Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner calls out former Democratic Florida Rep. Patrick Murphy on his soft take on Hamas during a live broadcast Thursday.
Faulkner confronted Murphy about his mild characterization of Hamas during a segment discussing the group’s actions and the broader geopolitical tensions in the Middle East. Faulkner was astonished at Murphy, a combat paratrooper and the first Iraq War veteran elected to Congress, for not using stronger language to describe Hamas, particularly in light of their attack October 7 that killed over 1,200 Israelis and their exploitative use of Palestinian children as human shields.
“We absolutely need to understand that he is in a vise, in a sense, because we have to bring Hamas to justice,” Murphy said, pointing out the need for President Joe Biden to act decisively amid pressures from within his party to address the situation more aggressively.
“We have to make a priority of the 130 hostages, including Americans. We gotta get them there. And so, the debate really isn’t really about bringing them to justice — and by the way, Hamas is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. They are bad people.”
However, Faulkner interrupted and criticized Murphy for soft-labeling Hamas.
“You know what, describing Hamas and you served in the military so, it boggles my mind why you would describe them simply as ‘bad people.’ They put babies in ovens. They tortured women,” she said. (RELATED: ‘That’s Not What I Said’: Ex-DNC Official Spars With Harris Faulkner About Black, Arab Voters)
“I can’t say what I really want to say about them ’cause we’re on TV,” Murphy explained.
“We can say the truth without cuss words. The women who were raped, who survived, were not even believed by the United Nations for months. This is more than just the vise on the other side or some bad people who’ve done some things,” Faulkner then responded. “By the way, that 130 plus number, my heart is with you, my heart and prayers are with those families, but yesterday, Hamas said they probably couldn’t come up with 50 to meet the release agreement. I don’t know if that means the rest are dead, they can’t find them, they’ve sold them off to Islamist Jihad and these other groups. We are playing with the devil here.