Faux News: Who Says the USA Doesn't Have State TV?

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Welcome to the Fox News presidency"

Spoiler

President Trump confirmed this morning that State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, someone with only brief government service and limited experience in diplomacy and foreign affairs, will replace Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations. Nauert’s chief qualification is probably that before joining the Trump administration, she was best known as a co-host of the president’s favorite TV show, “Fox & Friends.”

While it would be an exaggeration to say that the merger between the Trump administration is now complete — after all, there’s still room for more Fox personalities to take over key positions in government — we have truly never seen anything like this before.

In early U.S. history, newspapers were intensely partisan and a president could expect to have a paper or two acting as his propaganda arm. But there has never been a situation in which a media outlet — its personnel, its ideas, its spirit — has commingled with the government to this extent, creating one entity pursuing a common set of goals.

Before we explore what that means, let's run down some of the ways Fox and the Trump administration have joined hands:

• The White House communications director, Bill Shine, came to the job from Fox News, where he was a top executive for many years. Shine was accused of abetting the horrific sexual harassment allegedly perpetrated by Fox News founder Roger Ailes, contributing to Shine being forced out after Ailes’s death. But because of his severance package, Shine works in the White House while literally still being on Fox’s payroll.
• In addition to Nauert and Shine, a raft of high-ranking Trump administration officials seem to have gotten their jobs because Trump watched them on Fox and liked what he saw. They include former Fox contributors such as John Bolton, Mercedes Schlapp, K.T. McFarland, Tony Sayegh, and, of course, Anthony Scaramucci. 
• Trump starts nearly every day by watching “Fox & Friends,” a show so mind-bogglingly insipid it makes “Live With Kelly and Ryan” look like a graduate philosophy seminar. He usually live-tweets what he sees there, setting the news agenda for the entire media.
• According to reporting by New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, on “most weeknights” after his show is done taping, Sean Hannity calls the president, and they have a conversation debriefing the day’s events. “Unlike on Fox & Friends, where Trump learns new (frequently incorrect) information, Hannity acts to transform Trump’s pervasive ambivalence into resolve by convincing him what he’s already decided he believes and what he’s decided to do is correct.”
• Trump is an avid fan of the weekly punch in the face that is “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” making sure to record the show when he can’t watch it live, and he “considers Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs a close adviser.”
• Trump’s own staff members sometimes find that the best way to communicate with their boss is through Fox News. “Aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person. ‘He will listen more when it is on TV,’ a senior administration official said.”
• Donald Trump Jr., recently split from his first wife, is dating former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. They call themselves "Donberly."

But it’s only partly about the personnel. What Trump has done in the White House is bring about the full realization of Roger Ailes’s vision. Ailes may have been one of the most loathsome human beings to ever walk the earth, but he was also a genius, particularly in understanding how TV and politics could intertwine. What he created with Fox is a creature that simultaneously accomplishes two goals: making huge profits and serving the interests of the Republican Party.

Ailes never found a more perfect candidate than Donald Trump, which is why in 2011, Trump was given a weekly call-in segment on “Fox & Friends,” an absolutely essential tool in turning Trump from a TV personality into a political figure. Once a week, Fox’s audience would hear Trump opine on political matters and the news of the day, laying the groundwork for its acceptance of him as a legitimate candidate for president.

And while every president cares about his televised image, none has ever seen the entire world through the prism of television the way Trump does. How many times have we heard him say one of his nominees is "from Central Casting," meaning they look perfect for the position, whether they're qualified or not? As the New York Times reported last year, "Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television."

If Trump has fashioned his presidency like a television show, it’s one aimed directly at Fox’s audience. Anger, resentment and fear are the pillars of the Fox oeuvre, just as they are of the Trump presidency. Politics isn’t a search for solutions to problems; it’s a place where you’re told over and over what you should be mad about, who you should despise, and what’s threatening you and everything you hold dear. New threats are presented — The caravan! The War on Christmas! — and are given intense blanket coverage before getting dropped and forgotten as though they never happened. What matters is keeping viewers in a state of perpetual agitation so they’ll keep tuning in.

Underneath all of it are a few master narratives: that we are caught up in a battle between darkness and light, that change is bad and that what makes America great is either endangered or has been lost. This is what Fox tells its audience, and this is what Trump tells his audience.

There’s one other key way in which Trump and Fox are one and the same: Both have powerful voices, but both appeal only to a minority of the country. For Fox, that’s perfectly fine — they can pull in a few million viewers a night and make handsome profits, even if most of the country isn’t buying what they’re selling. As Trump discovered in November when his effort at a profoundly Foxian campaign failed to forestall a Democratic wave, it doesn’t quite work if you’re the president. But he isn’t going to change now.

Donberly? Gag. That is all.

[Howl]

Holy Schmoley! Tucker Carlson just totally eviscerated Trump in an interview with a Swiss German-language weekly, then cut him off at the knees and then confirms that, yes, the emperor has no clothes.   Yeah, these guys are definitely monitoring the winds of change and have come to the conclusion that Trump is quickly becoming a liability. 

Trump? Hardly knew him.  Wasn't he the president of some Rotary Club in northern Minnesota?  Or maybe it's that Chamber of Commerce in the southernmost town in Nevada.  

Excerpt from an article posted by The Guardian  Full text here: Fox News attack dog Tucker Carlson turns on Trump: 'I don't think he's capable'

Spoiler

Speaking with Die Weltwoche, Switzerland’s leading German-language weekly, Carlson catalogued a list of grievances and failures regarding Trump’s ability and desire to deliver on anything he pledged during his campaign.

“His chief promises were that he would build the wall, defund planned parenthood and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson said.

“I’ve come to believe that Trump’s role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does.”

Not only has Trump failed to come through, Carlson said, he might not even be able to, both due to his own shortcomings and his inability to muster legislators to follow his lead.

“I don’t think he’s capable,” Carlson went on.  “I don’t think he’s capable of sustained focus. I don’t think he understands the system. I don’t think the Congress is on his side. I don’t think his own agencies support him.”

While Trump has asked some questions that he thinks needed to be asked, such as: “Why don’t our borders work?” and “What’s the point of Nato?” Carlson said he has done nothing to follow through on them once they have been posed.

Why not? Because legislating is too complex for Trump to grasp.

In order to pass legislation, “you really have to understand how it works and you have to be very focused on getting it done, and he knows very little about the legislative process, hasn’t learned anything, and surrounded himself with people that can get it done, hasn’t done all the things you need to do so. It’s mostly his fault that he hasn’t achieved those things,” he said.

“I’m not in charge of Trump,” Carlson added, although considering the outsized role Fox News plays in setting Trump’s daily agenda that may be up for debate. Following a misleading segment on Carlson’s show in August the president tweeted about the so-called land seizures from white farmers in South Africa the next day, to name one example among many.

Now let's wait to see if Carlson voices these misgivings and criticisms on his show. 

 

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Donald Trump Jr., recently split from his first wife, is dating former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. They call themselves "Donberly."

Unbearable upper class twits. Personally, I'd go for something along the lines of KimDonDoh. 

Edited December 7, 2018 by Howl

[onekidanddone]

45 minutes ago, Howl said:

Holy Schmoley! Tucker Carlson just totally eviscerated Trump in an interview with a Swiss German-language weekly, then cut him off at the knees and then confirms that, yes, the emperor has no clothes.   Yeah, these guys are definitely monitoring the winds of change and have come to the conclusion that Trump is quickly becoming a liability. 

Trump? Hardly knew him.  Wasn't he the president of some Rotary Club in northern Minnesota?  Or maybe it's that Chamber of Commerce in the southernmost town in Nevada.  

Excerpt from an article posted by The Guardian  Full text here: Fox News attack dog Tucker Carlson turns on Trump: 'I don't think he's capable'

  Reveal hidden contents

Speaking with Die Weltwoche, Switzerland’s leading German-language weekly, Carlson catalogued a list of grievances and failures regarding Trump’s ability and desire to deliver on anything he pledged during his campaign.

“His chief promises were that he would build the wall, defund planned parenthood and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson said.

“I’ve come to believe that Trump’s role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does.”

Not only has Trump failed to come through, Carlson said, he might not even be able to, both due to his own shortcomings and his inability to muster legislators to follow his lead.

“I don’t think he’s capable,” Carlson went on.  “I don’t think he’s capable of sustained focus. I don’t think he understands the system. I don’t think the Congress is on his side. I don’t think his own agencies support him.”

While Trump has asked some questions that he thinks needed to be asked, such as: “Why don’t our borders work?” and “What’s the point of Nato?” Carlson said he has done nothing to follow through on them once they have been posed.

Why not? Because legislating is too complex for Trump to grasp.

In order to pass legislation, “you really have to understand how it works and you have to be very focused on getting it done, and he knows very little about the legislative process, hasn’t learned anything, and surrounded himself with people that can get it done, hasn’t done all the things you need to do so. It’s mostly his fault that he hasn’t achieved those things,” he said.

“I’m not in charge of Trump,” Carlson added, although considering the outsized role Fox News plays in setting Trump’s daily agenda that may be up for debate. Following a misleading segment on Carlson’s show in August the president tweeted about the so-called land seizures from white farmers in South Africa the next day, to name one example among many.

Now let's wait to see if Carlson voices these misgivings and criticisms on his show. 

 

Unbearable upper class twits. Personally, I'd go for something along the lines of KimDonDoh. 

Tucker: “Trump? Trump? I thought you said Forest Gump.  My bad”.

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Welcome to the Fox News presidency"

  Reveal hidden contents

President Trump confirmed this morning that State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert, someone with only brief government service and limited experience in diplomacy and foreign affairs, will replace Nikki Haley as ambassador to the United Nations. Nauert’s chief qualification is probably that before joining the Trump administration, she was best known as a co-host of the president’s favorite TV show, “Fox & Friends.”

While it would be an exaggeration to say that the merger between the Trump administration is now complete — after all, there’s still room for more Fox personalities to take over key positions in government — we have truly never seen anything like this before.

In early U.S. history, newspapers were intensely partisan and a president could expect to have a paper or two acting as his propaganda arm. But there has never been a situation in which a media outlet — its personnel, its ideas, its spirit — has commingled with the government to this extent, creating one entity pursuing a common set of goals.

Before we explore what that means, let's run down some of the ways Fox and the Trump administration have joined hands:

• The White House communications director, Bill Shine, came to the job from Fox News, where he was a top executive for many years. Shine was accused of abetting the horrific sexual harassment allegedly perpetrated by Fox News founder Roger Ailes, contributing to Shine being forced out after Ailes’s death. But because of his severance package, Shine works in the White House while literally still being on Fox’s payroll.
• In addition to Nauert and Shine, a raft of high-ranking Trump administration officials seem to have gotten their jobs because Trump watched them on Fox and liked what he saw. They include former Fox contributors such as John Bolton, Mercedes Schlapp, K.T. McFarland, Tony Sayegh, and, of course, Anthony Scaramucci. 
• Trump starts nearly every day by watching “Fox & Friends,” a show so mind-bogglingly insipid it makes “Live With Kelly and Ryan” look like a graduate philosophy seminar. He usually live-tweets what he sees there, setting the news agenda for the entire media.
• According to reporting by New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi, on “most weeknights” after his show is done taping, Sean Hannity calls the president, and they have a conversation debriefing the day’s events. “Unlike on Fox & Friends, where Trump learns new (frequently incorrect) information, Hannity acts to transform Trump’s pervasive ambivalence into resolve by convincing him what he’s already decided he believes and what he’s decided to do is correct.”
• Trump is an avid fan of the weekly punch in the face that is “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” making sure to record the show when he can’t watch it live, and he “considers Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs a close adviser.”
• Trump’s own staff members sometimes find that the best way to communicate with their boss is through Fox News. “Aides sometimes plot to have guests make points on Fox that they have been unable to get the president to agree to in person. ‘He will listen more when it is on TV,’ a senior administration official said.”
• Donald Trump Jr., recently split from his first wife, is dating former Fox News personality Kimberly Guilfoyle. They call themselves "Donberly."

But it’s only partly about the personnel. What Trump has done in the White House is bring about the full realization of Roger Ailes’s vision. Ailes may have been one of the most loathsome human beings to ever walk the earth, but he was also a genius, particularly in understanding how TV and politics could intertwine. What he created with Fox is a creature that simultaneously accomplishes two goals: making huge profits and serving the interests of the Republican Party.

Ailes never found a more perfect candidate than Donald Trump, which is why in 2011, Trump was given a weekly call-in segment on “Fox & Friends,” an absolutely essential tool in turning Trump from a TV personality into a political figure. Once a week, Fox’s audience would hear Trump opine on political matters and the news of the day, laying the groundwork for its acceptance of him as a legitimate candidate for president.

And while every president cares about his televised image, none has ever seen the entire world through the prism of television the way Trump does. How many times have we heard him say one of his nominees is "from Central Casting," meaning they look perfect for the position, whether they're qualified or not? As the New York Times reported last year, "Before taking office, Mr. Trump told top aides to think of each presidential day as an episode in a television show in which he vanquishes rivals. People close to him estimate that Mr. Trump spends at least four hours a day, and sometimes as much as twice that, in front of a television."

If Trump has fashioned his presidency like a television show, it’s one aimed directly at Fox’s audience. Anger, resentment and fear are the pillars of the Fox oeuvre, just as they are of the Trump presidency. Politics isn’t a search for solutions to problems; it’s a place where you’re told over and over what you should be mad about, who you should despise, and what’s threatening you and everything you hold dear. New threats are presented — The caravan! The War on Christmas! — and are given intense blanket coverage before getting dropped and forgotten as though they never happened. What matters is keeping viewers in a state of perpetual agitation so they’ll keep tuning in.

Underneath all of it are a few master narratives: that we are caught up in a battle between darkness and light, that change is bad and that what makes America great is either endangered or has been lost. This is what Fox tells its audience, and this is what Trump tells his audience.

There’s one other key way in which Trump and Fox are one and the same: Both have powerful voices, but both appeal only to a minority of the country. For Fox, that’s perfectly fine — they can pull in a few million viewers a night and make handsome profits, even if most of the country isn’t buying what they’re selling. As Trump discovered in November when his effort at a profoundly Foxian campaign failed to forestall a Democratic wave, it doesn’t quite work if you’re the president. But he isn’t going to change now.

Donberly? Gag. That is all.

KimDonPuke

[GreyhoundFan]

"Tucker Carlson is willing to overlook Trump’s personality because of his nationalist rhetoric"

Spoiler

Tucker Carlson’s interview with a German-language periodical this week included sharp criticism of President Trump.

“His chief promises were that he would build the wall, defund Planned Parenthood, and repeal Obamacare, and he hasn’t done any of those things,” Carlson said. “There are a lot of reasons for that, but . . . I’ve come to believe that Trump’s role is not as a conventional president who promises to get certain things achieved to the Congress and then does. I don’t think he’s capable. I don’t think he’s capable of sustained focus. I don’t think he understands the system. I don’t think the Congress is on his side. I don’t think his own agencies support him. He’s not going to do that.”

While the critique was more pointed than it has been in the past, Carlson has used broadly similar rhetoric on his show.

“Donald Trump is a volatile president,” he said after the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election. “He’s impulsive, he changes course on a dime, sometimes without explaining why. He’s elusive about what he really believes. He talks and tweets about himself too much, too much for his own good or the country’s good. And by the way, he’s not always a great manager. The White House actually is pretty chaotic right now. That’s not just media spin, it’s real.

“Well, if you voted for Trump, you already know this, and you probably also knew this back in November when you voted for him,” he continued. “But what you also knew, and what is worth remembering right now, is there are worse things than what we currently have.”

He made that same point in July 2017: “Trump may be badly flawed, you can make that case, but the people who hate him have gone crazy, sometimes hilariously so.”After the New York Times published an anonymous essay by a senior administration official criticizing Trump, Carlson express

ed agreement.

“The piece does make a couple of points. The first is that the president is an unpredictable and mercurial boss who is light on policy detail and given to saying outrageous things,” he said. “That is true. If you have you ever seen him give a speech, you already know that. . . . [Trump] is exactly who you think he is. You either like that or you don’t. You voted for him or you didn’t. But he is not trying to fool you. He is not capable of fooling you.”

What Carlson clearly appreciates about the president is twofold: That Trump enrages their shared political opponents and that Trump advocates policies with which Carlson agrees.

There’s one particular position advocated by Trump that Carlson has specifically praised. After Trump traveled to Europe last year and gave a speech during a visit to Poland, Carlson was effusive.

Trump’s speech “may have been the single best thing he has said out loud since entering politics and for one reason: It was a rousing defense of Western civilization,” Carlson said. “Now you wouldn’t think speeches doing that would be unusual; the only reason you hire leaders in the first place is to defend your civilization. Especially ours, which is the foundation of pretty much everything we have. Our history, our language, our art, science, law. Our entire culture. America itself is the product of Western civilization. So you would think the people running the West would want to defend all of that. But, no, it was left to Donald Trump to do it.”

He played a clip of Trump’s speech in which the president praised “our ancient heroes” and the embrace of “timeless traditions and customs."

“The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive,” Trump said in the clip.

“Now, admittedly, President Trump is a polarizing figure,” Carlson said after the clip aired. “But the words we just heard him speak shouldn’t be controversial.”

Throughout Trump’s presidency, Carlson has repeatedly drawn fire, including from myself, for his advocacy of positions that overlap significantly with those of white nationalists. In July, he suggested that Mexico was interfering with U.S. elections by “packing the electorate” with migrants. In August, he ran a segment on the purported plight of white farmers in South Africa, a subject that has been a focus of white nationalist attention — and that earned Carlson praise both from Trump and from a number of prominent white nationalists. (Carlson later scaled back his initial claims.)

White nationalists themselves, while similarly appreciative of aspects of Trump’s policy, have also at times expressed frustration at his not implementing the changes he promised. The Southern Poverty Law Center has catalogued recent complaints from that community that mirror Carlson’s laments about Trump’s ineffectiveness.

For example Richard Spencer, the white nationalist filmed shortly after the election giving a Nazi salute and chanting “Heil Trump”, declared last month that “[t]he Trump moment is over, and it’s time for us to move on.”

Why?

“Trump basically had a year and a half to enact lasting immigration reform,” Spencer wrote on Twitter. “Trump didn’t seize this moment. He instead enacted Paul Ryan’s agenda.”

When Trump tweeted repeatedly Friday morning about the Mueller probe, the white-nationalist-sympathetic site VDare offered a response each time: “Don’t care, build wall.”

The wall was the first failure that Carlson identified, as well.

The interviewer from that German-language magazine, Die WeltWoche, also asked about how America might prevent an internal revolution — a prospect Carlson didn’t dismiss as a possibility.

“If you asked your average old person what’s the most upsetting thing about being old? You expect them to say, ‘Well, my friends are dead.’ But that’s not what they say. Or ‘I have to go to the bathroom six times a night.’ That’s not what they say,” Carlson replied. “You know what they say? ‘Things are too different. This is not the country I grew up in. I don’t recognize this.’ All people hate that. It doesn’t mean you’re a bigot, it means you’re human.”

The interviewer asked how important migration was in driving such change.

“It’s central, because nothing changes the society more quickly or more permanently than bringing in a whole new population — and that’s not an attack on anybody,” Carlson said. “There are lots of populations — there are lots of immigrants — who are much more impressive than I am. I have no doubt about that. I’m not attacking immigrants. I’m merely saying that the effect on the people who already live here is real and they’re not bigots for feeling that way.”

Bigots such as Spencer, however, do feel that way. They, too, lament that Trump hasn’t been as effective as they wished or expected.

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Faux News hasn't twittered in a month.  This is the tweet that broke them: 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Fox person opines: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I love The Onion. Sadly, this could end up being true.

 

[fraurosena]

14 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I love The Onion. Sadly, this could end up being true.

 

She'll have even more of a chance if she dies her hair blond and takes a few turns as a Faux News anchor.

[AmazonGrace]

Who are you and what did you do to the real Fox contributor 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Kevin McCarthy  is okay with criminals running the country

 

Edited December 10, 2018 by AmazonGrace

[AmazonGrace]

Obama is doing black wrong: 

 

And here's the next chief of staff who hasn't heard of any news that happened after 1952 or so 

 

[AmazonGrace]

White men über alles. 

 

No white men belong to exotic sexual groups? 

No white male college queers? 

[fraurosena]

East, weast, south, and nouth.  Or is it sorth and north? I can never remember.

 

[AmazonGrace]

It's awesome that Jared has dreams. 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

Surely President Hillary Clinton will be forced to resign any day now. 

 

[onekidanddone]

2 hours ago, AmazonGrace said:

It's awesome that Jared has dreams. 

 

 

If you get to be Lou Dobbs's age and still think like this, there is hope. I'm not even going to bother.

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘Fox & Friends’ exposes Pompeo on Khashoggi killing"

Spoiler

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made some unfathomable statements about the killing of Post Global Opinions columnist Jamal Khashoggi in a Wednesday interview on “Fox & Friends.” Like this one: “Some of the reporting that you’ve seen on that has been inaccurate,” said Pompeo, after co-host Ainsley Earhardt noted that the CIA believes with high confidence that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had ordered the killing of Khashoggi. It’s one of the year’s biggest stories, and “Fox & Friends” was on it.

Earhardt and colleague Brian Kilmeade wondered if the reporting on the CIA’s findings was actually inaccurate. “Look, we all know that they’re still working on this,” Pompeo said, as noted in a write-up in The Post. “This is still a developing set of facts with respect to the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The intelligence community is working diligently on that.” He added: The direct evidence, this is what I’ve said before, the direct evidence isn’t yet available. It may show up tomorrow. It may have shown up overnight and I haven’t seen it.”

Contrast that Waffle House special with what Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) said after a briefing on the matter. “There’s not a smoking gun — there’s a smoking saw,” said the senator in reference to the reported dismemberment of Khashoggi’s body after he was killed at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

“We know the prince knows, right?” asked Kilmeade, in a valiant attempt to break through Pompeo’s talking points. The secretary responded, “I’ve spoken to the king ... I’ve spoken to the crown prince a number of times since the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, and it is absolutely America’s intent to hold everyone accountable who was responsible for this.”

Kilmeade asked whether Pompeo believed the crown prince, prompting this remark from Pompeo: “The kingdom of Saudi Arabia decides who’s running the country. ... We are working closely with the kingdom to make sure that America is protected.”

Just how stunning was it to see a top Trump administration official get hounded on “Fox & Friends”? Stunning enough to prompt a round of awe over at “Morning Joe,” its MSNBC competitor. Co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski chatted with Sen. Dick Durbin about Pompeo’s remarks and just couldn’t square them with reality or decency. “I understand Donald Trump doesn’t care,” said Brzezinski. "But why doesn’t Mike Pompeo care right now? Are the pathetic deflections that we just heard when he appeared on ‘Fox & Friends’ — is that a patriot speaking or a wannabe dictator’s butt-boy? And I’m dead serious. I’m asking, are these the words of a patriot?” said Brzezinski.

Speaking of words, Twitter apprised Brzezinski of the homophobic sentiment that she’d conveyed. So she did the wise thing:

The MSNBC hosts didn’t wrap things up without first commending the folks on the couch. “We also ... want to extend our thanks to the hosts of ‘Fox & Friends,'" said Scarborough. "We know at least two of them pretty well. And we really, really respect what they did this morning. They asked the secretary of state the questions that needed to be asked. He thought that he was going to go on ‘Fox & Friends’ and he was going to have a bunch of softballs lobbed at him. Instead, they asked him questions that needed to be asked. And my God, Pompeo’s answers were horrifying.”

Bolding added to highlight a moment of absolute truth-telling. The secretary had every reason to expect the soft-serve treatment from “Fox & Friends” — to judge from history and emails exchanged between the show and reps for a former Trump appointee. However, it’s nice to see those expectations upended in such news-breaking fashion.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Trump echoes Fox News talking point on Fox News"

Spoiler

President Trump needed to mount a forceful response to a federal court filing from last week alleging that his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, violated campaign finance laws at his direction. So he sat down with Fox News.

In an interview with host Harris Faulkner that aired on Thursday afternoon, Trump held himself blameless. “Nobody except for me would be looked at like this. Nobody,” he told Faulkner. His complaint was that the hush payments that Cohen had arranged for two women, with the involvement of the National Enquirer, didn’t violate campaign finance laws, and he cited a piece by the Heritage Foundation’s Hans A. von Spakovsky, as well as an opinion piece in the National Review headlined “Michael Cohen Pled Guilty to Something That Is Not a Crime.”

“What about Congress, where they have a slush fund? And millions and millions of dollars is paid out each year. They have a slush fund. Millions -- they don’t talk about campaign finance anything. Have you ever heard of campaign finance laws? Have they listed that on their campaign finance sheets? No,” said Trump.

Here, the president was referring to a congressional kitty used to pay out settlements, including those stemming from sexual harassment complaints. That’s a nifty little argument. Wonder where a guy like Trump came up with it?

One possibility is Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who on Monday night laid out essentially the same argument that Trump articulated on Fox News on Thursday afternoon:

Now, by this reasoning, any money a political candidate spends to maintain or protect his image while running for office now qualifies as a regulated campaign donation, and has to be disclosed. That would include, by the way, in addition to an infinite number of other things, buying toothpaste and getting a haircut.

It would definitely include the taxpayer-financed slush fund that Congress has set aside to pay off its own sexual harassment claims. Yes, those now qualify as campaign contributions. They must be publicly disclosed, except, of course, they’re not publicly disclosed, and they never will be. Why is that?

Bolding added to highlight Fox News-Trump echo effect.

It is possible, of course, that Trump dug up this talking point somewhere else. In his Wednesday piece on the matter, for example, von Spakovsky wrote that Capitol Hill lawmakers might be in trouble under the legal premise of the Cohen campaign-finance proceedings. “Last year, it was reported that Congress has secretly paid out over $17 million to settle close to 300 cases by staffers claiming sexual and other forms of harassment and discrimination.”

Then again, Trump could have sourced the argument from his lawyers. Whatever the provenance, Fox News viewers get a one-two punch of polemical reinforcement: They hear it from a leading network host and also from the president himself. He’s gotta be the victim of a double standard.

 

[Cartmann99]

Holy missed opportunity, Batman! One of the answers should imply that Orange Donnie and FLOTUS watch Faux Nation together afterwards. We all know it's complete bullshit, but implying that Orange Donnie and FLOTUS watch Faux Nation, will help keep their desired demographic paying extra for this trainwreck.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

Faux and Friends: The real crime is to investigate crimes  

 

[fraurosena]

LOL.. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

It would make a catchy chant. 

Build That Wall! 

We're gonna build that wall! 

Who's gonna pay for the wall! 

We're gonna pay for the wall! 

How are you gonna pay for the wall! 

We're gonna put $50 into your Gofundme!