The torched Fox News Christmas tree is already back, photos show
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas again.
The Fox News tree that was set ablaze in Midtown by a vagrant firebug was quickly rebuilt Thursday ahead of a live-broadcast relighting ceremony.
Photos show workers installing the 50-foot metal-framed artificial fir on Thursday morning — one day after the symbol of holiday spirit was torched, allegedly by an arsonist with a lengthy rap sheet.
Builders hung dozens of red and white ornaments on the tree and topped it with a large red star, the images show.
On Wednesday, Craig Tamanaha, 49, a homeless man known to police for committing a series of low-level crimes, was arrested for allegedly setting the tree on fire — then soon released by a judge due in part to New York’s lenient bail reform laws.
But the new Christmas conifer was triumphantly towering once again by around noon, in time for a lighting ceremony that will be aired at 5 p.m. on Fox’s “The Five.”
Fox News Media CEO Suzanne Scott called the new tree “a sign of resilience and hope” in the face of a horrible act.
The destroyed tree was originally lit during the network’s “All-American” Christmas special on Sunday. It glowed outside the News Corp. building that houses Fox News, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post on the tourist-heavy block of Sixth Avenue and West 48th Street.
