An interview on "Fox & Friends" went off course early Friday morning when guest Lt. Col. Ralph Peters made some light-hearted and controversial comments about a beheading in France, which is being investigated as a terrorist attack.
France has launched a terrorism investigation after an attacker with alleged ties to the Islamic State on Friday drove a car into a gas factory near Lyon, decapitated one person and left the head hanging on a fence, along with Arabic inscriptions.
On Friday, "Fox & Friends" co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck asked the retired lieutenant colonel what his "assessment" of the attack was. But Peters caught the hosts off guard when he responded with what felt like a poorly timed joke.
"I'm waiting for a statement from the White House blaming this on the Confederate battle flag," he said.
Peters then went on to say he thinks the American people's reaction to the attack is "a bit hysterical."
"This is the new normal," he said. "There's going to be more of this. We're going to be dealing with it for decades."
"What do you mean the reaction is hysterical?" Steve Doocy replied.
Peters touted the Islamic State militant group as "brilliant propagandists" with an "absolutely terrific" strategy. He said that the media's tendency to react with panic to these kinds of attacks is only strengthening that propaganda.
"We're really all prisoners," he said. "We in the media are prisoners of the Islamic State."
The Fox News co-hosts didn't love that statement, and argued that the media can't turn a blind eye to events like this. Peters countered that we need to take more serious action, but the co-hosts soon said they had to cut him off for commercial break.
"Sorry I couldn't make you happy," he said. "But the truth is the truth."