Speaking to Fox News contributor and RedState founder Erick Erickson this Monday morning, even Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy seemed a little baffled at Erickson’s apparent inability to label Charleston shooter Dylann Roof as a racist, instead changing the subject of Roof’s motives to the problem of “evil” and mental health.
Erickson had published a piece a few days before where he argued that the Charleston massacre was an example of America’s inability to confront the fact that certain people — such as Caitlyn Jenner — are mentally ill, and that’s where the focus should be rather than the subject of race.
“A society that looks at a 65 year old male Olympian and, with a straight face, declares him a her and ‘a new normal’ cannot have a conversation about mental health or evil because that society no longer distinguishes normal from crazy and evil from good,” he wrote.
Going with that thought, Doocy started out the segment asking Erickson (along with co-panelist and radio talk show host Richard Fowler) if the real problem is “that we cannot label mental health as an issue because we have accepted too many ‘eccentricities’ as normal.”
Erickson agreed that labeling Roof a “terrorist” was correct, and that he likely isn’t mentally ill, adding that “some choices in life that aren’t valid, and [Roof] made a very bad, not valid choice.”
But according to Erickson, the problem with talking about race rather than “evil” is “that people on both sides profit from keeping racism alive in this country. People on both sides profit by calling people ‘racist’ and diminishing the word. Nowadays you have a bunch of Democrats who assume that if you run for the Republican Party you’re racist.”
Watch the segment below, via Fox News:
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