Griff Jenkins
Fox News has largely dodged reporting President Donald Trump’s February 15 declaration that he is above the law as long as he “saves his Country,” with much of the network’s sparse coverage focusing on how the president’s nakedly authoritarian statement triggered the libs.
When Trump posted, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” midday Saturday, the response was fierce. Trump’s remark — a quote “often attributed” to Napoleon Bonaparte, who overthrew France’s post-revolutionary republic and crowned himself emperor — followed calls from his allies to defy court rulings that strike down administration actions as illegal.
Numerous critics on the left and a handful on the right pointed out the danger inherent in Trump appearing to place himself above the law. MAGA influencers like Jack Posobiec (who recently received special access to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s first overseas trip) cheered. “America will be saved,” the notorious Pizzagate conspiracy theorist wrote. “What must be done will be done.”
It should go without saying that a similar remark from Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris would have triggered days if not weeks of apocalyptic coverage from Fox. But the right-wing propaganda network’s response to Trump’s comment has been notably muted, with only about six minutes of discussion through noon ET on Tuesday.
The bulk of Fox’s coverage — more than four and a half minutes — came from a Sunday segment on The Big Weekend Show in which anchor Griff Jenkins and his panel mocked Democrats and journalists for criticizing Trump’s statement.
Jenkins introduced the discussion by reading Trump’s quote and describing it as “the left’s latest ammunition for vilifying Trump.” Jenkins then aired a series of criticisms of the remark as a chyron read “left melts down over out-of-context Trump post,” before providing the purported missing context: “Trump said only days ago that he does in fact plan on abiding by the law.”
Jenkins, having awarded the president credit for saying he would follow the law before saying that actions aren’t illegal if done to save the country, then added: “In fact, many people wonder if the ones not following the law are actually those on the left who have relentlessly gone after Trump over the past four years with questionable cases.”
The segment’s panelists celebrated Trump’s remark as a deliberate act of misdirection aimed at his political opposition.
“I am really grateful that President Trump did troll them on this, and I think he knew this was going to be their reaction,” offered Fox contributor Sara Carter.
Medical contributor Nicole Saphier added that Trump “puts up tweets like this because he knows that they are going to lose their mind. He has Democrats and left-wing media in such a tizzy.”
Fox prime-time host and Trump adviser Sean Hannity also responded by mocking Trump’s critics, tossing in a reference to the remark during a Monday recitation of purported instances of the media’s anti-Trump hysteria.
“It's like Nazi, fascist, racist, now it's Napoleon, now it's Margaret Brennan, now it's Saturday Night Live,” he moaned. “I mean, to be honest, it's like 10 years of this and they still haven't learned a thing.”
Fox contributor Andrew McCarthy offered a more cautious take on Monday’s edition of America’s Newsroom, suggesting that Trump’s comment could undermine his administration’s legal fights before the Supreme Court.
“Look, I think that some of the things the president said over the weekend about his, you know, authority, that — like, you don't violate the law if you are saving the country, and some of the stuff that has gone on with the Justice Department — I hope they haven't spooked the justices,” he said. “Because if you are going to ask the justices to uphold the law, you have to act like the law is important.”
But Trump’s remarks undermining the rule of law are not anomalous. He vowed during the campaign to act as a “dictator,” though only on “day one” of his presidency, and promised to unleash the Justice Department on his political enemies and journalistic foils. He has cited as his model the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban, a self-described practitioner of “illiberal democracy.” Trump regularly praises murderous authoritarian rulers like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, and even touted the “strength” China’s leaders deployed in violently suppressing the Tiananmen Square uprising.
And Trump’s actions suggest he means what he says: He regularly signaled during his first administration that he wanted law enforcement to act as an extension of his will, and now he has put that into practice in his second term.
Pushback from the Justice Department stymied his efforts to take authoritarian steps like prosecuting his political foes and overturning the 2020 election. But since he returned to the White House, Trump has issued mass pardons to the January 6 convicts who attacked law enforcement in a bid keep him in power; purged federal prosecutors and FBI leadership; and nominated his own former personal lawyers to lead the Justice Department and a sycophant with an enemies list for FBI director.
His appointees have overseen an effort to dismiss corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in exchange for his support for Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts and an attempt to open a probe into a Biden-era contract, both of which triggered resignations from career prosecutors.
Trump has functionally ensured that his allies will remain beyond the reach of federal law enforcement for the next four years. What a troll!
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.
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