Fox News sparks backlash calling three countries 'Mexican' instead of 'Central American'

On Sunday morning, “Fox & Friends Weekend” discussed President Donald Trump’s plan to cut aid to the three Central American nations. However, the Fox network show made a mistake with their graphic.

Instead of calling them Central American countries, the show labeled them as: “3 Mexican countries.” Social media users noticed the mistake and started mocking the news channel.

“Fox & Friends Weekend” broadcast a graphic that referred to El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras as “Mexican countries.” In full, the graphic read: “Trump cuts U.S. aid to 3 Mexican countries.”

The show was discussing President Donald Trump’s plan to cut aid to the three Central American nations when it displayed the erroneous graphic. The three countries are independent nations and they’re situated south of Mexico.

Mexico is a separate country and it isn’t part of Central America. Trump threatened to cut aid because he blamed the three countries for a recent influx of asylum-seekers to the US-Mexico border.

On Friday he said, "we're not paying them anymore" because "they haven't done a thing for us." Instead, he accused, “They set up these caravans," in a reference to groups of migrants that have traveled north toward the US.

A great number of the migrants have actually sought asylum in the US because of the instability they were facing in their own home countries. The US has provided aid to them for this reason.

Removing financial aid could eliminate programs that have kept people from migrating northward. Fox News was able to pick up on the geographical error and they issued an apology and a correction later.

However, social media users had already noticed the error and began mocking the channel. On Twitter MSNBC Live anchor Stephanie Ruhle wrote:

“Can’t help but feel a little disappointed...it was great to spend Spring Break with my family, but we only got to see 1 of the 3 Mexican Nations. #betterlucknexttime.”

A Twitter user named Kimberly Phillips responded to her with another message making fun of the show:

“I woke up this morning thinking there was only 1 Mexican country. Thanks @FoxNews for the education.”

Adam Serwer, a staff writer for “The Atlantic” had a much more serious outlook to the error. He tweeted that "this is less an error than an expression of Fox News' underlying sentiment towards most Latinos."

Co-host, Ed Henry also posted an apology in the 9 a.m. hour of the show. He stated:

"We want to clarify and correct something that happened earlier in the show. We had an inaccurate graphic on screen. We just want to be clear the funding is being cut off to three Central American countries. We apologize for the error it never should have happened."