Fox News contributor Lawrence Jones said on the right wing media giant’s airwaves that the man who burned down the Fox News Christmas tree overnight in midtown Manhattan “was targeting the country” and trying to instill fear.
That’s entirely false, according to police, who “say the man acted alone and the incident didn’t appear to be premeditated or politically motivated,” NBC New York reported earlier Wednesday. The New York Times added that “police said they believed that he was homeless and were investigating whether drugs or mental illness had played a factor.”
Not according to Jones, who came to fame by creating a GoFundMe page in 2015 for the Indiana pizza shop that said it would refuse to cater a same-sex wedding if asked, raising over $840,000 for the Memories Pizza owners.
“We’re going to rebuild it. We’re gonna because it’s not just a Fox News tree. This was America’s tree,” Jones said falsely. The Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree, which is a real tree unlike the Fox News tree, enjoys the moniker of “America’s Christmas Tree,” and has been erected annually since 1931.
“A lot of our audience,” Jones claimed, “come across from all across the country and even in our international audience that couldn’t see that. It was a moment of unity.”
Related: Meghan McCain Melts Down Over Fox News Christmas Tree Fire – Gets Scorched on Social Media
He admitted that the suspect “appears to be a guy that was a repeat offender,” who “had a criminal record” and “just wanted to set something on fire.” And yet Jones insisted that “although he wasn’t specifically targeting Fox’s” Christmas tree, “he was targeting the country.”
Again, police say the suspect had no political or social motive, so he was not “targeting the country.”
Jones then turned one single act of criminal arson into a nationwide crime wave across America.
“All these criminals are targeting. It invokes fear in the public when these sorts of things happen.”
After learning the tree will be replaced and re-lit on Thursday, Jones decreed, “we can’t be deterred.” He told Fox News viewers, “I hope with this lightning, that the criminals watch that and say, ‘there are a lot of Americans that are standing up and saying they’re just not going to take this anymore.'”
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