Fox News guest defends false rumour about women’s soccer team by saying it was ‘believable’

Earlier this week, a right-wing conservative news site falsely claimed that the U.S. women’s soccer team “turned their backs to [a] 98-year-old WWII vet playing the national anthem” - infuriating conservatives who had not yet fact-checked this allegation.

The U.S. soccer communications team quickly debunked The Post-Millenial’s rumour, however. “Not true. No one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPré during tonight’s anthem,” the U.S. Soccer Comms Twitter feed posted. “Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag on a pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him.”

Dana Perino addressed the controversy during Fox News’ America’s Newsroom with Bill Hemmer & Dana Perino, asking right-wing sportscaster Clay Travis as to what his thoughts on the situation were.

“There are some people who think the team who were turning away from the flag and the anthem that was being played there, but then the U.S. soccer team said, ‘no actually that’s not true, people were just looking at the different flag that was there,’” she said. “I watched the video, I feel like maybe that makes sense to me, but what did you see?”

“Well, first of all congrats to 98-year-old World War II veteran who played the national anthem so beautifully before this game,” Travis said in reply, as a Very Good American. “I think he deserves an awful lot of commendation, credit and applause from everybody out there for what he did in the past and also for what he did just yesterday.”

He then proceeded to explain that the initial rumour spread because it was so “believable,” and that it’s a “confusing video.”

“I think this is emblematic of where we are with sports now where a huge percentage of American sports fans totally think it’s believable that the U.S. women’s soccer team would turn their back on a 98-year-old World War II Veteran as he plays the national anthem and not even think twice about it,” Travis said.

“I, like you, Dana, watched this video, I think it’s a little bit confusing. They weren’t all faced in the same direction and I think it is unfortunately a sign of where we are as a country that so many of us just presume that that level of disrespect is occurring via our national teams during the anthem.”

Hm, why would people believe such things? It is possible some branches of the media actually told them this information in the first place? We may never know.