Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly told Bill O’Reilly several falsehoods Monday evening, including that pepper spray is “a food product” and that police have every right to use it to disperse non-violent protestors.
READ:Â UC Davis Professor Calls Administration “The Wrong People In Charge”
“It’s a food product, essentially,” Kelly lied, in support of police at the University of California, Davis, who used the chemical weapon on unarmed seated protestors.
Perhaps Kelly then would classify the 61 reported cases of people dying from police use of pepper spray as death by food poisoning?
O’Reilly, in perhaps the day’s greatest act of journalistic malpractice, claimed that because UC Davis is a “liberal” school, it is ok to use chemical weapons against the students. “I don’t think we have the right to Monday-morning quarterback the police,” O’Reilly says, “particularly at a place like UC Davis, which is a fairly liberal campus.”
O’Reilly also defended the police chief, saying she was just doing her job — same defense that didn’t work in “Judgment At Nurenburg.”
Also, O’Reilly claimed that University Chancellor Haketi had ordered the police to use pepper spray. This has never been determined.
Perhaps Megyn Kelly has never heard of the Fourth Amendment or the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which determined the use of pepper spray against unarmed protestors is illegal.
Ii actually unclear if the use of pepper spray in this case was legal. The 2002 Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals case of Headwaters Forest Defense v. County of Humbolt strongly mirrors the UC Davis pepper spray attack and would lead one to believe this was excessive force and, per Humbolt, violates the students’ Fourth Amendment rights.
One Gawker commentator wrote,
Megyn Kelly on tasers: “It’s static cling, essentially!”
Megyn Kelly on rubber bullets: “It’s a pencil eraser, essentially!”
Or, perhaps Megyn Kelly would like to prove how delicious pepper spray really is?
Kelly also claimed that sitting-in “is a crime.”
“Ten of them were charged with unlawful assembly and failure to disperse because they were posing a, you know, sit-in, a student protest. I mean, you can do that. It’s very American, but it may also happen to break the law. Look, I know the tape looks bad, but I don’t know if from a legal standpoint the cops did anything wrong.”
Kelly’s right — she doesn’t know. Much of anything, I imagine.