Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt has a talent for finding and clinging to the most pointless or perverse angle to any tragedy. The Fox News spokesmodel struck again during the morning show’s “Remembering 9/11” segment, when she clung to a bizarre and unnecessary detail put forth by guest Robert O’Neill, the former Navy Seal who claims to have fired the shot that killed Osama bin Laden.
The following clips come courtesy of Media Matters researcher Bobby Lewis, and entails O’Neill discussing an unidentified 9/11 victim he described as “a single mom” who leapt from the World Trade Center after it became engulfed in flames. SPIN reached out to Fox News to find out which victim O’Neill was referring to, but reps did not immediately respond for comment.
“Her last gesture of human decency was to hold her skirt down before she killed herself,” O’Neill said of the victim. Earhardt was clearly affected by that creepy detail, as evidenced by the way she breathlessly muttered, “Oh my goodness” under her breath.
A single mom jumping out of a skyscraper rather than be immolated by flames is a horrific and unspeakable tragedy that didn’t need to be buttoned with a creepy comment about how her “last gesture of human decency” was maintaining her modesty while faced with death.
It would have been best to just let that comment go by unacknowledged, but Earhardt brought it up again during an interview with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
“Listening to these stories, Robert O’Neill talked about a single mom…and she jumped, so you know she’s desperate,” Earhardt said. “She was holding her skirt down…she wanted to die with dignity.”
Earhardt could have just stopped after mentioning that a mother was desperate enough to knowingly plunge to her death. By all accounts, that’s profoundly sad and horrific. The part about the skirt doesn’t need to be mentioned, especially with the added gravitas.
Later in the show, Ainsley Earhardt emotionally mentions the unidentified 9/11 jumper who was “holding her skirt down” because she “wanted to die in dignity.” pic.twitter.com/IMgJow5na6
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) September 11, 2019
Earhardt demonstrated her superhuman ability to miss the point last month when she chastised country singer Kacey Musgraves for using foul language while speaking out about the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings during her Lollapalooza set. Bless her.
