Fox Hosts Freak Out In Live Interview After Putting Wrong Democrat On Air: “I’m here to speak directly to Donald Trump.”

Much like their president, the people at Fox News barely do any research or double checking — and they usually regret it deeply. One such moment happened earlier today at Fox & Friends First, when the network realized they had booked the wrong guest and the live interview devolved into chaos before the network could pull the plug.

The Fox hosts had thought they were having Democratic Arizona congressional candidate Ann Kirkpatrick on the show, a candidate who supports Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But when the two hosts introduced Kirkpatrick onto the show, Democratic Massachusetts Senator Barbara L’Italien showed up instead — and she didn’t squander her moment in the spotlight. Instead, she came prepared with a message directly for the president and wasted no time in bashing is family separation immigration policy. Her first words were:

Good morning. I’m actually here to speak directly to Donald Trump.”

And it just got worse from there:

I feel that what’s happening at the border is wrong. I’m a mother of four and I believe that separating kids from their parents is illegal and inhumane. I’m actually Barbara L’Italien. I’m a state senator representing a large immigrant community. I’m running for Congress in Massachusetts. I keep thinking about what we’re putting parents through, imagining how terrifying that must be for those families, imagining how it would feel not knowing if I’d ever see my kids again. We have to stop abducting children and ripping them from their parents’ arms, stop putting kids in cages, and stop making 3-year-old defend themselves in court.”

Once they realized what was happening, the two Fox hosts struggled to keep it together and get L’Italien off topic. They tried to defend the president, stating that the Trump administration had backpedaled on separating families and was working to reunite them — which was a lie because thousands of children are still without their parents and have been misplaced throughout the country.

The network eventually figured out how to cut their guest’s mic off and stop the interview, but not before L’Italien got her last words in:

Again my name is Barbara L’Italien, and I refuse to believe that our only options are open borders or traumatizing.”

After L’Italien was off the screen, host Rob Schmitt tried to process what had just happened. He said:

Yeah, OK, who is this? That didn’t go as planned.”

The show took a quick break to recollect itself, and then the hosts tried to explain to viewers:

We were told Ann Kirkpatrick was going to be on the show. As you saw, somebody else stepped in front of the camera. We are working to figure out how that happened.”

The whole thing was a sh*tshow. You can watch it go down below:

It was, however, a win for L’Italien, who later posted about her experience on Twitter and continued to talk about Trump’s horrific border crisis:

I’ve always fought for vulnerable people, and in Congress I will use every opportunity I have to make sure powerful people like @realDonaldTrump hear their voices. Here’s the full statement I would’ve given @FoxNews if I hadn’t been cut off. #ma3 #mapoli https://t.co/SAe7HoBVRV

— Barbara L’Italien (@teambarbara) July 23, 2018

In an interview with ThinkProgress, L’Italien explained further that the “mix-up occurred after the network reached out to L’Italien staffers mistakenly thinking they worked for Kirkpatrick.” ThinkProgress wrote:

They reached out to our staff believing they were reaching the Kirkpatrick office due to their own failure of due diligence.

Over the process of getting the interview scheduled, they repeatedly showed very little grasp on the facts, down to whether or not Ann Kirkpatrick was still in Congress. Fox News is where you go when you want to talk to Donald Trump, and Barbara felt she had an obligation to her constituents to take advantage of that opportunity. But this would not have happened to an actual news station. Fox’s lack of attention to the facts normally is a disaster for the country, it just so happened that today it was embarrassing for them.”

How embarrassing for Fox! Schmitt went straight to Twitter with his grief: