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PunditFact looks at Fox News, Barack Obama and their ‘lazy’ back-and-forth

Jon Greenberg
By Jon Greenberg May 14, 2015

There’s never been much love lost between President Barack Obama and Fox News. In the latest turn, the network bristled when Obama singled it out for criticism during a discussion of poverty.

Here’s how things developed at an event this week at Georgetown University. Obama said the country’s politics have created boogeymen out of the rich and the poor.

"Over the last 40 years, sadly, I think there’s been an effort to either make folks mad at folks at the top, or to be mad at folks at the bottom, Obama said. "And I think the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction."

To illustrate his point, the president brought up Fox News.

"If you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant menu," Obama said. "They will find folks who make me mad.  I don’t know where they find them. They’re like, ‘I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama phone’ or whatever.  And that becomes an entire narrative, right? That gets worked up.  And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical,  who’s raising a couple of kids and is doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills."

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As you might expect, that didn’t sit well with Fox News.

Our colleagues PunditFact looked at the response of one of their anchors, and how it stacks up to the facts.

You can read what they found here.

 

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PunditFact looks at Fox News, Barack Obama and their ‘lazy’ back-and-forth