Tag: Fox News

GOP Paid Fox News Pundits Over $500K For Speeches

A new report from Media Matters for America reveals Trump’s favorite right-wing pundits at Fox News have brought in more than $500,000 from the Republican Party.

The report tracked the flow of funds from Republican state parties to several of the network’s biggest names and found Fox News pundits regularly getting paid for speeches since 2007, calling it an “ethical disaster.”

Traditional journalistic outlets prohibit intermingling between on-air personalities and party politics — MSNBC once disciplined then-host Keith Olbermann for donating to Democratic candidates. But while Fox has sometimes given lip service to opposing party-pundit financial arrangements, the speeches have continued for a decade.

View the complete May 20 article by Oliver Willis on the National Memo website here.

Fox News’ Pete Hegseth has been lobbying Trump to pardon accused war criminals: report

President Donald Trump and his sycophants have a way of becoming furious whenever Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith or anyone else at Fox News questions anything the president says or does. Regardless, Fox on the whole is a very Trump-friendly outlet, and a new report by the Daily Beast outlines the ways in which Fox News’ Pete Hegseth has been lobbying for Trump to pardon some accused war criminals.

Asawin Suebsaeng, Sam Brodey and Andrew Kirell, in their Daily Beast report published on May 20, discuss the case of Special Operations Chief Edward Gallagher, a Navy SEAL platoon leader who is set to go to trial on May 28 for allegedly shooting civilians in Iraq in 2017. Gallagher is also accused of fatally stabbing a captured member of the terrorist organization ISIS (Islamic State, Iraq and Syria) who was receiving medical treatment in Iraq that year. And the article notes that Hegseth, a co-host of Fox News’ morning program “Fox and Friends,” has been urging Trump to pardon Gallagher as well as Maj. Mathew Golsteyn (who was accused of murdering an Afghan male detainee and burying the body in 2010).

Hegseth himself is a veteran of the Iraq War and formerly headed the right-wing group Concerned Veterans for America. And according to the Daily Beast’s sources, he has had multiple private conservations with Trump in 2019 and has specifically discussed Gallagher’s case with him.

View the complete May 21 article by Alex Henderson on the AlterNet website here.

Fox News hosts twist themselves into knots about Trump’s massive losses: ‘A bold businessman’

Fox News is on overdrive trying to whitewash President Donald Trump’s decade of massive losses, more than a billion dollars, as a bombshell New York Times investigation revealed Tuesday night.

The Times reported his financial losses were so large, “year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.”

Not according to the folks at “Fox & Friends,” who apparently don’t think one billion dollars is a lot of money.

View the complete May 8 article by David Badash of The New Civil Rights Movement on the AlterNet website here.

Fox News hosts expose the dishonesty of AG Barr and the network’s own ‘opinion people’

The highly anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing with Attorney General William Barr provided all the sparks and melodrama that was advertised. While the Republican members of the committee wasted their time flattering Barr and calling for ridiculously unwarranted investigations of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, the Democrats effectively revealed just how devoutly wedded to Donald Trump the Attorney General is.

Barr was unashamedly protecting Trump from any potentially negative perceptions he might have earned due to his flagrantly unlawful activity and obstruction of justice. Barr refused to concede some obvious failures on his part to be an objective servant of the American people, rather than a personal criminal lawyer for Trump.

Even so, Barr couldn’t remember whether or not Trump ever asked him to open an investigation into Trump’s political opponents or critics. He admitted that he didn’t review the evidence in the Mueller report before deciding that Trump was innocent. He denied that directing someone to change their testimony (as Trump did to White House Counsel Don McGahn) was witness tampering and obstruction of justice. He defended his use of the loaded, Trumpian term of “spying” during his previous congressional testimony. He couldn’t even say whether the President’s actions were consistent with his oath of office. So Barr is not just another Trump lawyer, he’s as bad at it as the rest of Trump’s legal team.

View the complete May 2 article by News Corpse from the Daily Kos website on the AlterNet website here.

Fox News Judge Condemns Trump For Obstructions Of Justice

When the Department of Justice designated Robert Mueller as special counsel to take over the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign in May 2017, Mueller’s initial task was to determine if there had been a conspiracy — an illegal agreement — between the campaign and any Russians to receive anything of value.

When former FBI Director James Comey informed Mueller that he believed Trump fired him because he had declined Trump’s order to shut down the investigation of Trump’s campaign and of his former national security advisor, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Mueller began to investigate whether the president had unlawfully attempted to obstruct those investigations.

We now know why Trump was so anxious for the FBI to leave Flynn alone.

View the complete April 26 article by Andrew Napolitano on the National Memo website here.

Mueller’s report proves why Trump loves Fox News — and why he needs it now more than ever

It’s no secret that Fox News and the Trump administration are deeply entwined: They are the conjoined twins of misinformation.

So it hardly raised an eyebrow when the president took to Twitter on Thursday to urge everyone to tune in to Fox for Attorney General William P. Barr’s (misleading) prelude to the release of the report by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

The results were predictable: Fox’s early news coverage was somewhat straight — kept so largely by the presence of Fox’s designated truth-teller, Chris Wallace.

View the complete April 20 article by Margaret Sullivan on The Washington Post website here.

These are the 4 times Fox News was referenced in the Mueller report — and why they make Trump look even worse

With the release of the redacted version of the Mueller report by Donald Trump’s plant in the Justice Department, Attorney General William Barr, there is going to be a flurry of furious spinning by Trump’s devoted martinets in the right-wing press. Trump himself will continue his frantic robo-rant of “no collusion, no obstruction,” as he has been doing for months.

Naturally, Fox News will assume its predictable role as the main line of defense for Trump. They will focus exclusively on any positive angles among the vague interpretations of Mueller’s report offered by Barr or other Republican partisans. And they will brazenly ignore anything in the report that is remotely detrimental to Trump, of which there is a significant amount. Even Chris Wallace of Fox News noted that “There is a lot of stuff in here that is damaging to the president, politically embarrassing to the president.”

However, Fox News itself had a place in the Mueller report with four references to Trump’s State TV affiliate. The following passages from the report illustrate just how deeply integrated Fox is with Trump and his associates. For instance:

View the complete April 18 article by the News Corp on the Daily Kos website here.

Trump refers to Fox News as ‘we,’ after years of echoing the network

Anchor defended network to DNC chief, claiming ‘line’ between daytime and evening shows

President Donald Trump on Tuesday acknowledged what his critics have charged for his entire tenure in office, referring to Fox News as “we.”

His morning and late-night tweets have closely resembled the themes of one cable network’s morning show since he took office in January 2017. Sometimes he has even quoted directly from “Fox & Friends” segments, and the right-leaning outlet’s other shows. He’s shared a campaign rally stage with one of its top hosts, Sean Hannity.

And on Tuesday, Trump signaled he views Fox News as a friendly broadcasting entity.

View the complete April 16 article by John T. Bennett on The Roll Call website here.

Fox News’ Chris Wallace takes on Kellyanne Conway over Trump’s claims of exoneration: ‘Just isn’t true’

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace badgered White House advisor Kellyanne Conway early Sunday morning over President Donald Trump’s claim of total exoneration, with Conway repeatedly attempting to bat it away.

“The special counsel cleared the president on collusion, absolutely no question about it. But he especially did not clear him on the question of obstruction, so why is the president telling Americans something that is not true?” Wallace pressed.

As Conway insisted Trump had not fired special counsel Robert Mueller, Wallace pulled her up short.

View the complete March 31 article by Tom Boggioni of Raw Story on the AlterNet website here.

Trump to pick Fox News contributor for State Dept spokeswoman

Morgan Ortagus will replace Heather Nauert, an ex-Fox News anchor who was Trump’s pick for U.N. ambassador until she withdrew from consideration.

The Trump administration has chosen counterterrorism expert and former Fox News contributor Morgan Ortagus to be the new State Department spokeswoman, three people with knowledge of the decision told NBC News.

Ortagus, a Naval Reserve officer, would bring significant experience in national security and foreign policy to the role. She will replace Heather Nauert, a former Fox News anchor who had been announced as President Donald Trump’s pick for United Nations ambassador but later withdrew herself from consideration.

Ortagus previously served as a public affairs officer for the U.S. Agency for International Development, an independent agency that takes direction from the State Department, according to a biography posted on the website of her consulting firm, GO Advisors. Her tenure included work in Iraq.

View the complete March 28 article by Josh Lederman on the NBC News website here.