'Too stupid or too lazy': Fox pundit deploys racist code words in attack on Obama's jobs record

On Thursday afternoon on Fox News, host Melissa Francis said that President Barack Obama was either "too stupid or too lazy" to "save" the 800 Carrier Inc. jobs that President-elect Donald Trump and Vice president-elect Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) bought back from Mexico with Indiana state tax funds.

Francis said that Trump and Carrier will have to find ways to pay for the wage disparity between the U.S. and Mexico.

"Some things are cheaper, like they're closer to where the products eventually will go, so they save on the transportation cost. We can make energy cheaper in those factories by making our energy costs lower," she said. "You can make regulation less of a burden so that's cheaper as well."

She went on, "I mean, I've said it before that the Obama administration was either too stupid or too lazy to get involved at this granular level and make the map make sense. We're not talking about giveaways. We are talking about making it more competitive to keep jobs here."

As Colin Powell noted in 2013, when conservatives call Pres. Barack Obama "lazy," they are using the word as racist shorthand for "ni**er."

"When I see a former governor [Sarah Palin] say that the President is 'shuckin’ and jivin’,' that’s racial era slave term," Powell said on NBC's Meet the Press during a discussion of the Republican Party's long tolerance of racism within its ranks.

"When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that," Powell said, referring to erstwhile Republican presidential candidate Gov. Mitt Romney (MA).

Watch the video, embedded below: