Fox News’ Dana Perino briefly broke down on-air Thursday after an interview with a domestic violence victim whose almost 2-year-old son was shot and killed by her ex-husband.
Perino interviewed Cassandra Tanner Miller during a segment about Illinois ending cash bail. Miller is a domestic violence survivor, according to Perino, who went on air and explained how her “estranged husband broke into” her house, beat her and shot her 18-month-old ten times before attacking her daughter in 2019. Miller’s ex-husband Christopher Michael Miller shot and killed himself after the attack, CBS2 Chicago previously reported.
Miller said her husband had been “facing three counts of aggravated felonies” and was released on “a no-cash bail bond” just prior to the attack. Following the segment, Perino briefly became emotional as she continued to anchor “America’s Newsroom.”
“Cassandra, you are a survivor and a mother. Thank you for sharing your story, and I hope the governor is listening,” Perino said, choking up after Miller explained how the governor “completely failed the entire domestic violence community.”
“Trace, I don’t think I’ve ever cried on TV, but that was really hard to,” Perino told Fox News anchor Trace Gallagher as she continued to break down.
WATCH:
Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a law Monday making the state the first to completely eliminate cash bail. The move, Pritzker argued, helped dismantle “systematic racism” – but Miller argued that the move broke “a promise” he previously made to her when they met after the incident. (RELATED: Los Angeles DA Vows To End Cash Bail, Stop Death Penalty As Citywide Shootings, Murders On The Rise)
“When I explained this … he [Pritzker] sat there, shook my hand, he held my hand and hugged me,” Miller said after explaining how her ex-husband was released despite multiple charges pending against him. “He said, ‘What can we do to make sure that there is never going to be another Colton Miller [son]? Never another Cassandra Tanner-Miller that sits in here … And honestly, not another Christopher Miller. And I said that we need to make sure that domestic violence is taken serious [sic], that victims have voices and the criminal justice system has stronger, not weaker conditions and bond conditions.”
“He absolutely let me down,” she continued. “I made a plea to him prior to signing this bill, asking him to hold off and to actually think about victims, and me specifically, when I sat in that office, he made a promise. This is the problem with the justice system in a whole is that people that are in power make promises, giving us false hope … only to let us down and put us in more harm’s way.”