During Thursday's edition of “The Five,” two of Donald Trump's favorite Fox News hosts had a terse exchange about the root causes of criminal behavior.
After reacting to the now-viral video of a convicted felon's horrifying reaction after being denied probation, Greg Gutfeld tore into Jesse Watters' claim that a “lack of fathers” has contributed to the uptick in violent crime.
“I don't know if you saw, Dana, in The Wall Street Journal the other day, the Jason Riley op-ed,” Watters remarked to co-host Dana Perino. “This has been studied … it's proven now that the criminal justice system is not against Black Americans. They are treated equally by the criminal justice system because they commit a disproportionate amount of the crimes, and then when they are in front of the court, they are actually treated more leniently, in terms of sentencing.”
“The main driver of crime in the African American community and in the white community, is a lack of a father. It's poverty and lack of fathers,” Watters added.
“Now, if you go back to the '30s and the '40s, the African American community, there was more racism in this country, and there was more poverty in the Black community. But the crime rate in the Black community was very, very low. And you know why that was? Fathers were there. That's the key issue,” he maintained.
At that point, Gutfeld decided he was done listening to Watters.
“But tell that to people, and that doesn't help anybody. ‘Oh, I'll just go out and get a father; I'll [be right] back!,” Gutfeld cried out. “This is the problem with the Republican message, telling people that, ‘Oh, we just need more fathers,' doesn't help anybody. You're going to have to live with the reality that the world is changed. It's not the – dads aren't coming back for a lot of people.”
Watters disagreed with his animated colleague and attempted to lighten the mood in the studio, according to Mediaite.
“I am still fighting for the dads, Greg. I'm not giving up on dads.”
“America's dad, Jesse Watters,” Democratic strategist Jessica Tarlov joked.
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