Yahoo Movies Fox Hosts Fume Over ‘Blood-Red Nazi’ Lighting in Biden Speech
President Joe Biden’s warning Thursday that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundation of our republic” was met with predictable outrage on Fox News airwaves.
But also coming in for criticism was the president’s choice of background imagery, which featured red lighting of the brick exterior of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall and Marines flanking the building’s entrance.
“Yeah, they are a threat, says the guy with the blood-red Nazi background and Marines standing behind him,” griped Tucker Carlson. “It’s a complete outrage that this is being sanctioned as a White House event—in other words, that this is the approved position of our government.”
In the next hour, Hannity fill-in host Tammy Bruce suggested the lighting could be a harbinger of bad things to come.
“This was a national, primetime presidential address that you paid for in front of Independence Hall. But there was nothing presidential about this speech, obviously,” Bruce told viewers. “It was a campaign event full of demeaning rhetoric, backlit with ominous red lighting.”
Later in the show, Bruce spoke to Bret Baier, Fox News’ chief political correspondent and the host of the 6 p.m. show Special Report.
“I too was struck by the image of the dark red lighting with the two Marines standing at attention in the background,” Baier said. “A lot of times when we analyze things, we do it through the prism of how the media would cover it if Donald Trump gave this speech. I think they might not stop talking about it for weeks on end.”
And during The Ingraham Angle, Fox guest and former Trump-appointed spokesperson for the Treasury Department Monica Crowley drew comparisons to the devil.
“The imagery there was almost Satanic, with that blood-red lighting and the two Marines behind him,” Crowley said, echoing what right-wing influencer Allie Beth Stuckey had to say online. “It was just insane.”
Non-Fox media figures, meanwhile, took to Twitter to post about the optics of Biden’s speech.
“Whatever you think of this speech the military is supposed to be apolitical,” CNN New Day host Brianna Keilar wrote. “Positioning Marines in uniform behind President Biden for a political speech flies in the face of that. It’s wrong when Democrats do it. It’s wrong when Republicans do it.”
CNN’s chief national affairs correspondent, Jeff Zeleny, chimed in that the president’s address, “against a backdrop of two Marines standing at attention and the Marine Band,” is “a break with White House traditions.”
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