had nothing to do with a man being burned alive in a cage we saw on Wednesday that we saw took place last month. Nothing to do it!” Hasselbeck said.
“Yet he named them, invoked the name of Christ — our savior! — three times and talked about Christians but couldn’t call radical Islam for what it was, couldn’t name the person behind the match,” she added.
The President also mentioned the longstanding Christian defenders of slavery and Jim Crow laws in the United States.
“You know what, Mr. President?” said co-host Steve Doocy. “Slavery ended here in 1865. It is still going on in the Muslim world.”
“Essentially what he’s saying is this, who started the Crusades? Well, the Catholic Church did,” Doocy continued.
“So he’s saying the Catholic Church was the ISIS of its time,” he said. “So try telling that to the pope who is going to visit Washington, D.C.”
The hosts later wrapped up the segment by once again praising their favorite Middle Eastern autocrat, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and saying that Obama was justifying terrorist violence.
