The savvy pop culture pundits over at Fox News have struck again with yet another Very Bad #HotTake. Just days after a vicious takedown of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the network is back to dissing Beyoncé. While guesting on Fox & Friends, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani called Queen Bey’s showstopping VMAs performance last night “a shame” and even went so far as to claim that he’s “saved more black lives” than the Lemonade pop star.
Guiliani — who, shockingly, also hated Bey’s Super Bowl Halftime show — took issue with the performance’s supposed references to racial injustice, in particular, the recent surge in racially-charged police shootings. (Beyoncé has spoken at length about such injustices and invited the mothers of victims of police violence to last night’s awards ceremony.) The former politician saw it not only as an insult to police forces, but as something of an insult to his own work and the policies he implemented while serving the Big Apple.
“You’re asking the wrong person [what they think of the performance] because I had five uncles who were police officers, two cousins who were – one who died in the line of duty,” he said. “I ran the largest and best police department in the world, the New York City Police Department. And I saved more black lives than any of those people you saw onstage by reducing crime, and particularly homicide, by 75%, of which maybe four or five thousand were African-American young people who are alive today because of the policies I put in effect that weren’t in effect for 35 years.” He concluded by saying someone of Beyoncé’s status using her platform to open a discussion about police violence is “a shame. It’s a shame.”
What’s wrong, Guiliani — couldn’t find a way to squeeze 9/11 in there? Watch the segment above.
Beyoncé isn’t the first artist Fox has accused of exacerbating tensions between minority communities and the officers that police. If you’ll recall, the channel once said that Kendrick Lamar “has done more damage to young African Americans than racism.” Keep on making America hate again, Fox.
