Fox News mocked as contributor likens burned Christmas tree to Pearl Harbor

‘What the heck does ‘they tried to extinguish the darkness’ mean?’

Fox News have been mocked after Rev Jacques DeGraff, a frequent contributor, compared the burning down of a Christmas tree to the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Rev DeGraff made the comparison between the burning down of the Fox News Christmas tree on Wednesday and the attack on Hawaii in 1941 during a relighting ceremony on Thursday night.

Surrounded by a crowd, Fox News anchors and contributors, as well as members of the New York Police Department, he declared: “I’m here because these colours do not run”.

Rev DeGraff, citing the 80-year anniversary of the attack by Japan’s military on the US, said “80 years ago this week, they tried to extinguish the darkness in a place called Pearl Harbor. We didn’t fold then, and we won’t fold now!”

The attack on Pearl Harbor, a US Naval base, caused the deaths of more than 2,000 and the sinking of dozens of US ships and led to the United States entering the Second World War, while the attack on the Fox News Christmas tree did not result in any such casualties.

The 49-year-old suspect, Craig Tamanaha, was released by the New York Police Department on Thursday, and no political motivation was found for the arson attack.

Reports suggested that Mr Tamanaha had a history of bizarre acts – which allegedly included exposing himself outside the ongoing trial of Ghislaine Maxwell in the southern US district court of Manhattan.

Laura Bassett, the editor-in-chief of Jezebel, was among the many who mocked and denounced Rev DeGraff for the comparison, and complained that Fox News had not stopped covering the burning of its Christmas tree.

“I just want to be clear that a random mentally ill man with no apparent political motivations set a Christmas tree on fire in Manhattan, and Fox News will spend the next 30 years being this dramatic about it,” Ms Bassett wrote.

“It isn’t even a real tree,” wrote Fred Wellman of the Lincoln Project. “It was a decorated metal cone. It isn’t the f****** USS Arizona you imbeciles.”

Helen Kennedy, a former writer for New York Daily News, added: “I’ve seen a lot of people mocking the comparison to Pearl Harbor, but what the heck does ‘they tried to extinguish the darkness’ mean?”