Hosts on Fox News' "Fox & Friends" needed a breather — and as one joked, some hot sauce — after moderating a heated argument between Donald Trump surrogate Brunell Donald-Kyei and Democratic strategist Brian Benjamin Monday over which presidential candidate may or may not be "pandering" for black votes.
"The pandering is not working," Donald-Kyei told the program."Honestly, black people just want a real seat at the table. We want our inner city youth to have jobs, investments, vocational programs, better schools. That's the kind of pandering that should be showing up."
However, she said, "we have no desire to know what she [Hillary Clinton] is carrying in her purse," making a reference to an April radio show during which Clinton made a reference to a Beyonce Knowles lyric about having hot sauce in her purse.
Benjamin, though, commented that he was on a "Good Morning America" program with Clinton, and she spoke about hot sauces with a guest, but really, she was making a joke about having it in her purse.
"I think good points were just raised," said Benjamin, and he agrees that Clinton and Trump need to speak more about what is happening in the black community.
That's where they stopped agreeing, though, with Benjamin complaining that Trump "panders more than anyone else" when he "goes to African-American churches, claps off beat. He is doing as much pandering as anyone else."
The pair continued to spar between each other, including crosstalk over a WikiLeaks-dumped email showing Clinton's aides discussing whether she should use a "yo mama" joke at a black college appearance.
"I'm not comfortable with Trump saying 'hombres' either," said Benjamin. "Trump says all of these pandering-like comments and some are racist and derogatory. I think Hillary doesn't say these things she shouldn't say, whereas Trump does."
But Donald-Kyei said she thinks black people are "tired of the token black people they're using to try to get our vote," but "four years go by, they do nothing. We want jobs. We want better schools. We want improvement in our communities. We want investment in our communities. We don't want hot sauce. We don't want 'Yo mama' jokes. We want black empowerment."
Finally, once host Steve Doocy was able to end the argument, he remarked "that was spirited," with co-host Brian Kilmeade responding, "I need hot sauce."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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