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On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

On Wisconsin Jobs, Biden Won And Trump Lost -- So Fox Whines About 'Trolling'

President Joe Biden traveled to Wisconsin on Wednesday to announce a new multibillion-dollar project by Microsoft, which stands in contrast to a notorious failure of local economic development in the state during the Trump administration. In response, Fox News’ purported “straight news” coverage accused Biden of “trying to troll” the public and otherwise dismissed the new project.

Biden traveled to Racine County to tout Microsoft’s $3.3 billion investment in a data center, which builds on other university partnerships and business projects the company has in the state. Notably, the data center will be constructed on land that was previously allocated for a factory to be built by Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn, in a deal pushed in 2017 by then-President Donald Trump and then-Gov. Scott Walker (R).

“Foxconn turned out to be just that,” Biden said Wednesday. “A con.”

The Vergereported in 2020 on the colossal failure of the Foxconn project. Though state and local governments spent at least $400 million on land and infrastructure, the factory never went into operation. And, far short of the 13,000 jobs that were promised, the company had hired fewer than 300 people by the end of 2019 and made a failed attempt to fill out its payrolls enough to qualify for state tax subsidies.

On the May 8 edition of MSNBC’s All In, host Chris Hayes said the Foxconn deal — along with many other Trump promises about saving jobs, reviving American manufacturing, or building important infrastructure — was “a big, glitzy announcement that turns into nothing.”

Hayes also revisited Trump’s remarks at a 2018 groundbreaking event in Racine County, in which he claimed the factory would be “the eighth wonder of the world.”

In Fox News’ telling, however, it was Biden’s event, rather than Trump’s failed promises on the Foxconn deal, that was politically suspect, and a cover-up for a supposedly failing economy to boot. (The American economy is objectively strong, despite the right-wing smear campaign to convince the public otherwise.)

  • Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner said people in Racine should ask the president why his economic policy “doesn’t … work for us, the American people.” “If anybody would like to raise their hand there — you don’t need to be a reporter, just be a citizen who is curious,” Faulkner said. “Mr. President, why doesn’t your economic policy work for us, the American people? Why is it not working for millions of people? And do you know when you wipe away the tax breaks you’re gonna hurt middle-class Americans too?” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 5/8/24]
  • Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich claimed that Biden “turned to a new strategy of trying to troll voters” by touting the new data center at the site of the failed Foxconn project: “Is that what he’s left with, to just troll Trump?” Fox News anchor John Roberts added that the Microsoft AI center is “scheduled to be built — we’ll see if they actually break ground on it. We’ll find out soon.” Roberts then dismissed Biden’s remarks on job creation, saying, “Take off the rose-colored aviators” and changing the subject to attack Biden on the issue of inflation. [Fox News, America Reports, 5/8/24]
  • Fox Business host and former Trump administration economic adviser Larry Kudlow accused Biden of “trying to buy votes” while defending Trump’s failure on the Foxconn project. “And I might add, the Trump years, the money was allocated to Foxconn, but the foreign investor pulled out so it never got done,” Kudlow said. “So, such is life, nothing you can do about that.” (Right-wing commentators often accuse Democrats of “buying votes” through various government programs, even as people like Kudlow defend economic interventions by Republican administrations regardless of whether they succeeded or failed.) [Fox Business, The Big Money Show, 5/8/24; Media Matters, 9/29/15, 4/9/24]

    • Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    What 'Bloodbath'? Auto Is Stronger, Paying Higher Wages Than Under Trump

    What 'Bloodbath'? Auto Is Stronger, Paying Higher Wages Than Under Trump

    During a March 16 campaign rally in Ohio, former president and presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump declared, “If I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” Trump’s violent rhetoric spurred a flurry of media discussion whether his warning of a “bloodbath” centered on other remarks in his speech about the auto industry, as suggested by the Trump campaign, or meant something more sinister given his history of endorsing actual political violence.

    But the former explanation itself is a lie; the auto industry is at an 18-year high for employment and wages have soared during the Biden administration, even as Trump's MAGA media allies claim that the industry is currently suffering because of President Joe Biden’s policies. Additionally, Trump's earlier policies as president hurt the auto industry. (Given these facts, it should come as no surprise that the United Auto Workers endorsed Biden for reelection earlier this year.)

    Media outlets are so caught up in the spin over exactly which “bloodbath” Trump might’ve been referring to, they are losing sight of the fact that even his campaign’s excuse is itself another lie about the economy.

    • Trump warned of a “bloodbath” if he loses the presidential election
      • During his rally, Trump said: “Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that’s going to be the least of it. It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” He later added: “If this election isn’t won, I’m not sure that you’ll ever have another election in this country.” [NBC News, 3/16/24]
      • The Biden campaign responded to Trump's comments by pointing to his previous support of political violence. “This is who Donald Trump is: a loser who gets beat by over 7 million votes and then instead of appealing to a wider mainstream audience doubles down on his threats of political violence,” Biden campaign spokesman James Singer said. “He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge.” [The Washington Post, 1/10/24; NBC News, 3/16/24]
      • NBC News reported that during the rally, Trump saluted while a recording played of the national anthem being sung by jail inmates awaiting trial for the January 6 insurrection; Trump also referred to imprisoned rioters as “hostages” and “unbelievable patriots.” The article also included a statement from Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt, who said: “Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers.” [NBC News, 3/16/24]
    • Trump's media allies came to his defense, pushing his campaign's claim that he meant a “bloodbath” in the auto industry and assailing its performance under Biden due to EVs
      • Newsmax host Emma Rechenberg: “It was clearly in the context of what's going on with the economy, and what's going on more specifically here with the auto industry right now.” Clearly implying that the auto industry is hurting right now, Rechenberg added: “And we've seen from the current president, the Biden administration, their push for this EV market, right, and outsourcing work from other countries here.” [Newsmax, The National Report, 3/18/24]
      • Newsmax host Rob Finnerty: “He's talking about the auto industry and the fact that jobs are being taken by car companies that are importing cars, and that means factories are closing here in the U.S.” Regular guest Mercedes Schlapp of the American Conservative Union echoed this, saying: “It's very clear that he's referring to the auto industry with the fact that these auto parts would be made in different countries like China and Mexico, and the importance of taking strong actions against China when it comes to the auto industry.” [Newsmax, Wake Up America, 3/18/24]
      • CNN conservative commentator Alice Stewart: “There are several definitions of ‘bloodbath,’” but Trump's “campaign made the point quite accurately that Joe Biden's electric vehicle mandates are killing the American manufacturing industry.” Stewart continued: “They're making the case that under the Biden administration, that's not great news for the auto manufacturing industry, and that's an accurate statement.” [CNN, CNN Newsroom, 3/17/24]
      • Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo: Trump “said there would be a bloodbath in the auto industry if Biden gets his way jamming down the throats of Americans EV vehicles, and the mainstream media completely mangled his words.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 3/17/24]
    • Auto industry employment is at the highest levels in 18 years, and autoworkers made huge wage gains
      • Bureau of Labor Statistics data show more people currently employed in auto manufacturing than at any time since July 2006. Data presented in a graph from the St. Louis Fed shows that nearly 1.07 million Americans are currently employed in auto manufacturing, the highest level since July 2006, when just over 1.07 million workers were employed in the industry. [Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, accessed 3/18/24]
      • BLS data also show that wages throughout the auto industry are higher than ever under Biden. [Bureau of Labor Statistics, accessed 3/18/24]
      • Biden supported the UAW strike that resulted in “record wage hikes” for autoworkers' wages, while Trump opposed it. In December, Reuters reported that car manufacturers in the U.S. “are bumping up pay for their non-union workers after the United Auto Workers (UAW) secured record wage hikes and benefits for union workers at the Detroit Three automakers.” And while Biden supported UAW's efforts to expand unionization and made history by joining striking autoworkers on the picket line, Trump blasted the strike and slammed it in a speech to a non-union auto parts plant. [Reuters, 12/19/23, 11/10/23; NBC News, 9/26/23; ABC News, 9/28/23]
      • New car sales in 2024 are expected to rise to the highest since 2019, normalizing after supply chain issues caused by the pandemic. CNBC reported: “Any increase in U.S. sales next year would mark the first sequential sales growth for the automotive industry since 2015-16.” [CNBC, 12/21/23]
      • Biden is not pandering to Chinese EV automakers, and has maintained the 25% tax on Chinese-made cars that Trump put in place. Biden is also currently debating raising these tariffs even more, despite pleas from Chinese car company BYD to remove them. (There is controversy over whether this would be the best move for climate goals.) [The Wall Street Journal, 12/21/23; Vox, 3/4/24]
      • Trump's policies hurt the auto industry and he previously called for wage cuts and bankruptcy for the sector
      • Trump's steel tariffs hurt the auto industry. PolitiFact explained that Trump’s actions to set a 25% tariff on steel imports and a 10% tariff on aluminum imports actually “hampered the U.S. auto industry, sparking the loss of thousands of jobs.” The article continued: “GM, Ford and Fiat Chrysler, now part of Stellantis, all have closed plants in Michigan since 2018, the year the tariffs were imposed. GM and Ford paid $1 billion each in increased steel costs in 2018. … A December 2020 summary from the Congressional Research Service, Congress’ nonpartisan policy arm, said most studies ‘suggest a negative overall effect on U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) as a result of the tariffs’ and that most studies found U.S. consumers and companies ‘bore nearly the entire increased costs associated with the tariffs.’” [PolitiFact, 10/8/23]
      • In 2008, Trump called for wage cuts for autoworkers and said the Big Three U.S. automakers should go bankrupt. In a 2008 Fox News interview, Trump said, “I think that the unions are really, really hurting very badly what's going on with the autos. … And by the way, the union workers are fantastic, but probably they have to take a cut.” Trump added: “They get their little 5%. They get another 2%. They get another 3%, 4%, then all of a sudden they're making more money than the people that own the company.” During that Fox interview, Trump also said the automakers should go through bankruptcy: “There are so many ways that it can be saved. If they do a Chapter 11. … If they do a Chapter 11, and over the years I've put companies into a Chapter 11. You negotiate from Chapter 11. It's a tremendous strength.” [Fox News, Your World, 12/17/08]
    • News organizations covered the spin over Trump’s “bloodbath” comment without debunking the lie about the auto industry’s performance under Biden
      • The Washington Post carried a Trump spokesman’s comment that “Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers.” The Post failed to note there is no such “economic bloodbath” in the industry under Biden’s policies now, and that U.S. autoworkers are better off today than they were under Trump. [The Washington Post, 3/16/24]
    • The Associated Press: “Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said that Trump had clearly been talking about the impact of a second Biden term on the auto industry and broader economy.” The AP article also failed to mention any details about the current state of the auto industry, but did report that “Trump repeatedly noted his difficulty reading from his teleprompters, which could be seen visibly whipping in 35-mile-per-hour wind gusts.” [The Associated Press, 3/17/24]
    • Politico: “Defenders of the former president say he was speaking about the plight of the auto industry.” The article included quotes on the Sunday shows from Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), and Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who all highlighted the supposed context of the purportedly imperiled auto industry. [Politico, 3/17/24]
    • CNN: “The Trump campaign shot back Saturday night, saying the former president was speaking about autoworkers.” “‘Biden’s policies will create an economic bloodbath for the auto industry and autoworkers,’ Trump campaign spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said.” [CNN, 3/17/24]
    • The Sunday political talk shows failed to clarify the point that the U.S. auto industry is doing better now than it did under Trump. Transcripts show that the hosts never raised this point, instead getting hung up on what the word “bloodbath” might be referring to. [ABC, This Week, 3/17/24; CBS, Face The Nation, 3/17/24; CNN, State of the Union, 3/17/24; NBC, Meet The Press, 3/17/24]
    • The New York Times carried Trump’s social media post claiming that media outlets “fully understood that I was simply referring to imports allowed by Crooked Joe Biden, which are killing the automobile industry.” The Times failed to note that nothing is “killing” the U.S. auto industry, which is in better shape now than when Trump was president. [The New York Times, 3/18/24]
    With research contributions from Ilana Berger

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Right-Wing Media Struggle To Embrace Early Voting In Wake Of New York Defeat

    Right-Wing Media Struggle To Embrace Early Voting In Wake Of New York Defeat

    Right-wing figures are sounding the alarm that Republicans must mobilize their supporters to embrace early voting in the wake of last night’s special election, in which Democrats won the U.S. House seat formerly held by scandal-plagued ex-Rep. George Santos (R-NY). The problem for them, however, is that this would require undoing the propaganda campaign that former President Donald Trump and his right-wing media allies waged against early voting and voter access initiatives in their failed effort to steal the 2020 election.

    Early on election night, Democrats boasted that their nominee, former Rep. Tom Suozzi, had already built up a 14,000-vote lead over his Republican opponent, Mazi Pilip. Republican get-out-the-vote efforts on Election Day might also have been hindered by a snowstorm on Long Island, which led to a Republican super PAC hiring private snow plows to clear areas around Republican-leaning precincts. Suozzi won the race by an almost 8-point margin and it is unclear whether the snow made a difference in the result, but the situation highlighted a problem for Republicans: Many Democratic voters had actively banked their ballots before Election Day, while Republican voters largely put off casting theirs until the last day of the campaign.

    Conservative media face tough choices after this election loss, which may have hinged on the GOP's abrupt abandonment of bipartisan immigration reform legislation in the final days of the campaign, and in turn been exacerbated by the party and its media allies distancing themselves from early voting over the past four years.

    • Former Trump 2016 campaign aide Rick Gates said, “My No. 1 takeaway is for Republicans: early voting, early voting, early voting.” Gates further touted the campaign’s successful work in 2016 at mobilizing early voters in Florida and North Carolina. “Why the Republicans haven't been able to, you know, basically replicate that process, I don't know, but we've got to fix it and fix it soon,” Gates said, failing to acknowledge at all that Trump himself spoke against early voting throughout the 2020 election, plus his continued denial about the 2020 election in the years afterward. [Newsmax, Wake Up America, 2/14/24; Business Insider, 2/14/24]
    • Former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway declared on Fox News: “Bank your vote early, getting that early vote and making Republican voters comfortable, center-right voters comfortable with voting early, is incredibly important.” Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer thanked Conway for her political analysis of the race, “especially the early voting, we’ve yet to see whether or not the RNC can pull that off.” [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 2/14/24]
    • Right-wing radio host John Fredericks told opponents of early voting, “If you continue to push game-day voting because of algorithms, servers on Mars, CCP people flying around in flying saucers changing algorithms in the middle of the night, we will never win an election.” A crucial fact here is that Fredericks himself previously spent years spreading claims of vast election fraud. Following the 2022 midterms, however, he reversed course and declared, “I’m out of the convincing business, the narrative business. I’m in the ballot business, I just want to put ballots in boxes.” [Real America’s Voice, Outside The Beltway, 2/14/24; Real America’s Voice, War Room, 11/30/22]
    • Dairy Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro castigated Trump for his past statements against early voting and said that he “better flip on that right fast, because use every method at your disposal to win.” “In the Republican Party, who would’ve suggested that mail-in ballots are stupid and you shouldn’t use them?” Shapiro asked rhetorically. “Who would’ve proposed such a foolish proposition that you should — you know, it’s somehow morally bad to vote early if you’re a Republican? Thus losing two Senate seats in Georgia, and maybe his own presidential election.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 2/14/24]

    Unfortunately for Republicans, not everyone the right-wing media echo chamber is getting onboard. Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, a key figure in spreading Trump’s election lies leading up to the January 6 insurrection and in promoting Big Lie candidates in 2022, asserted Wednesday that “they stole this election in New York,” and reiterated his old election lies: “Like I said in 2020, they're stealing it by mail-in ballots and with these bad voter rolls and you can't get away from that.”

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier

    Fox Anchors Resume Debasing Themselves To Boost Trump

    For those who watched Fox News’ January 10 town hall with Donald Trump, one message rang loud and clear: Fox News is utterly supplicating itself to the disgraced former president in preparation for the general election in which Trump appears most likely to be the Republican nominee.

    Not only are multiple media reviewers noting just how friendly and deferential the event was, but Trump himself just publicly noted it, too — specifically thanking the network’s purported “straight news” anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for the job they did moderating the event.

    It’s important to remember that Fox News followed Trump’s demands in even hosting this town hall in the first place, a fact that Baier openly admitted, by scheduling it to run opposite CNN’s Republican debate between former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in which the former president refused to participate. The network also stacked the deck by interviewing Trump in prime time, a strong contrast to Fox’s earlier town hall events with Haley and DeSantis which ran during the 6 p.m. ET time slot.

    • The Associated Press said Baier and McCallum had the task of “not alienating” pro-Trump viewers: “They did it by not interrupting Trump with fact-checks.” [The Associated Press, 1/11/24]

    Moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum had their own challenge: not to allow the town hall to go off the rails, as a similar town hall televised by CNN last May did, while also not alienating a network audience filled with Trump supporters.

    They did it by not interrupting Trump with fact-checks. After Trump criticized how DeSantis responded to COVID as governor of Florida, MacCallum said, “DeSantis would argue with your characterization.” During an abortion discussion, when Trump suggested “radical” Democrats supported killing babies after they were born, it was not challenged.

    • The New York Times highlighted Trump’s “charmed night” on Fox News, in contrast to the attacks between Haley and DeSantis at their separate debate. [The New York Times, 1/11/24]

    Over on Fox News, Mr. Trump had a charmed night, uninterrupted by competitors and their opposition research and appearing relaxed as he batted back the few gently skeptical questions he received from the audience. One questioner even introduced herself as a “caucus captain” for him, and nothing forced him from his talking points.

    • MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough called it “an advertisement for Donald Trump.” “I would call it softball, a softball event. I’ve never seen one as fawning,” the former GOP congressman turned Trump critic said. “I’m not even sure, why did they have two hosts there? They could’ve just had one to just sit there and smile and say, ‘You’re great,’ ask another softball question.” [MSNBC, Morning Joe, 1/11/24]
    • Mediaite: “Fox News Finally Surrenders to Trump With Subservient Town Hall.” Mediaite founding editor Colby Hall wrote the event “was more like the anointment of a future leader and, even more shocking, a surrender by Fox News to their once and future King.” Colby noted, for instance, that while Baier brought up Trump’s recent statement that he hoped the economy would crash before the election, the anchor “did so in the most feckless way imaginable, prompting Trump: ‘You’re not saying you’re hoping for a crash? Just to be clear.’” [Mediaite, 1/11/24]
    • Mediaite also noted that Baier and MacCallum failed to check an outrageous lie about abortion rights. Trump “repeatedly and falsely claimed that Democrats favor ‘killing babies after birth,’” Mediaite wrote. “During a lengthy answer on the issue of abortion, Trump repeated this lie several times — without correction from either host.” [Mediaite, 1/11/24]
    • Donald Trump: “Thank you to Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for doing a really professional job.” [Truth Social, 1/11/24]

    Though some in the media have speculated that Fox News and the wider Murdoch empire might break with Trump after he refused to stop the January 6 insurrection, the fact remains that the network can still be counted on to boost Trump as long as he maintains his own hold over Fox’s conservative viewers. Indeed, documents revealed in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox shows that the network joined in spreading the defeated president’s lies about the 2020 election, and internally attacked its own reporters for telling the truth, precisely because it did not want to lose viewers to other right-wing news outlets.

    The immediate reviews of Fox’s obsequious town hall with Trump may be a good start. But going forward, mainstream media outlets need to recognize that Fox is not a news organization at all, and they should instead treat it like the Republican Party propaganda outlet it really is.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Donald Trump

    Fox Glosses Over Millions Paid To Trump By Foreign Regimes

    Fox News anchor Bret Baier provided one of the network’s few acknowledgements of a House Democratic report documenting millions of dollars in payments by foreign governments to former President Donald Trump’s businesses while he was in office. In a headline report taking up less than 40 seconds — the first mention of the story at all Thursday on Fox News — Baier focused primarily on the Trump Organization’s rebuttal, which attempted to change the subject to Fox’s shared obsession with Hunter Biden.

    Fox News has spent years claiming that President Joe Biden was compromised by foreign governments — especially China — only to have a congressional report point the finger at Trump instead. Media Matters found that Fox’s dayside programming failed to mention this story at all, even though it had received extensive coverage Thursday morning in both The New York Timesand The Washington Post, as well as in Fox’s corporate cousin The Wall Street Journal.

    Baier’s brief headline report featured two arguments from the Trump Organization: that Trump supposedly donated profits derived from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury while in office; and that one of the highlighted business transactions involved a Trump Tower lease that was first signed in 2008, before Trump ran for president.

    The Trump Organization stated in 2018 that it had donated over $150,000 to the U.S. Treasury, followed by more payments in 2019 and 2020, supposedly representing the profits derived from foreign governments doing business at Trump hotels. Even at the time, experts pointed out that the company provided no transparency into how this figure was calculated. (The House Democratic report revealed that the Chinese government and state-controlled entities spent $5.5 million at Trump properties throughout his time in office, and other foreign governments paid $2.3 million to his businesses.)

    And the money spent at Trump’s properties is just one of many potential conflicts of interest highlighted in the House Democrats’ report. The report also mentions a story that ran years ago regarding Ivanka Trump’s apparent ability to fast-track trademark approvals in China after her father was elected. One such occasion, in which then-President Trump publicly supported the Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE, drew criticism at the time for creating at least the appearance of a serious conflict of interest.

    Additionally, the argument that some of these arrangements may have predated Trump’s presidency underscores the vacuity of Fox’s ongoing coverage of Republican-led investigations into the Biden family — all of which are meant to provide a pretext to impeach Biden. Many of these supposed bombshell reports have focused on business deals by either the president’s son Hunter or the president’s brother James. Many of these supposed smoking guns have involved events that took place in 2017 and 2018, when Joe Biden didn’t hold any public office and seemed unlikely to ever do so again. And nobody has ever demonstrated actual involvement of Joe Biden.

    Baier is set to host Trump on Fox next week, co-moderating a town hall event that Trump is holding with the network instead of participating in a Republican primary debate on CNN.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Meet Fox's Fake 'Democrat' -- An Anti-Vax Libertarian (VIDEO)

    Meet Fox's Fake 'Democrat' -- An Anti-Vax Libertarian (VIDEO)

    Fox News has a long history of hosting conservative activists while presenting them as everyday American voters. The network has also been presenting an anti-vaccine activist as a “Democrat voter” — despite her past public comments declaring that she actually votes Libertarian for president and for Republicans in other races, and that Democratic candidates are “an automatic no-no.”

    Stephanie Edmonds became an anti-vaccine political activist after she lost her job in the New York City school system for refusing to get a COVID-19 vaccine. She has an extensive media footprint, with interviews and appearances on outlets ranging from the mainstream CNN and CBS News to the right-wing Post Millennial.

    On the Wednesday morning edition of Fox & Friends, a panel of voters gathered to discuss the previous evening’s town hall event with former President Donald Trump and Fox host Sean Hannity. Co-host Ainsley Earhardt introduced Edmonds, saying, “I know you’re a Democrat,” while Fox’s on-screen chyron identified her as a “Democrat voter.” Edmonds then criticized Trump on the grounds that he had “teed up a socialist vaccination program that then led to mandates” and promoted her work on an upcoming documentary about the pandemic shutdowns. She further added, “Democrats like me are fleeing from the Democratic Party.”

    Edmonds has every right to voice her own opinions, of course. But for Fox to present her as a “Democrat voter” whose pronouncements generally reflect Democratic voters seems disingenuous. Edmonds has in fact described herself as “politically homeless,” and she seems to have registered with the Democratic Party simply in order to vote in local primary elections in a heavily Democratic area.

    Earhardt should have known all this information about Edmonds — after all, the two of them had previously discussed this very matter. Edmonds had appeared on the September 28 edition of Fox & Friends as part of a voter panel gathered to respond to the second Republican primary debate. Earhardt explained, “You live in Stamford, Connecticut, very Democratic area, so you’re registered as a Democrat, but you say you’re politically homeless.”

    In another segment an hour later, Edmonds further explained to co-host Steve Doocy, “I’m actually politically homeless. I’m Democrat because I live in a Democrat town, so it allows me to participate more effectively in the process.”

    Doocy jokingly responded, “You want to be one of the cool kids — is that what you’re saying?”

    Edmonds is also active on her personal account on X (formerly known as Twitter), where she promoted Wednesday morning’s Fox appearance and suggested that she would speak out against the “socialist vaccination scheme.” In past tweets, she explained that she first registered as a Democrat in order to support then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) in the 2020 presidential primaries and applauded Gabbard for “joining the Unaffiliated with me.” She also declared that she has “NEVER voted for either a republican or democrat for president” and that she expects she will “probably go libertarian again” in 2024. She has also stated that “Democrats are an automatic no-no for me,” and said that in the 2022 midterm election she was “voting down ballot Republican.”

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Fox News Deceives Viewers About Its Own Reporter's Question To Biden (VIDEO)

    Fox News Deceives Viewers About Its Own Reporter's Question To Biden (VIDEO)

    On the November 26 edition of Fox News Sunday, Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson declared, “The oldest president in U.S. history also continues to face questions about his age, even here in Nantucket,” followed by video of President Joe Biden reacting to a yelled question — “Mr. President, are you too old to be running for reelection?” — which was clearly Tomlinson’s own voice. In reporting the story to his Fox audience, however, Tomlinson did not make it clear that he was the one who asked the question.

    Fox News anchor Shannon Bream soon concluded the segment, “All right, Lucas, on the road with the president in Nantucket, thank you very much,” again confirming that Tomlinson was the reporter following Biden around for the Fox team.


    Tomlinson had previously appeared Saturday night on Fox’s The Big Weekend Show, in which he and the co-hosts discussed that he had asked Biden those questions. But by Sunday morning, Tomlinson’s depiction of the event on Fox’s flagship “straight news” show had become that Biden “continues to face questions” that Tomlinson himself had been asking.

    Numerous commentators and media critics on X (formerly known as Twitter) called out Tomlinson’s report from Sunday morning, including describing it as the “epitome of astroturfing a political attack.” The ridicule piled on further against Tomlinson:

    • Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote: “It’s kind of a perpetual motion machine: 1. Report that X ‘continues to face questions;’ 2. Continue to ask those questions; 3. Report that the questions continue; 4. Repeat…”
    • The Poynter Institute’s Tom Jones wrote that Tomlinson’s behavior was “deceitful and disingenuous.”
    • The conservative media outlet Newsweekran with an understated and deadpan headline, “Fox News Reporter Appears to Leave Out Key Point in Attack on Biden's Age.”
    • Tomlinson’s tweet now features a community note on X itself: “This post lacks context. The reporter that asked the question is this reporter, Lucas Tomlinson.”

    screen grab

    On Monday, Fox anchor Dana Perino briefly played the clips of Tomlinson’s questions to Biden, with Perino declaring that Biden was “finding no escape from his dismal polling during his Nantucket getaway” — again, with Perino failing to acknowledge that the clip was of a Fox reporter.

    Fox anchor Harris Faulkner later played the video clip again, presenting a seemingly new spin from the network on what had just happened by declaring that “the president was not happy about some of the questions from our very own Lucas Tomlinson.” (In fact, people are mocking Tomlinson for the dishonest manner in which he’d presented his question to viewers.)

    Tomlinson’s actions over the holiday weekend (followed by Perino and Faulkner’s public obfuscation) should serve as a reminder that Fox is not a news organization at all, but is instead a partisan propaganda organ that exists to spread the network’s chosen political narratives.

    Tomlinson’s conduct also needs to be placed in the context of double standards by Fox News — and indeed, a lot of mainstream media outlets, as well — which have sought to portray Biden as too old while simultaneously downplaying or ignoring former president and likely 2024 Republican nominee Donald Trump’s numerous misstatements. Moreover, the two men are nearly the same age, a fact that news outlets also tend to ignore.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters

    Study: National TV And Cable Networks Mostly Ignore Trump's Gaffes

    Study: National TV And Cable Networks Mostly Ignore Trump's Gaffes

    National broadcast and cable networks are failing to cover a series of verbal gaffes and incoherent statements recently made by disgraced former President Donald Trump, the front-runner to win the Republican nomination again in 2024.

    Trump’s recent campaign stumbles haven’t garnered much attention

    As Media Matters has already extensively documented, media outlets have repeatedly obsessed over President Joe Biden's age since he announced his campaign for reelection. The same attention has not been given to his likely challenger, former President Donald Trump, even though the two men are nearly the same age. In fact, in just the last two months, Trump has made a number of nonsensical statements: He has mixed up the authoritarian leaders of Hungary and Turkey; confused his former Republican opponent Jeb Bush and Jeb’s brother, the former president George W. Bush; mixed up a number of his Democratic opponents with former President Barack Obama; and made a garbled statement accusing President Joe Biden of leading the country into “World War II.”On Monday, a New York Times article finally brought some much-needed attention to the dichotomy between Trump’s own attacks on Biden, compared to Trump’s actual behavior:

    But as the 2024 race for the White House heats up, Mr. Trump’s increased verbal blunders threaten to undermine one of Republicans’ most potent avenues of attack, and the entire point of his onstage pantomime: the argument that Mr. Biden is too old to be president.Mr. Biden, a grandfather of seven, is 80. Mr. Trump, who has 10 grandchildren, is 77.

    An analysis by Media Matters found that TV broadcast news has given no coverage to these false and incoherent statements from Trump, and cable news has barely covered them. Overall, MSNBC has covered the four recent Trump gaffes the most, still just 35 minutes, and the majority of this coverage has come from just one program, Morning Joe. CNN has covered the gaffes a mere 9 minutes. Fox News, meanwhile, mentioned the gaffes just twice for less than a minute total in the periods studied.

    Mixing up Hungarian, Turkish strongmen

    Trump commented on October 23 during a campaign speech in New Hampshire: “You know, I was very honored — there’s a man, Viktor Orbán. Did anyone ever hear of him? He’s probably, like, one of the strongest leaders anywhere in the world. He’s the leader of Turkey.”

    Orbán is the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary; autocrat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is president of Turkey. This remark also could have brought renewed attention to Trump’s long-established affection for dictators.

    Media Matters reviewed transcripts from October 23 thorough 29 and found that the comment received less than 2 minutes of TV news coverage, mostly spread across MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and Deadline: White House, plus a single comment on Fox News’ The Five lasting 6 seconds. Broadcast news didn’t cover it at all.

    Warning that Biden might start “World War II”

    During a September 15 speech at a right-wing event in Washington, D.C., Trump claimed that Biden was “cognitively impaired” and “in no condition to lead,” while warning that his leadership could imperil the United States in “dealing with Russia and possible nuclear war.” Trump then added: “Just think of it. We would be in World War II very quickly if we’re going to be relying on this man.”

    World War II happened 80 years ago, a detail Trump missed while he was calling Biden “cognitively impaired.” During the same speech, Trump also seemed confused about whom he is running against in 2024, and whom he ran against in 2016.

    Media Matters reviewed transcripts from September 15 through September 21 and found that the comment received a total of 20 minutes of coverage on MSNBC and 5 minutes of coverage on CNN. The September 17 edition of MSNBC’s Morning Joe accounted for over half of all coverage, spending nearly 15 minutes discussing Trump's comments. Broadcast news didn’t cover it at all.

    Confusing Jeb Bush and George W. Bush

    During a September 25 campaign speech in South Carolina, Trump fell back on retelling the greatest hits of his 2016 campaign, boasting of how he’d triumphed in the South Carolina primary that year while seeming to confuse his actual opponent, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, for Jeb’s older brother, former President George W. Bush.

    “They thought Bush, because Bush supposedly was a military person. Great,” Trump said. “He got us into the Middle East. How did that work out, right? But they all thought that Bush might win — Jeb. Remember Jeb?”

    Media Matters reviewed transcripts from September 25 through October 1 and found that this particular statement received a total of 16 minutes of coverage across both CNN and MSNBC, and of that around half occurred on the September 26 edition of Morning Joe. Broadcast news didn’t cover it at all.

    Confusing Joe Biden and Barack Obama

    Trump first rose to political prominence by spreading the racist conspiracy theory that then-President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. In recent speeches, he has kept returning to the claim that Obama is still his true adversary.

    During an October 12 appearance on Fox News host Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, while commenting on the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, Trump claimed, “Obama wants to, he doesn’t want to talk about it. He doesn’t want to mention he doesn’t even mention them in his statements. It’s all coming through Iran.”

    “Well, you mean President Biden,” Kilmeade said, seemingly trying to steer the conversation back on track, before Trump then insisted that he really meant to say that “Obama is Biden’s boss. Guess you didn’t really know that.”

    Media Matters reviewed transcripts from October 12 through October 18 and found Trump’s conflation of the current President Joe Biden with former President Barack Obama received just over 1 minute of coverage, spread across two separate episodes of Morning Joe. Broadcast news didn’t cover it at all.

    Methodology

    Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream video database for all original programming on CNN, Fox News Channel, and MSNBC as well as all original episodes of ABC’s Good Morning America, World News Tonight, and This Week; CBS’ Mornings, Evening News, and Face the Nation; and NBC’s Today, Nightly News, and Meet the Press for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity of either of the terms “Orban” or “Erdogan” (including misspellings) or any variation of either of the terms “Hungary” or “Turkey” from October 23, 2023, through October 29, 2023.

    We searched the same transcripts for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity of any of the terms “world war,” “Obama,” “summit,” “Biden,” “Clinton,” or “Hillary” from September 15, 2023, through September 21, 2023.

    We searched the same transcripts for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity of either of the terms “Bush” or “Iraq” from September 25, 2023, through October 1, 2023.

    We searched the same transcripts for either of the terms “Trump” or “former president” within close proximity of any of the terms “Kilmeade” (including misspellings), “radio,” “Obama,” “Fox,” “host,” or “Biden” from October 12, 2023, through October 18, 2023.

    We timed segments, which we defined as instances when any of Trump’s mental gaffes were the stated topic of discussion or when we found significant discussion of any of the gaffes. We defined significant discussion as instances when two or more speakers in a multitopic segment discussed any of the gaffes with one another.

    We also timed mentions, which we defined as instances when a single speaker in a segment on another topic mentioned any of the gaffes without another speaker engaging with the comment, and teasers, which we defined as instances when the anchor or host promoted a segment about any of the gaffes scheduled to air later in the broadcast.

    We rounded all times to the nearest minute.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Kevin McCarthy

    Right-Wing Media Figures Clash Over GOP Government Shutdown

    As House Republicans fail to advance spending bills needed to fund the federal government and avert a government shutdown, right-wing media are at odds with one another over whether to cheer on the possibility of a shutdown or ridicule those Republicans leading the charge toward it.

    The federal government will enter a partial shutdown by the end of this week unless Republicans can agree to funding extensions, which would mark the sixth consecutive shutdown brought on by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

    The Republican-led House is lurching closer to a government shutdown

    • The federal government will shut down unless Republicans agree to continued funding by September 30. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is struggling to find 218 votes to support must-pass appropriations legislation before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. If legislation is not authorized in time, the federal government may face a shutdown. [The Washington Post, 9/12/23]
    • House Republicans have failed to advance multiple spending bills in recent days. The House has a series of yearlong spending bills to address, to fund the departments of Defense, State, Agriculture, and Homeland Security. CNN reported on September 25 that during the previous week, the GOP’s leadership team “failed twice to advance the defense bill” and that Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy “put the House GOP’s stopgap bill on ice amid a right-wing rebellion.” [CNN, 9/25/23]

    “Take a stand”: Many in conservative media support a shutdown

    • National Pulse Editor-in-Chief Raheem Kassam: “Govt shutdown > public lockdown.” [Twitter/X, 9/9/23]
    • Right-wing Grabien founder Tom Elliott: “My only concern w/ a govt shutdown is that it will be temporary.” [Twitter/X, 9/11/23]
    • Right-wing economist Stephen Moore: “Shutdown Might Mean Gov't Gets Serious About Fiscal Ineptitude.” In a syndicated column posted by Newsmax, Moore mocked concern over the damage of a government shutdown, comparing it to the public health orders early in the COVID-19 pandemic under the Trump administration. Even though he wrote, “I'm NOT in favor of a government shutdown,” he added, “But they aren't the end of the world,” and continued to downplay their impacts. He contradicted himself again by concluding: “But if it takes a short-term shutdown of some government agencies to force Congress and the White House to get serious about our fiscal ineptitude, then do it. It's for the children.” [Newsmax, 9/13/23]
    • OAN host Dan Ball expressed support for a government shutdown. In an interview with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), Ball said, “If the Dems can shut us down over the flu, then you guys, the Freedom Caucus, should shut us down over overspending.” Ball also said that shutting down the government “for a few weeks or months” won’t “damage anybody, except some federal employees might not get paid for a bit.” [OAN, Real America with Dan Ball, 9/13/23]
    • Fox star Sean Hannity instructed Republicans to “take a stand” and shut down the government, then blame Democrats. After demanding that Republicans shut down the government, Hannity encouraged them to blame Democrats for their obstruction: “And whatever the Republicans pull off in the House, and they eventually agree to, which will itself be a compromise, the Senate needs to do their job, and then they need to be willing to let the government shut down and then blame –– put the blame where it belongs: on the people that are robbing our children and our grandchildren blind. It's time to take a stand, that's what you guys got elected for. You said you wanted to, you know, lead. This is a chance to lead.” [Premiere Radio Networks, The Sean Hannity Show, 9/19/23]
    • Newsmax host Eric Bolling: “Stop writing the checks. ... The American people don’t really care.” In an interview with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), Bolling mocked Republicans for worrying about the political blowback of yet another federal government shutdown and added that Gaetz was right to oppose a funding deal, telling him to “stay strong.” [Newsmax, Eric Bolling The Balance, 9/19/23]
    • Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon: “Forcing the regime to shut down their own illegitimate government is a win.” Bannon asked his guest, far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, for his thoughts about “the meltdown of the uniparty,” and Posobiec argued that government shutdowns are nothing to fear even as he explained that intelligence personnel had to rotate days off during a shutdown when he worked for the government in 2013. [Real America’s Voice, War Room, 9/20/23]
    • Pro-Trump comics creator Scott Adams: “I back @RepMattGaetz on this. Avoiding a shutdown is a dumb goal. Fixing the budget approval process (as promised) is a winning system.” [Twitter/X, 9/24/23]
    • Ex-Fox Business host Lou Dobbs: “House RINOs are squealing at the prospect of actually shutting down this corrupt anti-citizen Federal government. End corruption—defund the Feds!” [Twitter/X, 9/24/23]

    Other conservative media figures have disparaged Republicans for driving toward a shutdown

    • Fox contributor Karl Rove: Republicans get blamed for government shutdowns “generally because Republicans are responsible for the shutdown. They seem to eagerly want it.” Rove continued to criticize Republican lawmakers: “So yeah, there's a reason why they get blamed. And look, the American people demand that their government try and run itself in an appropriate fashion. And the fact that the biggest financial and business enterprise in the world, the U.S. government, cannot pass a budget in time and then ends up shutting itself down over things that are on the margin. … The Republicans are going to be shooting themselves in the foot in the run-up to the 2024 election if they continue to think that shutdowns are a great way to put themselves in front of the American people.” [Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox News Sunday, 9/17/23]
    • Fox News host Mark Levin on conservatives pushing for a shutdown: “You can’t be Pickett. … Even Pickett didn’t want to be in Pickett’s Charge.” On his radio show, Fox News host Mark Levin told conservatives, “if your goal is to bring down the government, let me tell you a little secret: They’re not going to be able to do it this way.” Levin acknowledged the reality that Senate Republicans will vote with Democrats to avoid some draconian spending cuts, then said: “And so, you know, you can't be Pickett. This can't be Pickett's Charge. Pickett's Charge, let's go get ‘em. Even Pickett didn't wanna be part of Pickett's Charge,” a reference to a disastrous Confederate attack during the Civil War. Levin added: “So if we have stupid people doing stupid things in the name of conservatism, that bothers me a lot. I'm never going to line up behind stupid.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 9/18/23; Library of Congress, accessed 9/19/23]
    • Fox News Radio host Guy Benson: There are “Republicans saying, and not without reason, a shutdown is not a good idea.” In an interview with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Benson said that Republicans are giving the appearance of unreasonably opposing everything, “but part of the job is like manning up and being adults and getting something done as opposed to being against everything, especially when you’re at least nominally in the majority in the chamber where this stuff has to originate.” [Fox News Radio, Guy Benson Show, 9/18/23]
    • Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro argued that “the Republican Party, they are the stupid party, there is no question, and that stupidity is extending over into this government shutdown talk.” On his radio program, Shapiro attacked the so-called “stupid party” Republicans for missing an opportunity to use spending negotiations as leverage against Democratic Party priorities. He concluded by offering the GOP strategic advice going forward: “Whenever chaos is projected to no apparent end — because the Democrats run the Senate and Joe Biden is the president, and so they have a bit of a say in what exactly ends up becoming law here — Republicans, how about this? Be concerted in the issues that you attack. Focus for a moment in time. Otherwise, Democrats are going to have something to run on, and that is not what you want.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 9/18/23]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade grilled Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) about his pro-shutdown stance: “Congressman, you just know if the government gets shut down, Republicans get the blame.” After a testy exchange between Kilmeade and Rosendale over the latter’s refusal to support a short-term proposal to avoid a government shutdown, Kilmeade replied: “Congressman, you just know if the government gets shut down, Republicans get the blame because they are not even providing even a CR [continuing resolution], a pathway to a CR. You're saying I'm not going to go for 30 days, so the government shuts down. That means your investigations stop, that means the border funding doesn't happen, and that's OK?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/19/23]
    • On Hannity, Fox contributor and former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich singled out “all the people in the Freedom Caucus who are cheerfully screwing things up.” Gingrich argued that Freedom Caucus shenanigans might endanger GOP House seats in 2024. “Sometimes I think we have some members who can’t not only play chess or checkers, they can't play tic-tac-toe,” Gingrich said. “You have to start from success and work back.” Coincidentally, Gingrich engineered two government shutdowns during his time as House speaker, in part over a petty personal grudge. [Fox News, Hannity, 9/22/23; Media Matters, 8/31/10]
    • Fox anchor Maria Bartiromo to Rep. Gaetz: “Are you not right now indirectly working with Democrats? ... That's what your actions are doing.” Bartiromo pressed the far-right congressman over his strategy and noted, “That’s why some people feel this is a personal vendetta you have against” McCarthy. When Gaetz defended himself, Bartiromo replied, “You’re enabling” Democrats. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 9/24/23]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Kevin McCarthy

    Right-Wing Media Scorches 'Stupid' GOP Leaders Over Government Shutdown

    As the Republican-led House faces a deadline of September 30 to fund the government and avoid a shutdown — and with some hardline Republicans recently rejecting a proposal to pass their own party’s proposed cuts and thus fund the government for just one more month — even some right-wing commentators openly agree a government shutdown would be bad idea for which the voting public would blame Republicans.

    The federal government faces a September 30 shutdown deadline

    • The federal government will shut down unless Republicans agree to continued funding by September 30. The Republican-controlled House of Representatives is struggling to find 218 votes to support must-pass appropriations legislation before the end of the fiscal year on September 30. If legislation is not authorized in time, the federal government may face a shutdown. But House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) “is not (yet) considering relying on Democrats to pass a stopgap spending bill and will work to find enough Republican support,” according to The Washington Post, because “seeking Democratic votes would likely lead to an immediate challenge to Kevin McCarthy’s speakership from GOP hard-liners.” [The Washington Post,9/12/23]
    • A Republican-controlled House of Representatives has been responsible for the last five government shutdowns. In the last 30 years, a Republican-controlled House of Representatives has shut down the government twice under Democratic President Bill Clinton, once under Democratic President Barack Obama, and then twice under Republican President Donald Trump. The most-recent shutdown, the longest in U.S. history, began under a lame-duck Republican House that had lost in the 2018 midterms, and it ended only after spending provisions from the Democratic-controlled House were able to break a further deadlock in the Republican-controlled Senate. [PBS.org, 1/25/19; The Hill, 1/25/19]
    • History suggests the public will more likely blame Republicans than Democrats for a shutdown. During government shutdowns under Clinton and Obama, polls showed that the public blamed the shutdown on congressional Republicans more than the Democratic president. During the most-recent government shutdown, which began during unified Republican control of the federal government, a majority of Americans blamed Trump for the impasse, rather than congressional Democrats. [CNN.com; 1/11/19; PBS.org, 1/15/19]

    Some hard-right Republican lawmakers are opposing an intraparty deal to avoid a government shutdown

    • House Republicans negotiated among themselves for a short-term proposal to fund the government through October 31, with stiff spending cuts. Members from the hard-line House Freedom Caucus and the pro-McCarthy Main Street Caucus agreed to a short-term spending package with 8% cuts in spending levels except in the Defense and Veterans Affairs departments. The proposal, which has little chance of being enacted, “also includes conservative restrictions on immigration and the U.S. border with Mexico. It does not include funding for Ukraine, which Biden had requested.” [Reuters, 9/18/23]
    • Some hardline House Republicans declared their opposition to the proposal. In an article titled “Another doomed GOP spending plan collapses,” Politico reported that the immediate objection to the deal from multiple GOP lawmakers “highlights just how unmanageable the House GOP truly is, with Freedom Caucus leaders — including Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), its chair — endorsing a deal only to see it publicly rejected by a good chunk of its membership within a matter of minutes.” [Politico, 9/18/23]
    • Some initial news coverage said the Republican bill was doomed, with NBC News calling it “all but guaranteed to die in the Democratic-led Senate.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) called the bill “extreme,” saying it would “cut funding to the National Institutes of Health including funding for cancer research, defund the police, and decrease resources to important allies like Ukraine and Israel,” instead of “working on bipartisan solution[s] that could be enacted.” [NBC News, 9/17/23; The Hill,9/18/23; The Washington Post, 9/17/23]
    • The Democratic-led Senate, in contrast, has “been making good progress on the annual spending bills.” On September 18, The Hill reported that all of the annual appropriation bills had been passed out of committee and that the Democratic-led Senate “had been making good progress” until a Republican senator tried to halt progress on one of the spending bills. [The Hill, 9/18/23]

    Right-wing media criticize Republicans for heading toward another shutdown, with some acknowledging the GOP deserves the blame

    • Fox News host Mark Levin on conservatives pushing for a shutdown: “You can’t be Pickett. … Even Pickett didn’t want to be in Pickett’s Charge.” On his radio show, Fox News host Mark Levin told conservatives, “if your goal is to bring down the government, let me tell you a little secret: They’re not going to be able to do it this way.” Levin acknowledged the reality that Senate Republicans will vote with Democrats to avoid some draconian spending cuts, then said: “And so, you know, you can't be Pickett. This can't be Pickett's Charge. Pickett's Charge, let's go get ‘em. Even Pickett didn't wanna be part of Pickett's Charge,” a reference to a disastrous Confederate attack during the Civil War. Levin added: “So if we have stupid people doing stupid things in the name of conservatism, that bothers me a lot. I'm never going to line up behind stupid.” [Westwood One, The Mark Levin Show, 9/18/23; Library of Congress, accessed 9/19/23]
    • Fox contributor Karl Rove: Republicans get blamed for government shutdowns “generally because Republicans are responsible for the shutdown. They seem to eagerly want it.” Rove continued to criticize Republican lawmakers: “So yeah, there's a reason why they get blamed. And look, the American people demand that their government try and run itself in an appropriate fashion. And the fact that the biggest financial and business enterprise in the world, the U.S. government, cannot pass a budget in time and then ends up shutting itself down over things that are on the margin. … The Republicans are going to be shooting themselves in the foot in the run-up to the 2024 election if they continue to think that shutdowns are a great way to put themselves in front of the American people.” [Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox News Sunday, 9/17/23]
    • Right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro argued that “the Republican Party, they are the stupid party, there is no question, and that stupidity is extending over into this government shutdown talk.” On his radio program, Shapiro attacked the so-called “stupid party” Republicans for missing an opportunity to use spending negotiations as leverage against Democratic Party priorities. He concluded by offering the GOP strategic advice going forward: “Whenever chaos is projected to no apparent end — because the Democrats run the Senate and Joe Biden is the president, and so they have a bit of a say in what exactly ends up becoming law here — Republicans, how about this? Be concerted in the issues that you attack. Focus for a moment in time. Otherwise, Democrats are going to have something to run on, and that is not what you want.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 9/18/23]
    • Shapiro further added, “Republicans are hellbent on running directly into a wall at full speed.” “The measure wasn’t going to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, anyway. But McCarthy was then going to use that as the basis for some sort of compromise with Democrats,” Shapiro explained. “It doesn’t matter, we’re just going to run directly into a wall, and the only loser here, presumably, will be the Republican Party. Because Democrats are not going to be punished for Republicans not even being able to come to an agreement on what they want the basis for negotiations to be.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 9/19/23]
    • Fox News Radio host Guy Benson: There are “Republicans saying, and not without reason, a shutdown is not a good idea.” In an interview with Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), Benson said that Republicans are giving the appearance of unreasonably opposing everything, “but part of the job is like manning up and being adults and getting something done as opposed to being against everything, especially when you’re at least nominally in the majority in the chamber where this stuff has to originate.” [Fox News Radio, Guy Benson Show, 9/18/23]
    • Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade grilled Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) about his pro-shutdown stance: “Congressman, you just know if the government gets shut down, Republicans get the blame.” After a testy exchange between Kilmeade and Rosendale over the latter’s refusal to support a short-term proposal to avoid a government shutdown, Kilmeade replied: “Congressman, you just know if the government gets shut down, Republicans get the blame because they are not even providing even a CR, a pathway to a CR. You're saying I'm not going to go for 30 day, so the government shuts down. That means your investigations stop, that means the border funding doesn't happen, and that's OK?” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/19/23]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Linda Yaccarino

    New CEO Yaccarino Is Lying About Hate Speech On Musk's 'X' Site (VIDEO)

    X Corp. CEO Linda Yaccarino, the head of the social media site formerly known as Twitter, sat down for a lengthy interview Thursday on CNBC’s Squawk on the Street, during which she made a variety of obviously false statements about the platform and its performance since Elon Musk took over in October 2022. The business-channel interview should make it clear to any corporate executives watching that the site continues to be a virtual cesspool following Musk’s rebranding, and that Yaccarino’s appointment as CEO has predictably changed nothing.

    Twitter is a more dangerous place today

    When CNBC anchor Sara Eisen asked about major brands’ reluctance to advertise on the site due to the proliferation of hate speech, Yaccarino responded, “By all objective metrics, X is a much healthier and safer platform than it was a year ago. Since [Musk’s] acquisitions, we have built brand safety and content moderation tools that have never existed before at this company.”

    In fact, academic research earlier this year showed that hate speech has nearly doubled on the site since Musk’s takeover, as he reinstated previously banned accounts and disingenuously declared a policy of protecting “free speech” on the platform. Meanwhile, just in the last two weeks, X Corp. sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate for their work showing that the site has failed to take action in response to antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts.

    Media Matters data confirmed that under Yaccarino’s leadership, anti-LGBTQ hate is still prevalent on the platform: Nearly one-third of the top 200 accounts that tweeted about pride during June — Yaccarino’s first month as CEO — were right-wing accounts that have posted anti-LGBTQ content on Twitter.

    In addition, all the content moderation systems that Twitter might possess still have a weakness: Elon Musk himself and his propensity to reverse content moderation decisions, including on hate speech. Caving to the demands of right-wing political and media figures, he recently reinstated a previously-banned account from an infamous conspiracy theorist who had posted child sexual abuse material to the site.

    Ads for major brands end up in bad places

    Yaccarino boasted that major brands were returning to the site, naming Coca-Cola, Visa, and State Farm among her examples. She said, “They’re coming back — the last bunch of weeks, continued revenue growth,” and explained that for the last eight weeks she has been personally speaking with corporate executives to who had either “maybe paused or reduced spending, to remind them about the power of the platform, and the power of the user base, and the economic potential of them partnering with us again.”

    It’s worth noting, however, that the three specific brands she claimed were “coming back” to the platform never fully left in the first place. While they may have reduced spending, a Media Matters analysis of advertising data from Sensor Tower shows that they still advertised on the platform to some extent after Musk took over.

    These companies should consider exactly what the “power of the platform” that Yaccarino touts will mean for their brand identities. Media Matters has spotted ads from Coca-Cola and State Farm right next to posts those companies might find objectionable, including vaccine misinformation from an account Musk had previously reinstated and infighting among white supremacists.

    Media Matters has repeatedly shown that ads from major companies have continued to appear next to harmful content since the platform was rebranded over two weeks ago. We identified ads for brands including Honeywell, Discovery, National Women’s Soccer League, the Pittsburgh Steelers, USA Today, and Manchester City on the verified account of the National Socialist Network, a leading neo-Nazi group that engages in violence and has connections to terrorism.

    And in a short period of scrolling through the site, we found an ad for Comcast next to content from election denier Roger Stone and QAnon influencer Jeffrey Pedersen (known online as “intheMatrixxx”); an ad from Disney next to a post from QAnon-promoting figure Brian Lupo (“CannCon”); a Samsung ad next to a post from anti-Muslim extremist Laura Loomer; an ad from Apple next to a tweet from right-wing blogger David Vance that amplified Tucker Carlson’s interview with misogynist Tristan Tate; and ads for Mondelez International’s Ritz Crackers and Chips Ahoy alongside content from right-wing psychologist and budding climate denier Jordan Peterson.

    Elon Musk is still the problem

    Eisen also asked about companies’ hesitancy to spend money on X because of Musk specifically, as he continues to amplify conspiracy theories with no apparent regard for their concerns. Yaccarino only made it clearer that he has none, and that she cannot control what Musk says or does. (This was confirmed in a June 1 federal court filing, in which lawyers for the company told the court that hiring Yaccarino as CEO “will not result in a different content-moderation strategy for Twitter, a company that will still be owned by Musk and led by a person chosen by Musk.”)

    SARA EISEN: But I think there are questions with your boss’s own tweets. I was talking to a brand yesterday that scaled back advertising on X. Why? They said, well, the head of the company sometimes tweets things that we think are in violation of their own safety practices. And in an interview with my colleague David Faber, Elon said in response to a question about tweeting a conspiracy theory and whether that was risking losing advertisers, ‘I don’t care, I want to say what I say, and I lose money, so be it.’ Doesn’t that make your job impossible?

    LINDA YACCARINO: It definitely does not make my job impossible. I think what it — it fuels more of an ambition for my job to make sure that everyone, including Elon, is entitled to their own opinion. Now, we all do things that we reconsider at other times. I think you remember, when I — in my early days of meeting Elon — I interviewed him at a marketing conference in Miami, and we had a little bit of a debate of rethinking tweets maybe, I don’t know, after 3 a.m. in the morning.

    EISEN: Does he give you a heads-up on the tweets, Elon?

    YACCARINO: I would never expect him to do so. I would never. And again, the real-time nature and beauty of X — clearing your tweets with someone is much less effective.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Jesse Watters

    Still Lying: Fox Totally Falsifies GOP 'Star Witness' Testimony On Biden

    Following the July 31 testimony to the House Oversight Committee by former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer, right-wing media outlets arrived at what should have been a very uncomfortable crossroads: They had relentlessly hyped a narrative that Archer would seriously incriminate President Joe Biden, but Archer denied that Joe Biden had talked business with his son’s associates and instead confirmed Hunter had sold only the “illusion” of access to his father. The full release of the transcript further busted right-wing narratives about any vast Biden family corruption linked to the president.

    Fox News had an easy solution to this dilemma, however: It has simply claimed repeatedly that Archer had said the opposite of all these things. The brazenness with which the network is voicing these falsehoods is another example proving that Fox is simply a political propaganda outlet rather than any kind of news organization.

    False: Joe Biden participated in nefarious business calls and dinners with Hunter Biden

    The closest that House Republican investigators got to linking Joe Biden with his son’s business deals was that the two of them frequently spoke on the phone, and that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone while in the company of his own business associates. But in his testimony, Archer explicitly said the two Bidens had been checking in on each other, making small talk — as well as discussing Beau Biden’s terminal cancer — and not discussing business.“Say, where are you, how’s the weather, how’s the fishing, how’s the — whatever it may be, whatever,” Archer said, describing the calls. “It was very, you know, casual conversations about — you know, not about cap tables or financials or anything like that.” Archer also said that while Joe Biden did attend several dinners with his son and some of his associates, but these dinners remained casual and they did not discuss business, instead discussing the U.N. World Food Program on which Hunter Biden then also served.But as Fox News hosts and guests tell it, Archer described proof of an intricate involvement between Joe Biden and his son’s business partners.

    • Fox News contributor Leo Terrell claimed the phone calls were “proof that Joe Biden knew what was going on” with Hunter Biden's business. Terrell proclaimed that “Joe Biden lied to the American people. He lied, and this witness has proven that he lied” when the president previously stated that he had no involvement with his son's business. Terrell continued, “Joe Biden getting on the phone and basically stating, ‘Hello,’ he made that call, is proof that Joe Biden knew what was going on.” [Fox News, The Story with Martha MacCallum, 8/1/23]
    • Fox guest and former Senate Republican staffer Garrett Ventry boasted that Archer’s “explosive testimony” showed Joe Biden “was potentially involved” and “certainly had knowledge” of Hunter Biden’s business. Ventry claimed that “we learned the day before [from] Devon Archer's explosive testimony that Joe Biden potentially was involved in Hunter Biden's business dealings, he certainly had knowledge of them.” Ventry further claimed that the indictment of former President Donald Trump for attempting to obstruct the 2020 election was really meant to be a distraction from this “explosive” evidence from Archer. [Fox News, America Reports, 8/2/23]
    • Fox News prime-time host Jesse Watters declared, “The full transcript of Biden's former business partner, Devon Archer, has just been released and it confirms everything that Joe Biden and the media have been lying to you about.” In fact, Archer’s testimony disproved everything that Watters and right-wing media have claimed. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 8/3/23]
    • Fox host Maria Bartiromo said that Archer’s testimony about Hunter Biden putting his father on speakerphone “contradicts President Biden's repeated denial that he had no knowledge of his son's business deals.” In fact, Archer said that they did not discuss business during these speakerphone exchanges. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]
    • Conservative pundit Peter Schweitzer falsely claimed that Archer “unequivocally said any people discussing or claiming that he [Joe Biden] was not involved with his son's business is totally and completely incorrect.” Archer actually said that he was never aware of Hunter Biden discussing business with his father. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]

    False: Hunter Biden sold access to Joe Biden and obtained changes in U.S. policy

    Right-wing media has repeatedly mischaracterized conclusions from the testimony as proof that Hunter Biden sold access to then-Vice President Joe Biden. Archer’s testimony showed that Hunter Biden sold the “illusion of access” with no actual influence from his father. Archer further confirmed: “He did not ask him — to my knowledge, I never saw him say, do anything for any particular business,” nor was he aware of anything Joe Biden ever did in that direction.

    • Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett: “Devon Archer absolutely demolished Joe Biden's lies that he knew nothing, had no involvement. Archer confirmed that Hunter was selling access to his father and promises of influence.” Archer confirmed that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business deals, and that Hunter Biden sold an “illusion” of access rather than the real thing. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/3/23]
    • Right-wing author David Marcus: “There's no question left as to whether Joe Biden was involved in Hunter Biden's scheme to sell influence. Joe Biden was absolutely involved. The only question is did he know he was involved?” Again, Archer actually testified under oath that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business dealings. [Fox News, America’s Newsroom, 8/7/23]
    • Wall Street Journal columnist Kimberley Strassel: “The important thing we learned this week from Devon Archer is that whenever Hunter Biden wanted to show that he had access to Washington, his dad willingly got on the phone. He came to the meetings, and it was all designed to help Hunter suggest he had access to the wheels of power.” Archer said that Joe Biden got on the phone with his son as they discussed Beau Biden’s terminal cancer and to check-in with each other emotionally. [Fox News, Hannity, 8/4/23]
    • Fox & Friends guest Brett Tolman: “This is the vice president of the United States getting on calls with foreign leaders in order to sell to them access and sell to them capability of helping them when they get in trouble.” This statement has no connection to reality. Archer testified that whenever Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone, the result was an exchange of friendly hellos. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]

    False: Joe Biden fired Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin to help Burisma

    Fox News has continued to push the years-old smear campaign that led to then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, claiming that as vice president, Joe Biden pushed for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor who was investigating the energy firm Burisma when Hunter Biden was on the company’s board.In fact, Archer confirmed that Shokin’s firing was consistent with a longstanding anti-corruption policy. Furthermore, Archer explained that “the firing of Shokin was bad for Burisma because he was under control,” meaning that Shokin was not seriously prosecuting Burisma and might have let the company off easy on any corruption charges. For example, Shokin’s lack of cooperation with a U.K. investigation had already led to the head of the company’s assets being unfrozen. Archer’s testimony is consistent with voluminous other reporting over the years demonstrating that Shokin was removed by the Ukrainian government at the urging of American and European officials concerned that the prosecutor was himself corrupt. (The international groundswell to remove Shokin actually predated Biden’s involvement.)Fox News, however, has fully resurrected this zombie narrative:

    • Fox News host Ainsley Earhardt stated that Joe Biden “went over there and he fired the prosecutor that was investigating the company for corruption.” For her proof of this, Earhardt cited an article in the right-wing Washington Examiner. Archer confirmed that Shokin’s firing was part of an anti-corruption policy. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]
    • New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said Joe Biden “withheld a billion dollars or threatened to withhold a billion dollars of U.S. aid from Ukraine unless they fired the very prosecutor who was investigating the company” that employed Hunter Biden. In reality, Archer said that Shokin’s firing was “bad for Burisma.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/1/23]
    • Fox News host Todd Piro: “Burisma was worried that people would legally mess with them, those people being Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor. So who could they get? Joe Biden.” Shokin was precisely not messing with Burisma, as the head of the company’s assets had been unfrozen “because of a lack of cooperation from the Ukrainian prosecutor’s office.” [Fox News, Outnumbered, 8/3/23]
    • Fox News contributor Andy McCarthy falsely claimed that Joe Biden “used his influence to help get a prosecutor fired, who happens to have been investigating the company that was paying his son $83,000 a month.” Archer confirmed that Shokin was not effectively investigating Burisma and his role as prosecutor was viewed as “good” for the company. [Fox News, Your World with Neil Cavuto, 8/4/23]
    • Former Trump acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker: “Joe Biden brags about firing the prosecutor who was investigating Burisma. This is a prima facie case.” Shokin was failing to investigate Burisma. [Fox News, Life, Liberty & Levin, 8/6/23]

    False: Joe Biden is compromised by foreign governments

    Archer testified that he and Hunter Biden “didn’t raise capital from the Chinese,” and that they never spoke about any alleged prospects of Chinese investments being important to his family. But in Fox News’ telling, Archer’s testimony was proof that Joe Biden is in hock to foreign governments, especially China.

    • Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy claimed that “Joe Biden and his family have gotten, you know, enormously wealthy off of this kind of influence peddling. … These countries have something over him. He is compromised.” Archer shot down claims that foreign business dealings were of importance to Joe Biden. [Fox News, Fox & Friends Weekend, 8/5/23]
    • The Hill media columnist Joe Concha: “You have a president that can be compromised by the likes of China, Ukraine, Romania, you can go down the list. … If that’s the case, then this makes Watergate look like a smash-and-grab.” Archer denied claims that Joe Biden had been bribed. [Fox News, The Faulkner Focus, 8/7/23]
    • Fox News host Pete Hegseth claimed that “the Biden family can be bought and the Chinese will pay big bucks for it, or should I say big Yuans.” Archer said that he and Hunter Biden did not raise money from China. Instead, Hegseth switched from citing Archer to then relying on an article from serial smear merchant John Solomon for this particular claim. (Solomon’s article involves Hunter Biden’s business activities from 2017 and 2018, a time when his father did not hold any public office.) [Fox News, The Ingraham Angle, 8/4/23]
    • Bartiromo claimed that Archer said “what he called the brand was what China, Ukraine and Russia all wanted to pay for, with Joe Biden at the seat of — with Joe Biden at the seat of power as the vice president of the United States.” Archer specifically shot down claims that Joe Biden had been bribed. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 8/6/23]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Fox Business Hosts Hype Biden 'Bribe' Tapes With No Proof They Exist

    Fox Business Hosts Hype Biden 'Bribe' Tapes With No Proof They Exist

    Fox Business hosts Stuart Varney and Jackie DeAngelis engaged in uncritical speculation this morning about rumored audio recordings implicating President Joe Biden in a bribery scandal, with Varney suggesting that they could be located in Ukraine and DeAngelis declaring, “We better see them, and they better hold people accountable.”

    The fundamental problem is that even the leading Republicans seeking to dig up dirt on Biden have admitted that the tapes may not exist at all. In an interview with CNN last month, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) gave the meandering response: “I don’t even know where they are. I just know they exist, because of what the report says. Now, maybe they don’t exist. But how will I know until the FBI tells us, are they showing us their work?”

    On Thursday, Grassley released an FBI document known as an FD-1023, which contains unverified allegations from a confidential human source. The source provided secondhand information that Ukrainian energy executive Mykola Zlochevsky had claimed years earlier to have recordings that would confirm he had bribed then-Vice President Biden. NBC News previously reported that a senior law enforcement official said the FBI and a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney had reviewed the bribery claim in 2020 and determined that it was not substantiated.

    There should be a number of reasons to be skeptical about the allegations in the document, most notably that the source only spoke up in June 2020 about conversations that supposedly occurred in the years 2015-2017. And even this June 2020 contact occurred months after then-President Donald Trump’s first impeachment, when he had attempted to pressure the Ukrainian government into announcing an investigation of Biden in exchange for receiving badly needed military aid to defend itself from Russia.

    Presumably, this information could have provided a more dramatic development during the heat of the impeachment, in order to show even some validity to the ongoing right-wing smear campaign against the Biden family. (Instead, the source waited until the general election campaign between Biden and Trump.) The document further notes that the source “explained it is very common for business men in post-Soviet countries to brag or show-off” about their political connections, and that they were “not able to provide any further opinion as to the veracity of Zlochevsky's aforementioned statements.”

    DeAngelis appears to have further exaggerated the allegation even on its own secondhand terms. Whereas the confidential source in the report described Zlochevsky as claiming that “two of the recordings included Joe Biden, and the remaining 15 recordings only included Hunter Biden,” DeAngelis described these as “17 recordings that include Joe Biden in them.”

    STUART VARNEY (HOST): Congressman James Comer says there is more to come in the Hunter investigation. Jackie, he wants criminal referrals?

    JACKIE DEANGELIS (FOX BUSINESS HOST): He does, and he says by the time this is all said and done, there could possibly be six to 10 charges recommended to the Justice Department. Now, that would be really significant. I mean, obviously, we've got this latest bombshell in the FBI file, talking about the inform

    ant's comments that specifically refer to Joe Biden. “It cost five [million] to pay one Biden and five [million] to pay the other Biden.” He calls Hunter Biden stupid. He says the head of Burisma has 17 recordings that include Joe Biden in them. So, we really need to piece this apart and get to the bottom of it. The House is working on that now — but six to 10 criminal referrals.

    VARNEY: I believe the 17 tapes that you're talking about —

    DEANGELIS: Yes.

    VARNEY: I think they're in Ukraine.

    DEANGELIS: Yes, so this is the Ukrainian head of Burisma conducting these conversations that supposedly include the president.

    VARNEY: Do you think we'll ever see those tapes?

    DEANGELIS: We better see them, and they better hold people accountable for what’s happened here. This has been, I mean, really mind-boggling.

    VARNEY: It is absolutely exploding.

    DEANGELIS: Yeah.

    VARNEY: And that's a fact.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    No, Hunter Biden Didn't Get A 'Sweetheart Deal' From GOP Prosecutor

    No, Hunter Biden Didn't Get A 'Sweetheart Deal' From GOP Prosecutor

    Right-wing media have attacked the plea deal reached for Hunter Biden over his past failure to pay taxes and unlawful possession of a gun, falsely claiming that the president’s son got a “sweetheart deal” in comparison with others who faced tax and gun charges and in particular comparing it to the sentencing of musician Kodak Black.

    But numerous legal experts rebutted these conservative claims of a “sweetheart deal,” with some explaining that his deal is actually “harsh” for his circumstances as a first-time offender.

    Legal experts rebutted claims of a “sweetheart deal"

    On June 20, Hunter Biden was charged for tax evasion and unlawful gun possession. He pleaded guilty on misdemeanor tax charges, for which he likely faces probation, and agreed to a pretrial diversion program for the gun charge. Even though the U.S. attorney who prosecuted Biden was appointed by former President Donald Trump and was left in place by President Joe Biden to preserve the independence of his investigation, Republican lawmakers were quick to call the agreement a “slap on the wrist” and a “sweetheart deal” for the president’s son.

    But legal experts interviewed by news outlets explained that the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely prosecuted and even more rarely include jail time. As many experts have explained, given Biden’s repayment of the taxes he owed, his lack of a prior criminal record, and the fact that his gun was not used in any crimes, his plea deal may even seem unduly “harsh.”

    • CNN legal analyst Jennifer Rodgers said that “it’s certainly not a sweetheart deal out of line with what happens in the rest of the country” and that the gun charge deal is “very standard” in similar circumstances. Rodgers explained: “So, on the gun form charge, it’s very, very standard for someone in this situation who lies on the form because they are an addict, the gun is long gone, apparently he only had it for a couple of weeks, it’s very standard in these circumstances for this diversion to occur and to wipe out the charges, assuming he successfully completes it. So, that’s totally standard. And the tax fraud is similar as well. I mean, he paid those taxes back a long time ago. That’s something that DOJ takes very, very seriously.” She continued: “This is not a sweetheart deal. … It’s certainly not a sweetheart deal out of line with what happens in the rest of the country.” [CNN, CNN News Central, 6/20/23]
    • MSNBC legal analyst Paul Butler explained that “this doesn’t look like a sweetheart deal,” explaining that “almost no defendant would be sent to federal prison for first time, low-level tax offenses.” Butler further noted that Biden paid back his owed taxes and sought treatment for his addiction, and that a federal judge may still ultimately step in if the judge deems the plea agreement too lenient. [MSNBC, Chris Jansing Reports, 6/20/23]
    • MSNBC legal analyst Catherine Christian: “I don’t think it’s accurate to call it a slap on the wrist” because Biden will have a criminal record. Christian said: “This is someone who didn't pay his taxes, and now he has — he's going to be stuck with these two criminal convictions on his record. He had a gun when he knew he was addicted to a controlled substance, and so now he has to go through a diversion program. So, I don't think it’s accurate to call it a slap on the wrist. As I said, these are serious charges that he’s now pleading guilty to.” [MSNBC, Ana Cabrera Reports, 6/20/23]
    • Former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti: “If anything, Hunter Biden was treated harshly” for his tax charges because “those crimes are rarely charged.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]

    • NYU law professor and MSNBC legal analyst Andrew Weissmann: “This is if anything harsh, not lenient.” Weissmann wrote on Twitter: “first time tax offenders like this rarely get prosecuted and even rarer to get jail time. And false gun applications sadly also almost never get prosecuted or jail time. So this is if anything harsh, not lenient.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]
    • Former federal prosecutor Shan Wu wrote that “Attorney General Merrick Garland was actually pretty harsh on Hunter Biden.” In an opinion piece for The Daily Beast, Wu explained his reasoning:

    The truth of the matter is that Attorney General Merrick Garland did Hunter Biden no favors in this case by leaving the original Trump-appointed prosecutor on the case, and approving a plea deal on charges that for anyone else would likely have resulted in no criminal charges being brought.
    …
    Under the terms of the plea deal, Hunter Biden must plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018—for which he apparently underpaid by $100,000 each year. (In 2021, he paid the shortfall.) That makes the tax case a bit of an outlier, since prosecutors usually have little appetite for bringing criminal tax cases when the taxpayer has already paid the amount owing.
    …
    His self-admitted drug addiction likely played a role in prosecutors allowing him to seek pre-trial diversion, as diversion is frequently used as a means of holding drug addicts to accountability while not making them take a felony on the records in light of their addiction. In fact, it is rare for prosecutors to pursue criminal charges for this kind of false information on a gun ownership application form unless the gun was also used to commit some other crime, such as a robbery, to cite one example.

    Here, however, there is no evidence Biden used the gun in any crime. He apparently only had the gun for two weeks before his then-girlfriend threw it away in a trash dumpster. [The Daily Beast,6/20/23]


    • MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance said “it wouldn’t at all be unusual” for the gun charge to be diverted.       Vance said of the tax charges: “It’s very typical, the law provides for misdemeanors in cases where a defendant fails to file. And so this would be, I think, within the heartland of the way the department charges these kinds of cases, if that in fact is what the charge is, a failure to file.” Vance also called the gun charge “a more obscure portion of the statute,” adding that “it wouldn’t at all be unusual to see someone put into some form of front-end program.” [MSNBC, Morning Joe, 6/20/23]
    • CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig: “There’s virtually no chance that a first-time offender would get sentenced to prison based on misdemeanors … especially tax-type misdemeanors.” Honig further explained that “the vast majority of federal firearms cases are either a firearm used in another crime of violence, or a firearm possessed by somebody who has a prior felony. This is sort of low down on the list of firearms offenses.” [CNN, CNN News Central, 6/20/23]
    • CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates said that Biden’s pretrial diversion for the gun felony “is quite common in the grand scheme of things.” Coates explained: “These are oftentimes included in any plea deal to try to use a diversionary program that essentially says, look. If you keep on the up-and-up, if you stay clean, then you will not have this felony charge attached to your record as well. This actually is quite common in the grand scheme of things. What’s so uncommon is that it’s now a former vice president and current president’s child.” [CNN, CNN News Central, 6/20/23]
    • UCLA law professor Adam Winkler suggested that it’s unusual for someone to be charged solely for lying on a gun form. Winkler told The Washington Post that “prosecutors typically would not charge lying on a gun form as a stand-alone crime, instead filing it as a secondary charge when someone also may have committed a violent crime with the weapon.” [The Washington Post, 6/20/23]
    • Ohio State University law professor and sentencing expert Douglas Berman told The New York Times that “the average person is rarely prosecuted for” the crimes Biden was charged with. Berman further suggested that far from receiving preferential treatment in this case, Biden was charged only because he’s the president’s son and prosecutors may have hoped to avoid “the perception that there was some sort of special treatment or leniency.” From the NY Times:

    Douglas Berman, a professor of law at Ohio State University and a sentencing expert, read the court papers unsealed on Tuesday morning and said that it was difficult to assess from the filings whether Mr. Biden received a sweetheart deal.
    The crimes to which Mr. Biden is pleading guilty, Mr. Berman said, are ones that the average person is rarely prosecuted for because they are usually only brought along with more serious offenses.

    In Mr. Biden’s case, they include a charge stemming from lying about drug use on the government form used for his purchase of a handgun. Current and former officials say tens of thousands of Americans, out of the 25 million who buy guns each year, lie on their forms and are not prosecuted.
    …
    “If these are the only offenses, most prosecutors are going to say it’s not worth a federal case — they would say: Let’s not make a federal case of it for the average person because it’s not worth it to bring a case unless there’s reason to be concerned that there’s a public safety issue or the trust that everyone is treated equally under the law is at stake,” Mr. Berman said.

    Mr. Berman said that in this case, federal prosecutors are in a unique situation because there was a very high-profile defendant who was the subject of investigations for a range of activities. The failure to bring some charges when there is no factual dispute, he said, could create the impression of a two-tiered system of justice.

    “Everyone is paying attention and the facts are not in dispute, so a failure to bring charges would create the perception that there was some sort of special treatment or leniency being given to the president’s son,” Mr. Berman [said]. [The New York Times, 6/20/23]

    Right-wing media falsely claimed Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal”

    Despite the extensive evidence and expert commentary to the contrary, right-wing media ran with the false accusation that Hunter Biden's plea agreement was a “sweetheart deal” arranged by a corrupt Department of Justice.

    • Fox News contributor and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine: Hunter Biden got “this sweetheart deal from the DOJ.” On Fox, Devine said: “I think Hunter Biden's team is quite correct in that their man is off the hook with this sweetheart deal from the DOJ,” before referencing GOP probes into Biden’s business dealings. [Fox News, America Reports, 6/20/23]
    • Tucker Carlson producer Justin Wells wrote on Twitter: “President Biden’s inept son, Hunter Biden, gets a sweetheart deal from the DOJ. What a joke.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]
    • On Twitter, Breitbart senior editor-at-large Joel Pollak wrote that Hunter Biden got “a sweetheart deal” and will later be pardoned by his father. Pollak claimed: “.@JoeBiden just had his leading opponent arrested for ‘documents’ while his son, Hunter — whom the media assured us was innocent — gets a sweetheart deal and will, no doubt, be pardoned. Trump was right about the Bidens in 2019, and they impeached him for it. Banana republic.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]
    • Fox host Jesse Watters said, “Hunter Biden was never going to go to prison anyway, he was either going to get a sweetheart plea deal or get pardoned.” Watters also asked, “If this wasn’t a sweetheart deal, then why did Donald Trump’s CFO get thrown in Rikers Island for 100 days for pleading guilty to a smaller tax charge than Hunter?” Watters continued making comparisons with celebrities who served prison time. [Fox News, Jesse Watters Primetime, 6/20/23]
    • Quoting House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Trump ally John Solomon argued that Hunter Biden got a “‘sweetheart’ plea deal” in the headline of an article he wrote on Just the News. [Just the News, 6/20/23]
    • Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton claimed Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart plea deal,” which is an “‘in-your-face’ show of contempt for the rule of law.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]
    • CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp tweeted that the president “just orchestrated a sweetheart deal for his son in order to boost his re-election.” [Twitter, 6/20/23]

    Conservatives made false comparison between Hunter Biden and rapper Kodak Black

    Some conservative media figures and outlets compared Biden’s gun charge, described by the Justice Department as possessing “a firearm despite knowing he was an unlawful user of and addicted to a controlled substance,” to that of the rapper Kodak Black, who was sentenced to almost four years in prison for ostensibly similar gun charges.

    But these comparisons exclude important context: Black already had an extensive criminal record and was facing numerous other criminal charges when he lied on background check forms to purchase multiple guns, and two of the guns he purchased were later found at crime scenes, including one, as The New York Times reported, “with Black’s fingerprints and a live round in the chamber — that had been used to fire at a ‘rival rap artist.’”

    The remainder of Black’s sentence, for falsifying information to buy firearms, was commuted by former President Donald Trump during his last full day in office, and months later he received a plea agreement that avoided prison time in a case involving a report of sexual assault.

    Conservatives ignored this context in making the comparison to further their false claim that Biden has been treated too leniently:

    • Devine highlighted the years in jail Black served for his gun charges: “I think David Weiss should come before [Rep. James Comer's (R-KY)] committee and just explain if everything was aboveboard exactly why they made the decisions they did, and why it took five years to come up with these two pretty minor misdemeanor tax charges and a gun charge that has gone away that has had people locked in jail for four years. The rapper Kodak Black was in jail for four years in a federal prison for lying on his background form to buy — he bought four guns in that case.” [Fox News, Hannity, 6/20/23]
    • Fox & Friends hosts claimed that Black merely used a “wrong Social Security number on the gun form” and went to prison, omitting all other context. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 6/21/23]
    • Daily Caller chief national correspondent Henry Rodgers wrote a tweet echoing a claim that Black “served 3 years in jail” for the “same crime”: “NEW: Kodak Black’s lawyer reacts to the Hunter Biden news… Says Kodak was charged for the same crime and had to serve 3 years in jail for it:” [Twitter, 6/20/23]
    • A FoxNews.com headline repeated the false comparison: “Kodak Black's lawyer slams Hunter Biden plea deal after rapper sentenced to 3+ years for same crime.” [FoxNews.com, 6/20/23]
    • Gateway Pundit also cited the false claim by Black’s lawyer that he was charged with the “same federal weapons crime” as Hunter Biden. Jim Hoft, the founder of Gateway Pundit, wrote:

    Hunter will serve NO TIME in prison for his latest criminal actions.

    The same DOJ sent rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black to prison for years on gun charges. Both rappers were granted a pardon by President Donald Trump.

    …
    Contrasting Hunter Biden’s case, Kodak Black, whose real name is Bill Kapri, faced similar charges in 2019.

    According to New York Post, the Grammy-nominated artist was found guilty of providing false information on a federal gun purchase form to procure three firearms from a shop in Miami. Given his criminal record, Black was not eligible to buy these weapons.

    Despite pleading guilty, Black was handed a sentence exceeding three years in federal prison. [The Gateway Pundit, 6/21/23]

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    How Fox News Promoted Homeless Vets Hoax To Smear Asylum Seekers

    How Fox News Promoted Homeless Vets Hoax To Smear Asylum Seekers

    Fox News and Fox Business relentlessly promoted a false New York Post story claiming that homeless veterans were displaced from hotels to make room for newly-arrived migrants for several days last week, devoting more than an hour of airtime to claims that seemed tailor-made for Fox’s anti-immigrant hysteria. The networks’ coverage even included interviews with local government officials who said they had met with the displaced veterans.

    But the story told by the Post, and promoted by Fox, unraveled less than a week later, when local news outlets investigated the claims and determined that it was a hoax.

    The Mid Hudson News was the first outlet to debunk the story. According to their reporting, there were never any veterans at the main hotel in question, the Crossroads Hotel, and nobody was kicked out to make room for migrants. The Mid Hudson Newsalso reported that the veterans that local politicians claimed to have met to verify the story were actually homeless men who were recruited from a shelter and paid “to act as veterans that had been displaced from a Newburgh hotel in order for a non-profit organization to perpetrate a fraud on the public.”

    Another local newspaper, the Times Union, reported that an attorney for the Crossroads Hotel stated that staff at the hotel “are receiving serious threats — including death threats — from all over the county as a result of” the false accusation, and that staff one day “were forced to call 911 to seek protection against someone who was menacing the staff at the hotel, claiming he was looking for the veterans.”

    Once this story was debunked by local news outlets, and nearly two weeks after Fox began promoting the story, Fox News and Fox Business began airing extremely short “updates,” which admitted that the entire story was false. On May 24, Fox rolled out an obviously scripted statement on several programs specifically mentioning the Crossroads Hotel, which had featured prominently in Fox’s coverage, possibly to avoid yet another defamation lawsuit similar to those brought by Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic in response to Fox’s political smear campaigns against them.

    Key events in Fox’s promotion of this hoax:

    • May 12

      Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post published an “exclusive” evening report headlined: “Homeless vets are being booted from NY hotels to make room for migrants: advocates.” The report cited Sharon Toney-Finch, CEO of a nonprofit organization that the Post claimed “works with the vets.” According to the article, “Nearly two dozen struggling homeless veterans … were told by the hotels at the beginning of the week that their temporary housing was getting pulled out from under them at the establishments and that they’d have to move on to another spot.” The Post claimed that the Crossroads Hotel in Newburgh, New York, booted the majority of the veterans, and that they were relocated to another hotel “about 20 minutes away.”

    • May 13

      Fox & Friends Weekend kicked off Fox News’ coverage of this fake story the day after it was published by introducing it in the context of the expiration of Title 42 and prominently displaying the Post’s front page, with the cover stating: “Vets kicked out for migrants: Outrage as upstate hotels tell 20 homeless veterans to leave.” The co-hosts quoted from the Post as Pete Hegseth held up the front page to the camera.Later, Neil Cavuto interviewed Orange County (New York) Executive Steven Neuhaus, whom the Post reported had filed a lawsuit against the hotels, which supposedly kicked out the veterans. Neuhaus would be the first of several New York state government officials Fox would interview about the story. During the interview, Neuhaus attacked the owners of these hotels and urged the New York Civil Liberties Union to sue them, and claimed he talked to one of the displaced veterans, saying: “The girl I talked to today, she’s got three Purple Hearts, and a Bronze Star with valor. She was in tears.” (It’s unclear which woman Neuhaus claims to have spoken to; the homeless people recruited by Toney-Finch for this hoax were all men. However, Toney-Finch herself now faces scrutiny for potentially lying about her service in the Army, including her receipt of a Purple Heart.)

    • May 14

      A day after Fox began promoting the fake story, Fox News weekend anchor Arthel Neville explicitly claimed, “Fox News confirms 20 homeless vets just got kicked out of several hotels in the suburbs north of Manhattan to make room for those migrants getting bussed in from the city.” Fox correspondent CB Cotton then quoted Toney-Finch’s nonprofit organization (which had fabricated the entire thing) to substantiate the false claim.

    • May 15

      After the weekend, Fox News and Fox Business began promoting the hoax in earnest. Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt said it was “astonishing that some of these hotels are getting migrants” and canceling other reservations, adding, “There are two couples that booked rooms for their wedding … and 20 vets also were in that hotel, they all had to move out because these migrants moved in.” Later on Fox & Friends, guest co-host Will Cain claimed that a “flood of illegal immigrants” are taking up hotel rooms and other resources in New York. Cain went on to remind viewers “about homeless veterans booted from a hotel so that rooms could be given to illegal immigrants,” with Earhardt adding, “Eric Adams says they’re gonna stay there for four months, so 20 veterans had to move to another hotel.”Fox anchor Harris Faulkner claimed the story showed “the disgraceful treatment of our military veterans played out in Orange County, New York,” as the nonexistent group of “at least 20 homeless veterans, some reportedly suffering from PTSD, had to give up their hotel rooms for illegals.” Fox contributor Johnny “Joey” Jones added a jab at the Biden administration, stating, “A president that would leave Americans stranded in Afghanistan probably doesn't see the onus to take care of 20 veterans in a hotel. And I hate to say it, but that's just the absolute truth of it.”

    • Outnumbered co-hosts Emily Compagno and Kayleigh McEnany expressed outrage over the Post story, with Compagno claiming “America's heroes are now paying the price” for the “Southern border crisis.” McEnany lamented, “I can't help but notice the contrast when you have a 24-year-old — a veteran, had been in Afghanistan — kicked out of his hotel room as an Afghan national on the terror watchlist is crossing the border in San Diego.”Fox anchor Martha MacCallum complained, “You’ve got the hotels in New York that are having to take folks in. You had one in Newburgh, New York, where they had to cancel a wedding and kick out some homeless veterans to make room for incoming migrants.” (Unlike the homeless veterans hoax, other outlets have confirmed the reported wedding cancellations.) Fox host Sean Hannity said, “Let’s get some facts out so Joe Biden can understand what is really going on,” before proclaiming: “This is pretty infuriating, homeless vets who served our great country, they’re being put out on the street and replaced by illegal immigrants.” As he said this, Hannity displayed the headline of a FoxNews.com article which stated: “Biden admin, NY officials slammed after homeless veterans booted from migrant hotels: ‘Slap in the face.’” (After local news outlets debunked the false story, this FoxNews.com article was completely changed to reflect the debunk, with an editor’s note added to the bottom).Fox Business anchor and noted election conspiracy theorist Maria Bartiromo introduced this fake story to Fox’s sister network during an interview with Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY). During the segment, Bartiromo slipped and said: “It's incredible that the vets are being killed — kicked out, so that there's room for illegals.”

    • May 16

      On May 16, another Fox correspondent, this time Nate Foy, said that Fox had “confirmed” that the fake story was true: “I can confirm those 20 veterans are staying at a different hotel, and a handful of them are on their way to permanent housing.”Later on The Ingraham Angle, David Riley, an American Legion representative in New York, joined host Laura Ingraham in expressing outrage over the fake Post story. Ingraham claimed homeless veterans were being treated as “second-class citizens” by supposedly being kicked out of hotels. During Riley’s angry ranting about the fake story, Fox aired b-roll video prominently showing the front of the Crossroads Hotel.Cavuto also continued to feature the fake story on his Fox Business program, where on-air graphics claimed, “Homeless vets booted from hotels to house migrants,” and, “Nearly two dozen homeless vets removed from hotels.”

    • May 17

      The hoax story continued to be told on several Fox programs on May 17, including for the first time on the network’s flagship “news” show, Special Report. On the program, Foy said that the office of New York City Mayor Eric Adams “denies removing homeless U.S. veterans from an Orange County hotel to accommodate migrants.”That night, the Mid Hudson Newspublished its first report debunking the New York Post’s story. Toney-Finch, who was the Post’s source for its story, had provided a credit card receipt for room charges at the Crossroads Hotel as proof that her organization paid for homeless veterans to stay there before they were supposedly displaced. But the Mid Hudson News determined that the receipt was a forgery, and a manager at the hotel said there was no record of that transaction. The newspaper further reported that “the manager said there were no veterans at the hotel, none were kicked out and no other guests were told to vacate. The hotel does have a group of asylum seekers there, but the seven-year general manager noted that the hotel is not even booked to capacity and rooms are available.”

    • May 18

      The day after the Mid Hudson News debunked this story, and hours after the newspaper published follow-up reporting on the hoax, Fox continued to air the fake story as if it was true. On Fox News Tonight, Riverhead, New York, Town Supervisor Yvette Aguiar said: “In particular, what’s really, really disturbing … was that in the Crossroads Hotel in Orange County, he [Mayor Eric Adams] made a deal with the hotel. They took 25 local area residents who were homeless, who needed this shelter, put them out on the street to house people that have come in over our borders.” Cain, who was hosting the show, did not correct her.

    • May 19

      On May 19, Mid Hudson Newspublished another story further debunking this hoax, reporting that a group of 15 local homeless men were recruited by Toney-Finch “to pretend they were veterans that had been kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh last Friday, in advance of the arrival of migrants brought up from New York City.” The newspaper reported that “they were each promised $200 along with food and alcohol” by Toney-Finch, who “appear[s] to have fabricated the entire story.”
    • Hours later, Fox began to admit that the story it promoted was fake. Fox correspondent Nate Foy, who previously claimed to have “confirmed” the story, offered what he described as a “quick update,” stating: “We’re now looking into new reports that a veterans advocate misled lawmakers, and media outlets, about a story that some homeless men may have been hired to pose as veterans.” Anchor John Roberts responded: “There’s enough chaos without potentially false stories running around out there.” Indeed.
    • Later that night, Ingraham offered her own “little update” on the hoax she had been promoting: “Before we go, a little update on a story we brought you this week about homeless vets being displaced from hotels so that illegals could move in. Turns out, the group behind the claim made it up. We have no clue as to why anyone would do such a thing.”
    • A Media Matters review determined that Fox News and Fox Business had devoted more than an hour of combined airtime to the promotion of this hoax prior to starting these corrections.The same night, The Daily Beast also published an exposé of Sharon Toney-Finch, the veteran and advocate who fabricated the story, which she fed to the New York Post and other media outlets. The Beast reported that she may have lied about her own military record and decorations:

    The woman at the center of the maelstrom is Sharon Toney-Finch, who was inducted last July into the New York State Senate Veterans’ Hall of Fame after a special salute by lawmakers for her service. She is listed in the National Purple Heart Hall of Honor, has been the subject of glowing profiles about her heroism under fire, and once appeared on Fox & Friends to unveil a set of Purple Heart commemorative coins. On May 16, New York State Sen. Rob Rolison, a former police officer, honored Toney-Finch as a “woman of distinction,” making special note of her Purple Heart.[...]However, U.S. Army spokesman Bryce Dubee told The Daily Beast on Friday that the Department of Defense does not know anything about Toney-Finch and a Purple Heart.[...]Officials with the Army’s Human Resources Command told the Times-Union on Friday that they, too, were “unable to verify (from our records) that Sharon Toney received a Purple Heart.”


    • May 20

      On May 20, one week after Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, who is himself a decorated U.S. Army veteran, kicked off Fox’s promotion of this hoax by holding up the front page of the New York Post, he made a seemingly sincere apology and used the word “correction”: “We do have a quick correction on a story we brought you last weekend. The source who told the New York Post, get this one, that the homeless veterans in New York were displaced to make room for illegals at another New York hotel, made the story up. It was a made-up story. And our apologies for reporting it as such.”

    • May 21

      New York Mayor Eric Adams called out the hoax during an appearance on CBS’ Face The Nation on May 21, saying: “We have witnessed in some municipalities where they lied and stated that veterans were being forced out of hotels, which was untrue and found out to be fabricated. So, these types of tactics are just anti-American and anti-New York City.”And on CNN, anchor Jim Acosta and national correspondent Gloria Pazmino highlighted the “very disturbing story” of the homeless men hired to pose as displaced veterans, describing the allegations as “a complete scam.”

    • May 22

      On May 22, MSNBC host Chris Hayes ran a comprehensive segment calling out Fox News for claiming it had “confirmed” the false story, in the context of its recent $787.5 million defamation settlement in the Dominion case, as well as the long line of Republican politicians ranging from the local to national levels who pushed the hoax. He ended by mocking Ingraham’s contention that “we have no clue as to why anyone would do such a thing” like making up a story.“Why would anyone want to make up a story that’s too good to check, but plays directly into the most deranged bias of your conservative audience?” Hayes opined. “I can’t imagine Fox News airing those kinds of lies, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.”

    • May 24

      Multiple Fox News anchors and other on-air personalities, including Cavuto, Bartiromo, Faulkner, and others read a nearly-identical script, again described as an “update” rather than a correction or retraction, specifically naming the Crossroads Hotel and acknowledging that the story was false. They also gave a disingenuous promise to provide viewers more information “as we get it,” ignoring the extensive information already uncovered in the last week by both local and national news outlets. This script also ignored that they smeared migrants by pushing this fake story in the previous week.

    TODD PIRO (CO-HOST): We want to update you on reports last week claiming that upstate hotels in Orange and Rockland counties, including the Crossroads Hotel, evicted a group of homeless veterans. We've since learned that veterans advocates misled local officials, and it now turns out those eviction claims were false. We wanted to update you on this story and make sure the record was set straight. More as we get it.

    It turns out that the Crossroads Hotel that Fox repeatedly attacked in its promotion of this hoax, and which is prominently mentioned in the weirdly scripted corrections on May 24, is owned by Choice Hotels, which is an advertiser on Fox.

    Fox News was effectively smearing one of its own advertisers by promoting a hoax that was reportedly followed by death threats.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Tucker Carlson

    Why Fox's Carlson Is Promoting Fringe Presidential Candidates

    Fox News prime-time star Tucker Carlson interviewed talk radio host Larry Elder yesterday, providing a platform for the previously failed political candidate to launch a seemingly improbable 2024 presidential campaign. But while Elder has virtually no chance of winning the Republican nomination away from disgraced former President Donald Trump, the real mission here may be for Fox News to recruit and promote its own pet candidates.

    Elder previously ran for governor of California in the 2021 recall election, during which his long history of far-right political stances and election denial conspiracy theories helped to push incumbent Gov. Gavin Newsom to a landslide Democratic victory.

    Against that backdrop, Carlson introduced his guest on April 20: “He just ran for governor of California in a recall election against Gavin Newsom. He came up short after the state's media united to call him a white supremacist. Still makes us laugh. It’s pretty offensive, actually. But he is not deterred. He has a major announcement for us tonight.”

    While it’s certainly odd that a man who declined to run again for governor in 2022 would turn around and claim to be running a viable presidential campaign in 2024, on closer examination this fits well into a pattern of Fox serving as a platform for fringe candidates this year.

    The network has remained primarily loyal to Trump, but Fox has also clearly been flirting with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as a possible alternative. In that context, the network’s cultivation of other vanity candidates has a familiar air to it. Fox is essentially working to control the political discourse, with some similarities to the way in which a dictatorial regime puts up its own controlled opposition parties which continue to praise the regime’s party line.

    In essence, by cultivating the crop of would-be presidential challengers, Fox is serving as an apparatus of the Republican Party itself, while also asserting its own political control. (One thing that has definitely become clear, is that Fox News is not in the journalism business.)

    Carlson’s broadcasts also combine this pattern of controlled political opposition with a possible agenda to advance his own political power. In comparison to fellow Fox prime-time host Sean Hannity, who had been a longtime Republican operative and close Trump adviser, Carlson’s efforts to dictate the Republican political agenda have met with less electoral success.

    As such, Carlson’s work thus far in reaching out to presidential candidates has been a mix of elevating fringe candidates while also getting more potentially serious candidates to adopt his fringe positions.

    On the February 21 edition of his show, Carlson hosted frequent Fox guest Vivek Ramaswamy to announce his Republican presidential campaign. This in turn kicked off a wider Fox News tour for the right-wing gadfly, who Carlson praised as “one of the great talkers we've ever had.” (Since then, Ramaswamy’s campaign has raised less than $1 million from people other than himself.)

    On the March 13 edition of his show, Carlson explained that he had sent a questionnaire to potential presidential candidates, seeking for them to parrot his own pro-Russian talking points against supporting Ukraine. DeSantis took up Carlson’s invitation with the most gusto, describing Russia’s war of conquest against a neighboring country as a “territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia.” This was seemingly a major get for Carlson — but then it triggered such a wider uproar that DeSantis tried to walk it back.

    This past Wednesday, Carlson also hosted fellow anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr., with whom he has a long history going back years, and who has launched a spoiler campaign in the Democratic presidential primary. Carlson sang Kennedy’s praises while alleging a vast corporate conspiracy to silence the fringe candidate. “He’s not running to get rich. He's running to make things better, but he’s not allowed to have those conversations. He’s been censored,” Calson claimed. “Other media won’t even talk to him — he criticized their advertisers.” Carlson further described Kennedy as “Joe Biden's leading primary opponent.” (A poll published by USA Today to coincide with Kennedy's announcement showed him trailing Biden by a substantial margin among 2020 Democratic voters: 67 percent to 14 percent.)

    Carlson has also developed a close relationship with the House Republican leadership, crafting revisionist propaganda in support of the far right’s assault on American democracy. Combined with his hosting of vanity presidential candidates, Carlson is seemingly throwing everything at the wall in the hopes that whatever does stick will serve to elevate his twisted political agenda.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.

    Fox News

    New Tapes: Trump Campaign Directed Bartiromo To Push January 6 (VIDEO)

    New audio revealed as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News — which Fox allegedly failed to provide to Dominion in the discovery process — shows how Fox News and Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo took directives from the Trump campaign to promote the campaign’s plan to overturn the 2020 presidential election results on January 6, 2021.

    The new evidence was revealed by former Fox producer Abby Grossberg as part of her separate lawsuit against the network for allegedly setting her and Bartiromo up as scapegoats for Fox’s clear pattern of spreading lies and conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. While the paper trail released so far in the case shows that Grossberg herself promoted conspiracy theories in the pursuit of ratings, she has also brought forward additional evidence that has already produced big legal results in the Dominion case. The judge in the case reportedly sanctioned Fox on Wednesday for failing to turn over Grossberg’s audio recordings in a move that will give Dominion an opportunity to conduct further legal discovery at Fox’s expense.

    On Wednesday night, MSNBC host Alex Wagner played exclusive audio excerpts from the key pieces of evidence that Grossberg had preserved and Fox had allegedly withheld from Dominion, including a phone call on November 8, 2020, in which then-Trump campaign attorney Rudy Giuliani admitted that he did not have evidence for his outlandish claims about Dominion. (Bartiromo and other Fox hosts continued to host Giuliani, anyway.) In another phone call, from December 5, 2020, an unnamed Trump campaign official admitted that Georgia’s statewide recount of ballots was “pretty darn close to what the machine count was,” and that the secretary of state’s office found that “that there weren’t any physical issues” with the voting machines. In a key piece of audio that Wagner played Wednesday night, the Trump campaign official also gave one of the earliest signals that the campaign intended to use the January 6, 2021, joint session of Congress in an attempt to overturn the election results, and that then-Vice President Mike Pence would supposedly “have to decide” which votes to count.

    In another key section from the December 5, 2020, phone call that Grossberg’s lawyer provided to Wagner, the unnamed Trump campaign official suggested that media outlets should cover this date as a supposed milestone for determining the election — indeed, this had been his entire purpose for getting on this phone call.

    Bartiromo immediately picked up on the Trump campaign’s instruction. On both her weekday morning Fox Business show, as well as her Sunday show on Fox News that Grossberg regularly produced, Bartiromo pushed the January 6 date many, many times, furthering the Trump campaign’s efforts to move the goal posts from its many legal and electoral defeats. These examples included instances in which Bartiromo either mentioned the date first, or she was clearly teeing up the guest to talk about the date, which Bartiromo depicted as an alleged point in time when Congress or Pence could realistically overturn the election.

    • On December 8, 2020, which was known as the “safe harbor” date against any legal challenges for the election results, Bartiromo hosted then-Trump campaign attorney Jenna Ellis, asking her, “So what do you see as, you know, today's date in terms of the safe harbor date? How does that complicate your challenges?” Ellis responded that “the ultimate date of significance is January 6,” which she said justified the campaign’s continued litigation. This was three days after Bartiromo’s call with the Trump campaign official. [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/8/20]
    • On the December 13 edition of her Sunday show, Bartiromo hosted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), asking him, “I want you to walk us through what happens on January 6,” which she described as “another date, as we approach a potential transition” of the presidency. Jordan then described the efforts that congressional Republicans would make to object to the election results, in order to prevent the “potential transition” that Bartiromo had described. [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 12/13/20]
    • On December 14, the date when the Electoral College delegates voted across the country, Bartiromo hosted then-House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy. “What's your take on where we are?” she asked. “Is it the end of the line now for the president's campaign to stop and overturn this election as the Electoral College will meet, or are you looking at January 6 as a pivotal date or what?” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/14/20]
    • The next day, December 15, Bartiromo read a news headline about the Electoral College results. Following a video clip of President-elect Joe Biden calling for the country “to unite, to heal,” Bartiromo said in a seeming rebuttal: “The next major step in the election process is on January 6. This is the date we are looking forward to, when Vice President Mike Pence is going to preside over the joint session of Congress while they officially tabulate the electoral votes.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/15/20]
    • On December 18, Bartiromo hosted former pro football player and future Republican U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker and his son, right-wing social media personality Christian Walker. Bartiromo played a video clip that Christian Walker had posted in which he declared, “The electors might have cast their votes today. They're not counted until January 6, when Congress meets. … This isn’t over yet.” Bartiromo responded: “I just love that.” [Fox Business, Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, 12/18/20]
    • On December 20, Bartiromo hosted Herschel and Christian Walker again on her Sunday show, once again praising Christian Walker’s online video and telling him, “You were basically underlining Section 1, Article 2 in the Constitution.” After Christian declared on “January 6, the vice president will count the votes,” Bartiromo did not challenge the apparent contention that Pence could determine the election results, but instead just praised Christian further: “Yes, and that's pretty much what you said on Instagram, which was great. It went viral.” [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 12/20/20]
    • On the January 3, 2021, edition of her Sunday show — the weekend prior to the joint session of Congress — Bartiromo hosted multiple Republican members of Congress who were planning to challenge the election results. At the conclusion of one segment, she remarked to Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL): “If you're going to object to six states, and then you’ve got a two-hour debate, we’re not going to learn the results here until — well, we're not going to learn on January 6, that’s for sure. This goes into January 7.” (The electoral votes were indeed certified after midnight, under what had become truly unprecedented circumstances.) [Fox News, Sunday Morning Futures, 1/3/21]


    The manner in which Grossberg has sought to substantiate the main claim in her lawsuit against Fox — that the network was allegedly setting up her and Bartiromo to take a fall in the Dominion lawsuit — is turning out to be a very strange thing indeed. Fox executives must bear ultimate responsibility for the lies the network helped to spread, but at the same time the new evidence that Grossberg has brought to bear in this case makes Bartiromo look worse and worse by revealing more of her reckless on-air behavior and coordination with the Trump campaign’s effort to subvert a national election result.

    Reprinted with permission from Media Matters.