The Fox News interview with Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar Wednesday night didn’t go over well even in the one place it would be expected to meet with the most uncritical approval — Fox News . At least two Fox News personalities blasted the Duggar interview, with one even condemning the Duggar family — who normally enjoy broad popularity in the conservative media — as “sick creeps.”
The interview was the first media appearance by the Duggar family since a scandal broke over accusations that Duggar scion Josh Duggar sexually abused five young girls — four of them his sisters and one only five-years-old — when he was a teenager. In the interview, the Duggars admitted that Josh had indeed committed the acts of sex abuse.
But the performance by the Duggar parents in the interview has been widely condemned as disturbing for the Duggars’ apparent attempts to dismiss Josh Duggar’s sexual assaults on the young girls as somehow not serious or as overblown by the media, and their tendency to the focus the conversation on what they say is a media smear campaign against them.
In fact, the statement in the interview by Jim-Bob and Michelle Duggar, stars of the TLC reality show 19 Kids And Counting , was so poorly received that even on Fox News’ own airwaves, pundits had sharp criticism of the Duggar family.
Greg Gutfeld, on the weekday panel discussion show The Five , scoffed at the idea that there is a concerted campaign against the Duggars.
“There’s a backlash against them because they have a sick son who molested maybe his siblings and was protected by it,” Gutfeld said.
“Confession, for some people, is a way out of heinous activity,” Gutfeld continued. “Sick creeps are saying, like, ‘I have been forgiven and, therefore, isn’t that enough?’ They are using religion as a shield and that’s disgusting. To me, that’s disgusting.”
Gutfeld then responded to comments by former Fox host, now presidential hopeful, Mike Huckabee, who has defended the Duggars as victims of a “bloodthirst” by the media.
“I wonder if Josh were a member of [Muslim advocacy group] CAIR, would forgiveness by Huckabee or anybody else be as discussed like this?” Gutfeld asked. “If the Duggars weren’t part of a religious team that you belonged to, would you be as sympathetic?”
On the Fox News morning show, Fox and Friends , psychologist Keith Ablow — who usually appears on Fox providing unfavorable psychoanalysis of President Barack Obama — also ripped the Duggar family.
“This family in my opinion isn’t very much keyed in to empathy and the feelings of others,” Ablow noted after watching the Duggar interview, adding that the Duggar family appeared “locked in denial” regarding the seriousness of Josh Duggar’s sexual abuse of five young girls.
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