Despite reports that Fox News is souring on Ron DeSantis, The Five host Jesse Watters made it very clear that the network is still willing to fall on its sword for the Florida governor.
On Monday night, Watters doubled down on DeSantis’ controversial claim that slaves actually benefitted from their time in slavery. This viewpoint will reportedly be forced upon Florida students, which earned understandable condemnation from Vice President Kamala Harris. Ever the dutiful culture war soldier, Watters rushed to DeSantis’ aid.
“This is well documented among historians,” Watters said. “This is historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and used those skills as blacksmiths, in agriculture, tailoring, in the shipping business, to then use to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed.”
Watters then argued that this viewpoint is actually a huge compliment even while noting, again, that African Americans had to be subjected to horrible, dehumanizing conditions to obtain their sweet new job skills.
Via PEOPLE:
Stating that the issue is “not controversial,” Watters claimed that it “actually speaks to the resistance and the aptitude of the enslaved African Americans who were at the time able to better themselves and able to improve their situation despite brutal, brutal conditions.”
As Watters’ remark went viral, comedian Patton Oswalt fired off the perfect response to the nonsense argument.
“Every prisoner at Auschwitz hit their target weight,” Oswalt tweeted or exed or whatever the heck Elon Musk is calling these things now.
“Every prisoner at Auschwitz hit their target weight.” https://t.co/mEcVxdlz6N
— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) July 25, 2023
(Via PEOPLE, Patton Oswalt on Twitter)