The News

The White House denounced Fox News this week over feedback by one in every of its hosts, Greg Gutfeld, that some Jews “had to be useful” as a method for survival in Nazi focus camps, calling his remarks “an obscenity.”

Mr. Gutfeld, who took over the ten p.m. time slot final week as a part of a reshuffling of programming at Fox, made the feedback throughout a debate on “The Five” about Florida’s new African American history curriculum. New directions for center college college students, championed by the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, say college students needs to be instructed that “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” an outline that has drawn widespread rebuke.

During an trade with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host who equated the brand new historical past requirements to saying Jews derived some profit from being imprisoned throughout the Holocaust, Mr. Gutfeld requested her in regards to the work of Viktor Frankl, a Jewish psychiatrist who wrote about his wrestle for survival at Auschwitz and different Nazi camps.

“Did you ever read ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’?” Mr. Gutfeld stated. “Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive.”

Ms. Tarlov didn’t handle Mr. Gutfeld’s query straight, as a substitute saying she was involved about center college kids being taught what Florida had set in its new curriculum.

A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, launched an announcement on Tuesday condemning Fox News for broadcasting Mr. Gutfeld’s feedback, calling them “a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement.” He added, “There was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust.”

Fox News has not commented on Mr. Gutfeld’s assertion.

Background: A rocky relationship with Fox News.

Fox News and the Biden White House have lengthy had a contentious relationship. And neither has been shy about airing their variations in public. Much because the community’s hosts and commentators will not be shy about pillorying President Biden and his administration on any variety of subjects — inflation, the president’s age, the authorized woes of his son Hunter — the White House has usually attacked the credibility of Fox, the nation’s main supply of conservative news.

Just final month, Mr. Bates accused the community of “lying through their teeth,” including {that a} Fox reporter had misrepresented the topic of an article in regards to the show of a Pride flag when contacting the White House media workplace for remark.

The president himself has been vocal — and typically testy — about Fox’s questioning of his report. When the Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy requested Mr. Biden final yr if inflation may be a political legal responsibility for him, Mr. Biden responded underneath his breath with vulgar language.

Why It Matters: Controversies are expensive for Fox.

Controversies over offensive statements by Fox News hosts are nothing new for the community. But they’ve been expensive in some ways.

Fox agreed in April to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems over broadcasting false data that Dominion had participated in a plot to steal votes from President Donald J. Trump.

Years of advertiser boycotts, set off by nativist and racist sentiments promoted by hosts like Tucker Carlson, left Fox News with few blue chip firms prepared to promote. That promoting had begun to return to Fox after it took Mr. Carlson off the air in April and canceled his present.