Three days before Michigan votes, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy asked on air on Saturday whether Democratic Senate nominee Abdul el Sayed should disavow Rebellion PAC’s ad that has a couple setting aside money for “killing Palestinians,” “even though he didn’t put it out.” A day earlier, Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) had called the ad antisemitic and said it “blames our close ally Israel for everything Michiganders cannot afford.”
Co-host Griff Jenkins immediately interjected: “Oh my goodness, Rachel! Absolutely.” Perhaps a producer got in her ear, because Campos-Duffy quickly turned to the national debt but proceeded to make things even worse for herself by appearing to advise el Sayed on better strategy. “Maybe they should have said foreign wars instead of Israel,” she said, as Gerald Posner documented on X.
Does Fox News have a Rachel Campos-Duffy problem? I think so and said so Sunday night, and I say it as a friend of this network that has been very good to me and on the issues that I hold dear. I’ve appeared on Fox many times. I have watched its hosts consistently defend Israel and the Jewish people with moral clarity for years. That clarity is why Campos-Duffy’s positions need to be addressed. Fox’s most loyal viewers deserves to know where the network stands on its editorial positions and standards.
Let’s take three particular Campos-Duffy appearances, in order.
On Friday, June 19, she filled in for Jesse Watters on Jesse Watters Primetime. Her opening monologue began, “The peace deal with Iran could be a great move for the world, but Israel’s not making things easy.” It ended: “Israel and the neocons want regime change at all costs, even if it takes U.S. boots on the ground.” Many viewers missed that Friday night show because most Fox regulars were off on that night.
On Sunday, Oct. 11, on Fox & Friends Weekend, Campos-Duffy defended President Donald Trump’s call to replace Ukraine’s president and said that because of Volodymyr Zelensky, “we’re probably going to get peace there because President Trump is now working with Russia because Zelensky is so arrogant.” She called Ukraine’s drone war “using these kids as guinea pigs.” Brian Kilmeade, as Mediaite reported, answered with moral clarity: “There’s one person who’s responsible: Vladimir Putin.” He added, “It would be the biggest mistake of his administration to work with Russia. That is the modern Hitler of our generation.”
I wrote on X that night that Kilmeade “couldn’t have made the moral situation more clear.” Campos-Duffy had called the leader of an invaded country arrogant, in a segment about his strikes on the refineries that fuel the war against him. He named the aggressor.
The third appearance came this past weekend with the Oct. 31 Michigan segment that opened this column.
That makes two on-air corrections from colleagues in 20 days. The hosts did their jobs, and Fox’s leadership should ask why they had to.
The pattern predates the fall.
On July 20, on Outnumbered, Campos-Duffy said, according to a Jerusalem Post account, that she had “spoken to a lot of Jewish people who think that Netanyahu bears some responsibility for the rise of antisemitism,” and that “the highest number of child amputees in any modern-day conflict is in Gaza.” Not Hamas, who hides behind these civilians, but Israel. Waging a defensive war for their very existence in which their enemy refused to surrender and maintained their intention to wipe out Israel. When she said Netanyahu should “stay out of American politics,” co-host Lisa Boothe reminded her that “if a mayor of a foreign country was talking about arresting you, you’d probably have an opinion on it.”
I hold Republicans to the same standard as Democrats. A radical Democrat who shrugs at an antisemitic remark must answer for it. When I wrote about JD Vance and Tucker Carlson, I applied the same rule on the fringe Right, and I applied it again when Carlson’s imprint put “Final Solution” beside the word “Jews” on a book cover.
What airs on Fox travels, and Republican voters take cues from the people on that couch. Fox can fix this by making their editorial stance on these issues clear.
First, Putin is the aggressor in Ukraine.
Second, Israel is America’s ally, and the Rebellion PAC ad blaming it for Michigan’s grocery bills is antisemitic. Stevens said the Anti-Defamation League’s chief executive called it “a case study in antisemitism.”
HASAN PIKER CHEERED HAMAS. ABDUL EL SAYED HANDED HIM THE MIC
Third, a host who cannot say both plainly should not anchor segments on them.
Fox viewers trust the network on these questions because its best hosts answer them without hedging. Kilmeade and Jenkins did that twice in three weeks. Fox’s leadership owes them, and its audience, a standard that does not depend on who happens to be sitting next to her.
Jeffrey Lax is a professor of law at the City University of New York and the founder of S.A.F.E. Campus. He holds a J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a master’s degree from Baruch College’s Zicklin School of Business. Lax is a frequent legal and political commentator on Fox News, Newsmax, and other major media outlets and is active on X at @CUNY_Prof.