Fox News took three actions prior to Thursday night’s GOP primary debate in Des Moines, Iowa that some found “agenda driven” against conservatives and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump.
First, Fox News invited an “anti-Trump Muslim” to ask a debate question.
According to Breitbart News’s Neil Munro, Nabela Noor – a Muslim woman and YouTube personality – was approved by Fox News and the Republican National Committee (RNC) to ask a question at the debate.
Noor is described as a “Muslim advocate who describes Donald Trump as a bigot and who visually portrayed him as being in agreement with national socialist Adolf Hitler.”
Trump previously received widespread criticism from Democrats and fellow Republicans for proposing a ban on Muslim immigration for the sake of national security in the wake of several radical Islamic terror attacks, and until proper vetting processes for issuing visas is put into place.
Secondly, Fox News invited an “illegal immigrant” to ask a debate question on Thursday.
Dulce Candy – another YouTube personality – was an illegal immigrant who reportedly came illegally to America from central Mexico and then enrolled in the U.S. military.
Trump has been one of the most vocal GOP candidates against illegal immigration and even lost a number of business deals after describing the crime that many illegal immigrants have committed once they’ve crossed the border into America.
Conservative author Michelle Malkin responded to Candy’s participation on Twitter:
FoxNews debate questioner Dulce Candy was an illegal immigrant. I’m sure her q will be fair. https://t.co/ixZ8nlhIdv pic.twitter.com/9pCvphOm3s
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) January 27, 2016
Malkin added, “It would be bad enough if the RNC and Fox knowingly approved agenda-driven YouTube questioners. But what does it say about their competence if they cluelessly allowed the invitees to participate without properly vetting them in the first place?”
Third, Fox News released a press statement on Tuesday, which many media professionals found to be unprofessional and an attempt to “provoke” Trump.
The press release was in response to Trump polling his Twitter followers about whether or not he should attend the debate with moderator Megyn Kelly, whom Trump said asked him an unfair question in a prior debate:
We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.
Breitbart News’s Jeff Poor reports that MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough responded to the press statement, saying it was provoking to the GOP frontrunner. Scarborough said:
First of all, a news organization that is going to run a debate provoking a candidate like that just is asking for it. Donald Trump, I will tell you, I would literally go to the center of Sixth Avenue and set myself on fire – set myself on fire before I stood on a debate stage with any news organization that did that statement. I would tell them to go to hell a lot faster than Donald Trump did. I’m not talking about Fox. I got a lot of friends at Fox. I love Fox. I know a lot of people at Fox are really twisted up about how this has gone down and how Megyn Kelly is somehow with Michael Moore taking over the network. They provoked him. They had to know.
Trump, pointing at the “wise guy” press release, said he wouldn’t participate in Fox News’s debate on Thursday and instead is holding an event for veterans at the time of the debate.
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