The White House has publicly condemned comments made by Fox News host Greg Gutfeld on Monday, calling them a “horrid, dangerous, and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.”
On the Fox News talk show The Five, Gutfeld engaged in a debate with liberal-leaning cohost Jessica Tarlov after she expressed her discomfort with Florida’s new Black history standards, which require instructors to teach pupils “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
“Obviously, I’m not Black, but I’m Jewish,” said Tarlov. “Would someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews? While they were hanging out in concentration camps, you learned a strong work ethic? Maybe you learned a new skill?”
Gutfeld then asked Tarlov whether she had read the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust concentration camp survivor. In the bestseller, Frankl details the atrocities that took place in the camps and explores how people coping with intense suffering can find meaning in even unimaginably horrible circumstances.
“Vik Frankl talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility! Utility kept you alive,” Gutfeld argued.
Gutfeld was immediately criticized for distorting Frankl’s message and downplaying the atrocities of the Holocaust. “Being skilled or useful did not spare [Jewish people] from the horrors of the gas chambers,” read a statement from the Auschwitz Memorial.
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By Tuesday, the White House had issued its own criticism of Gutfeld’s remarks. “What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday—and has so far failed to condemn—is an obscenity,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement to CNN. “In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous, and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust.” (A Fox News spokesperson did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.)
Bates continued: “Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: There was nothing good about slavery. There was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop. Americans deserve to be brought together, not torn apart with poison. And they deserve the truth and the freedom to learn, not book bans and lies.”