While his colleague Jon Stewart decided not to tell any jokes on Thursday after the killing of nine people in Charleston, S.C., Larry Wilmore had more to say.
“Even on a day like today, Fox News just makes my fucking head explode,” the host of “The Nightly Show” said.
He ran a montage of clips showing Fox frame the attack of a historically black church as an “attack on faith,” in the words of “Fox & Friends” co-anchor Elizabeth Hasselbeck, and actively downplay the idea it was a racially-motivated attack.
Wilmore was stunned, referencing the evidence and replaying the clips reporting shooter Dylann Roof’s racism and statements to the victims like, “you are raping our women and taking over the country.”
“Nice try anyway, Fox,” Wilmore said.
Next he turned to presidential candidate and former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), who echoed the Fox line, saying the attack was an assault on “religious liberty.”
Wilmore pointed out that when four black girls were killed in a church bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, there wasn’t a question about motive.
“Back then, no one pretended to wonder what the motivation was,” he said. “If you tried to say it was about religion, even the perpetrators would have corrected you.”
Watch the clip, courtesy of Comedy Central:
