Following the St. Cloud mall attack Saturday evening, Fox News desperately tried to spin the incident into anti-immigrant propaganda. So they turned to St. Cloud Police Chief William Blair Anderson for a statement. Unfortunately for the right-wing channel, Anderson wasn't biting.
Anderson spoke on Fox & Friends Monday morning about Saturday's mass stabbing in St. Cloud. Fox showed Anderson a clip of GOP nominee Donald Trump bashing Muslim immigrants, whom he believes are ineffective in informing authorities about radicalized members of their community.
When Steve Doocy asked whether Trump’s “concern” about St.Cloud's 6,000 Somali refugees holds any water, the police chief was crystal clear.
“I can tell you that the vast majority of all of our citizens, no matter their ethnicity, are fine, hard-working people, and now is not the time for us to be divisive,” Anderson told Fox News. “We already have a very cohesive community, and I expect that this will draw us even closer together. But at the end of the day, our job is public safety, period.”
Anderson also spoke about building relationships in order to root out potential extremism.
“We actually work very well not just with our East African community, but all of our community,” Anderson said. “We meet regularly with any number of people, whether they are advocates for a specific ethnicity or different cause. It’s one of things that makes St. Cloud a wonderful place to live, and I know that might sound corny, but it’s the truth. We have established and maintained a very good rapport with our East African community and our community at large.”
Watch, via Media Matters:
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