Appearing with Ann Coulter, frequent Fox News guest Heather Mac Donald goes on hour-long tirade discussing Tyre Nichols' killing

During the hour-long interview, Mac Donald asserted that the public does not know the truth of what happened to Nichols, implying he could have been on drugs during the encounter and suggesting the blows from the police might not be the cause of death

Frequent Fox guest Heather Mac Donald appeared on Ann Coulter’s podcast to rant against race-based hiring in police forces and downplay the existence of white supremacy. 

During an hour-long interview discussing the police videos on Coulter’s January 29 podcast, Mac Donald asserted that the public does not know the truth of what happened to Tyre Nichols, a Black man, implying he could have been on drugs during the encounter and suggesting the blows from the police might not be the cause of death. 

Mac Donald also defended January 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by police while breaking into the U.S. Capitol, saying, “That was a completely unjustified shooting as far as I’m concerned.” Mac Donald further complained about supposed rates of “Black-on-white crime,” stating “the whole discourse about white supremacy” in policing is “utterly ludicrous.” She cited “shoplifting videos” — a favorite subject of Fox News coverage — in part as evidence that Black people commit more crimes and white supremacy is not the problem in America.

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Citation From the January 29, 2023, edition of Ann Coulter's Unsafe uploaded to Substack

Mac Donald further claimed that the “discourse” of racism by “elite whites” will only “increase the alienation among Blacks that will increase crime, that will increase the oppositional culture, the hostility to bourgeois norms of self-control, of academic achievement, and the violence against police officers.”

Following the recent release of video footage showing the police beating of Nichols, a Black man, Mac Donald appeared on Fox’s Jesse Watters Primetime on January 27 where she blamed “diversity hiring” among police officers for Nichols’ violent death. Mac Donald repeated the same claims in an appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight on January 30. 

Mac Donald also made appearances this week on Charlie Kirk’s podcast and OAN’s Real America with Dan Ball to continue arguing that Black people commit more crimes. She claimed on Real America that the media perpetuating a “race war” are saying “all those videos we've seen of Blacks beating up elderly Asians or elderly Jews, just ignore those, can't possibly be racism.”

“In order to preserve the ubiquitous racism-explains-everything narrative, we now have to be able to fold Blacks into the racist perpetrator category,” Mac Donald told Kirk before pivoting to complain about “Black-on-Black violence.”

Coulter is a regular contributor to the white nationalist site VDare, and she has cited VDare’s founder as her “intellectual influence” and the reason she “first became interested in immigration.” During her long career as a conservative pundit, Coulter has often spoken on her extreme anti-immigration and antisemitic views. Coulter was a regular presence on Fox News and a high-profile commentator in right-wing media before December 2018, when she urged then-President Donald Trump to allow the military to shoot people at the southern border in an appearance on the now defunct show Justice with Judge Jeanine.

Mac Donald is a fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute and author of The War on Cops who has appeared on Fox News 86 times since 2017. She regularly appears on Tucker Carlson Tonight to push her bigoted talking points, and has also appeared on his Fox Nation show.

Mac Donald's work is also prominently featured in the “Sheriff Fellowship” of the far-right Claremont Institute.