Tag Archives: Fox & Friends

media news

Fox hasn’t changed, Mr. President; some of ’em just doing their job

What do you mean, Mr. President, that “Fox has changed”? And you say you’re “not happy with it”?

If you don’t mind my borrowing a phrase: “Big fu**ing deal.”

Fox hasn’t changed, Mr. President. To my way of thinking, it remains uber-friendly to you and what pass for your policies. You still have your friends hosting those talk shows. “Fox & Friends,” Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Jeannine Pirro, Laura Ingraham … am I missing someone? Probably.

It’s just that Fox also has some straight-away journalists who manage to do their jobs. Chris Wallace — who comes from solid journalistic stock, given that his dad was the great Mike Wallace — is but one example of what I mean. Shepard Smith is another. Neither of these men is an apologist for you the way Sean Hannity and the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts have proven to be.

I shouldn’t have to remind you, Mr. President, that answering difficult questions from the media is part of the job you inherited when you won that election in 2016. I know, it’s not written anywhere. But it’s in there, somewhere. Believe me, Mr. President. It’s there.

Your predecessors, every one of them from both political parties, have known that to be the case. You are cursed, though, with the thinnest of skins. As Jack Nicholson’s character, Marine Col. Nathan Jessep, said in “A Few Good Men,” You can’t handle truth!

Maybe you’re upset that Fox has a few token liberal commentators on its payroll these days. I saw where you referred to Juan Williams as “pathetic.” Hey, do you say the same thing about Donna Brazile, the former CNN and ABC News talking head? What about Geraldo Rivera, the grandstander who’s been with Fox since The Flood?

The fact that your perception that Fox has turned on you doesn’t make you “happy” doesn’t mean a damn thing. Presidents cannot dictate how the media do their job. The First Amendment protects the “press” and, by extension, all media from any government interference or coercion. You need to read the Constitution, sir. You took an oath to “defend” it; you damn sure need to know what you swore to protect.

So, my request of you, Mr. President, is a simple one. Pipe down. Shut the hell up. Worry about the important stuff … if you care enough to actually serve all Americans.

media news

Fox & Friends turns ‘big loss’ into a ‘big win,’ go figure

If you had any doubt at all — which is impossible, of course — about why Donald Trump loves the Fox News Channel, you ought to get a load of some of the commentary that came from the co-hosts of “Fox & Friends,” the network’s morning gab show.

The New York Times published a report chronicling how Trump lost more than $1 billion for a decade leading up to 1994; for eight of those years he didn’t pay any federal income taxes. The report has been seen generally by political, business and media analysts as a big-time embarrassment for the self-proclaimed deal making genius.

Oh, but then the “Fox & Friends” sycophants weighed in the other morning. Ainsley Earhardt gushed to her “Friends” colleagues Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade that the losses show what an “impressive” risk-taker Trump was at the time. “If anything, you read this and you’re like ‘wow, it’s pretty impressive, all the things that he’s done in his life,'” Earnhardt gushed.

No, it’s not impressive, Ms. Earnhardt. It reveals that Trump has been lying through his teeth at Americans about his business acumen.

That won’t dissuade the president’s amen chorus at Fox. They love the guy. They give him a pass on all the hideous behavior he has exhibited during his brief time in politics. One of FNC’s more egregious examples of pro-Trump obsequiousness occurred when commentator Sean Hannity acted as an emcee at a Trump political rally.

So it’s no surprise that “Fox & Friends” would grovel at Trump’s feet when a major American newspaper blows the lid off the president’s miserable business failures.

Hey, I believe we ought to call the “Fox & Friends” critique what it is: fake news!

International news, media news

Fox News host: Trump has ‘refounded’ ISIS

I guess hell has frozen over, as it does from time to time.

“Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade, a guy I usually ignore, said this to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders:

“Sarah, he’s giving Russia a big win. Vladimir Putin praised him. He’s also doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing. He said President Obama was the founder of ISIS. He just refounded ISIS.”

Donald Trump’s declaration that Barack Obama “founded” ISIS certainly was a hideous declaration from the campaign stump.

His decision to pull U.S. forces out of Syria, though, does give the Islamic State reason to revive itself. The Russians also are happy, given that they want to eliminate the forces fighting against their man in Damascus, Bashar al Assad. The Turks endorse the president, too, as they want to wipe out the Kurds who pose a threat to them while fighting on our side against ISIS.

Still, for Kilmeade to say on national TV that Trump has “refounded ISIS” is stunning, given that “Fox & Friends” has been such a traditionally venue for the president. He goes on the air, makes profoundly false statements and hardly ever is called out by the Fox hosts.

International news

Is this one of ‘the best people’?

Remember this name: Heather Nauert.

She is Donald J. Trump’s latest incarnation of the “best people” he has vowed to hire to help him “make America great again.”

Oh, but who is she? She is the president’s nominee to be our nation’s ambassador to the United Nations. Nauert will succeed Nikki Haley, who is leaving government at the end of the year, possibly to pursue other political ambitions.

OK, what about her credentials to speak for the United States of America in the body aimed at keeping the worldwide peace and working around the globe?

She has zero foreign policy experience. Nauert has limited government experience of any kind; she joined the Trump administration in April 2017, becoming a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who then slammed the door shut on Nauert. Tillerson managed to get fired and his successor, Mike Pompeo, has welcomed Nauert into State’s inner circle.

But . . . this must be what put Nauert into the hunt for the UN job: She was a top news correspondent for Fox News and served for a time as a co-host on the president’s favorite “news” and gab show, “Fox & Friends.” These are the folks who never ask him tough questions, fearing, I suppose, that they would be lumped in with those other “fake news” outlets. We can’t have it, right, ladies and gents?

So, there you have it. The president of the United States has handed the UN envoy job to someone who has not a single thing to show her fellow diplomats that she knows anything about the world around us. Indeed, she has only a little less government experience than the man who nominated her, Donald Trump.

Hey, she appears to be the perfect pick for the president, who defines “best people” in ways I cannot possibly fathom.

national news

He said, he said … to himself

Donald J. Trump is on record telling “Fox & Friends” that he knows Matthew Whitaker, the nation’s newest acting attorney general.

Then the president contradicted himself by telling us he doesn’t know Whitaker. He made the latter statement after appointing him acting AG upon the president’s firing of Jeff Sessions as the nation’s top lawyer.

So, which is it? Does he know Whitaker or doesn’t he?

I’ll take a guess.

Trump knows Whitaker. He knows that the acting AG is no fan of Robert Mueller’s probe into “the Russia thing.”

Thus, the president lied to Americans about not knowing the acting attorney general.

Imagine that.

media news

‘These aren’t our kids’

1 Comment

Brian Kilmeade needs a serious whuppin’.

The “Fox & Friends” co-host said this today while defending Donald J. Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which the president ostensibly ended with an executive order that stops the practice of yanking kids from their parents along the southern border of our nation.

“Like it or not, these aren’t our kids. Show them compassion, but it’s not like he’s doing this to the people of Idaho or Texas. These are people from another country and now people are saying that they’re more important than people in our country who are paying taxes and who have needs as well.”

Let’s hold the phone, dear reader. Time out! Take a breath and digest what this clown has said on national TV.

Has anyone, ever hinted, implied or suggested — let alone say it out loud — that the young immigrants at the center of this immigration firestorm are “more important than people in our country”?

Kilmeade was trying to make some sort of cheap point, I reckon, when he blurted out that misstatement.

It is false. It is yet another lie. He has demonized in one of the most hideous examples we’ve heard in all this tumult the critics of the Trump administration policy that has swept the entire globe.

If the president is going to go after the mainstream media for telling lies, right there is a glittering example of “fake news.”

national news

Trump contradicts himself again … imagine that!

When the talk show hosts on the Fox News Channel look nervous while talking to Donald J. Trump, then you know the president is treading where he shouldn’t go.

“Fox & Friends” had the president on the air this morning and Trump took the opportunity to fly off the rails. Take, for instance, what he said about Michael Cohen, his lawyer who now plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment rights regarding Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly had a one-night tryst with the man who would become president.

Trump had denied repeatedly that he knew anything about the $130,000 hush money payment Cohen made to Daniels to keep her quiet about the tryst that Trump denies ever happening.

Today, Trump said that, yep, Cohen represented him on that “crazy Daniels” matter. Huh? Does that mean that Trump knew of the payment, the one where he denied knowledge?

So, where do we stand with the Prevaricator in Chief?

He said he didn’t know about the payment. Cohen said he made it on behalf of his client … that would be the president. Does the president’s lawyer engage in activity without notifying his client? Um, no, not if he is worth a damn as a lawyer.

And did the president today just reverse his prior denials about what Cohen did? It sure looks like it to me.

Therefore, one now understands why the “Fox & Friends” hosts looked so damn nervous while they had their guy, Trump, on the air blathering and bloviating about this and that.

It certainly looked to me as though Trump had come unhinged.

Check it out here.

Simply … amazing.

national news

It’s a CYA moment for the president

In 2013 a wealthy real estate mogul/reality TV celebrity told “Fox & Friends” who he thought should take the heat in the event of a federal government shutdown.

“I mean, problems start from the top and they have to get solved from the top and the president’s the leader. And he’s got to get everybody in a room and he’s got to lead,” said Donald John Trump.

Now, though, that mogul/celebrity is the president. Who takes the hickey in the event of a government shutdown this time? According to Trump, it’s congressional Democrats. They’re the bad guys, he says. They need to be punished politically for the failure to reach an agreement that funds the government over the long term.

But, but … here’s what he told “Fox & Friends”:

“They’re not going to be talking about who was the head of the House, the head the Senate, who’s running things in Washington,” Trump said.

“So I really think the pressure is on the president,” he added.

Hey, which is it, Mr. President? Are you the leader you expected from your predecessor? Or … are you a bystander?

He also has said Republicans shouldn’t fear fear a government shutdown.

Actually, I believe they should. So should the Democrats.

Time is running out.

As for leaders, they don’t worry about covering their own, um, backsides.