Donald Trump Parrots Fox News’ Claim Of ‘War On Thanksgiving’ At Florida Rally On Tuesday
Donald Trump arrived in Florida on Tuesday afternoon to spend the Thanksgiving holiday at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach. But before heading to Mar-a-Lago, the president made a stop about 50 miles south of the mansion that he recently declared to be his new, legal residence after spending his entire life as a resident of New York City.
Trump held a campaign rally in Sunrise, Florida — just west of Fort Lauderdale — where he opened his address by apparently repeating a Fox News story alleging that liberals are waging a “War on Thanksgiving.” According to the media-monitoring site Media Matters, earlier this month the conservative news network favored by Trump aired a series of broadcasts claiming that “liberals” now want to “cancel Thanksgiving.”
While stopping short of the claim that liberals want Thanksgiving done away with altogether, Trump instead told his crowd of supporters at the 20,737-seat BB&T Center that “some people want to change the name Thanksgiving,” according to an account of the rally by Mediaite.
“Everybody in this room I know loves the name Thanksgiving and we’re not changing it,” Trump promised his supporters, without identifying any of the “people” who supposedly want to change the name of the 156-year-old holiday.
Though Thanksgiving has been celebrated in the United States even before the country’s inception, President Abraham Lincoln first declared the day a national holiday in 1863.
According to Media Matters, several different Fox News programs seized on a November 5 article by Alexandra Emanuelli on HuffPost. In the article, Emanuelli outlines a series of suggestions for families to reduce their carbon footprint during Thanksgiving dinner.
But Fox News host Tucker Carlson on November 7 made a controversial claim about the article, telling his viewers that the HuffPost article was “demanding that you cancel Thanksgiving dinner.”
Earlier on the same day, Fox & Friends also ran a segment about the HuffPost article, claiming that it said Emanuelli was “telling America cancel Thanksgiving because of the carbon footprint, telling you not to travel to see family, don’t eat meat, eat veggies.”
Fox & Friends is among Trump’s favorite broadcasts on the network, and not only as a viewer. The president frequently calls in during the show to air various grievances. On Friday of last week, Trump made a call on the show and spoke for 53 minutes.
Fox News was not alone in conservative media in attacking the HuffPost article by issuing divisive takes on its arguments. The Daily Wire site accused Emanuelli of trying to “guilt” readers into skipping Thanksgiving, while The Blaze said that HuffPost “proposed cancelling” the holiday, according to Media Matters.
