On Saturday's AM Joy, during a discussion of President Donald Trump's recent tweet on South African efforts to expropriate more land from white farmers, MSNBC contributor Jason Johnson managed to squeeze in a complaint about Fox News daring to cover the discovery of murder victim Mollie Tibbett's body on the same day as breaking news on Paul Manafort's legal problems.
In fact, Fox News Channel spent a great deal more time on the legal problems of Manafort and Michael Cohen than on the Tibbetts story the evening both stories broke.
Near the end of Saturday's show, Johnson -- also politics editor of The Root -- asserted: "Trump's racism is a brand-new, extra hot sauce brand of the bigotry that black people have been warning America about for 100 years, but no one was listening to us."
He soon suggested that Fox News was trying to distract attention from the Mueller probe by covering the Tibbetts murder case as he added: "It's this kind of racialized distraction that the right does, right? The day that we find out Manafort's in trouble, Fox News runs a story about Mollie Tibbetts."
But, after the news broke that an illegal immigrant confessed to killing Tibbetts, all three broadcast network evening newscasts found the story newsworthy as each show gave it full stories of more than two minutes each. CNN's Erin Burnett Outfront -- guest hosted by Poppy Harlow -- even gave it almost three minutes.
Over on Fox News Chennel, Baier spent almost 30 minutes on the Manafort and Cohen news, but less than two minutes on Tibbetts. Martha MaCallum and Tucker Carlson spent the bulk of their airtime on President Donald Trump's rally in West Virginia, but also spent some time on both the Tibetts story and the Manafort and Cohen story.
Sean Hannity spent the overwhelming majority of his hour on Manafort and Cohen, and made time for a five-minute discussion of Tibbetts near the end of the show. MSNBC famously spent all their airtime Tuesday evening discussing Manafort and Cohen, with one guest complaining about Fox News covering Tibbetts.
Back to AM Joy, Johnson claimed the Trump administration is "aligning itself with global white nationalists and white supremacists" in countries like Israel, Italy, and Germany, and worried: "It is a danger to the world when he tweeted that."
A bit later, he concluded that white Americans must do more to fight racism, calling it a "white people problem." Here was Johnson:
I've always said, look, racism is -- ultimately it's a white people problem. They created the problem -- they got to fix it. And I know people don't like to say that, but its true, and that's what we have to understand in this country.
