Filmmaker Jason Pollock sounded seriously deranged during his appearance on Fox News’ “The First 100 Days” with Martha MacCallum Monday evening. Pollock was on the show to defend his nonsensical and fact-challenged documentary “Stranger Fruit.”
Pollack was rude and contentious with MacCallum from the get-go, his tone getting hotter and his face getting redder as the interview progressed. He came on following Trace Gallagher’s report about newly emerged surveillance tape that shows Michael Brown and friends at a convenience store on the day Brown was shot.
“I am simply stunned by that report. Simply stunned. Beautiful job, fake news 101,” he sneered. Pollack has been arguing that the tape somehow exonerates Brown because it purportedly shows him engaging in a drug deal, rather than stealing cigarillos.
The new footage is from much earlier in the day — 1:00 in the morning — and was considered immaterial by prosecutors. But it wasn’t hidden from the public. “It’s documented in the police report,” said St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch in a later interview. McCulloch said that the new video shows Brown “trying to strike a deal” with the convenience store employees but was not relevant to the case.
“The reason we put out this convenience store tape up now is so people could get over it, because he didn’t rob the store,” Pollock told MacCallum. “And anyone who sees the exchange that takes place, with a conscience, a heart, two minds (?!), and is not a bigot, pretty much understands what happened!”
Pollock added that “there are some people in America with so much bias inside of them that they just want to think Michael Brown is a bad guy.”
His argument seems to be that since the footage “proves” that Brown was a drug dealer rather than a petty thief, that somehow makes him a better guy. But apparently, he was both.
MacCallum noted that the DOJ under Eric Holder did not charge Officer Darren Wilson and said, “I think it’s fair to assume that they really believed that they were going to be able to indict Officer Wilson.”
Indeed, under Holder and Lynch, the DOJ became a virtual racial-grievance incubator, actually encouraging the cries of injustice in the wake of police shootings of black men. If there had been a way to charge Officer Wilson, they would have done it.
The filmmaker shot back, “That’s absolutely not true! Not true! Don’t just say that!” He fumed, “You know how the system works! These cops get off every single time!”
Pollock, who started his career as a documentary filmmaker under the tutelage of Michael Moore, constantly interrupted MacCallum as she spoke.
When she pointed out that the grand jury and 40 FBI agents all came to the same conclusion, Pollock cried, “The DOJ failed!” While she was still talking, he bellowed, “When the facts of this case come out…!”
The red-faced Pollock hollered, “Can I speak now?!” He said one of the facts he was presenting in his movie is “the fact that Michael Brown was shot in the head and a bullet came out of his eye!” When MacCallum pointed out that there were three different forensic investigations that didn’t find that, he shot back, “They all failed!”
While MacCallum continued to destroy his argument, Pollock interjected, “You know how many black men are in jail right now for nothing…because the Department of Justice failed them?!”
“My film will show the public the truth, ma’am!” he thundered, as MacCallum shook her head in disbelief.
“I don’t know why you got so hung up on whether he was trading pot or stealing something — it’s completely irrelevant to this case,” she concluded.
St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch came on next to respond to Pollock’s dubious assertions.
“Well, he has his facts wrong, not shockingly,” McCulloch said dryly. “There was no bullet in the ground anywhere near Michael Brown. He pointed out that three separate medical examiners — including one hired by the Brown family — came to the same conclusion.
He said the purportedly new surveillance video is not new at all. “This isn’t new information. It’s documented in the police report — the conversations that the police had with the employees of the store, the fact that we issued a search warrant so that we could get the surveillance video, that they looked at the surveillance video, examined it, documented it, described what’s on that video…all of which was released on November 24, 2014. It’s all been sitting there.”
Violence erupted outside of the Ferguson Market on Sunday after the new footage was released.
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