Donald Trump is claiming that liberals want to change the name of Thanksgiving, but the hosts of Fox News show don’t seem to be buying it.
Trump had said during a pre-Thanksgiving rally in Florida that the “radical left” wanted to change the holiday’s name, though he didn’t go into details as to why they may be demanding the change.
“As we gather for Thanksgiving, you know, some people want to change the name Thanksgiving. They don’t want to use the term Thanksgiving,” Trump said, via Vox . “People have different ideas why it shouldn’t be called Thanksgiving, but everybody in this room, I know, loves the name Thanksgiving. And we’re not changing.”
The report could not explain why Trump made the claim, though it noted that some historians have called for a better understanding of the relationship between early American settlers and Native Americans. It added that Trump’s claim of a liberal “war on Thanksgiving” appeared to be a “watered-down version” of the conservative idea that there is a “war on Christmas” among overly sensitive liberals who do not want overt references to the Christian holiday. This has been a popular theme on Fox News, reemerging every holiday season for the last decade.
While the idea of the “war on Christmas” has gained traction in right-wing media circles, Trump’s extension to Thanksgiving did not appear to get much support. Even the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends , which is one of the most friendly to Trump and frequently boosts his claims, expressed skepticism at the idea that liberals want to change the name of Thanksgiving.
Host Brian Kilmeade noted that there were false rumors in 2015 that Barack Obama wanted to change the name of Thanksgiving. He quickly shifted to the idea that environmentally conscious people are warning about the carbon footprint of Thanksgiving meals and trying to get people to be more sensitive to that idea.
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade confused by Trump’s claims of a war on Thanksgiving: “I don’t think there’s a huge push to change the name of Thanksgiving, is there?” pic.twitter.com/TKeFkSUctE
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) November 27, 2019
As The Inquisitr noted, Fox News had already done some leg work in pushing the carbon footprint idea, which rose to prominence after a November 5 article by Alexandra Emanuelli on HuffPost that suggested ways families could reduce their environmental output on the holiday. This led to accusations from Fox & Friends that the left-leaning news outlet was “demanding that you cancel Thanksgiving dinner.” Still, Fox & Friends didn’t seem to back Trump in extending that idea to a claim that liberals want to change the name of the holiday.
