Tag: Fox News

‘Answer my question’: Fox anchor grills defiant Stephen Miller on Trump’s national emergency

White House senior adviser Stephen Miller. Credit: Evan Vucci, AP

Unstoppable rhetoric collided with immovable facts on “Fox News Sunday,” as White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller defended President Trump’s national emergency declaration and invoked the potential for a veto if Congress disapproves in an interview with Chris Wallace.

The segment focused on the limits of presidential powers to circumvent Congress and procure funds to build 230 miles of barriers along the southern border. Miller described an onslaught of drugs and migrants flowing over the border as justification for the emergency declaration.

Yet, like a small army of fact-checkers have noted before, Wallace told Miller the vast majority of hard drugs seized by Customs and Border Protection are captured at points of entry, not between them, and unlawful migration over the border has fallen 90 percent since 2000.

View the complete February 17 article by Alex Horton on The Washington Post website here.

The 135 times in 2018 that Trump specifically wanted us to know what was airing on Fox News

The centrality of Fox News to President Trump’s politics is by now well-established. From his weekly gig on “Fox and Friends” in the years before he announced his candidacy to his reliance on the network once he was inaugurated, Trump has shown that his political philosophy guides and is guided by what airs on Fox News and Fox Business.

On many mornings, Trump’s first tweets are directly related to whatever is airing or has recently aired on “Fox and Friends,” a pattern so firmly cemented at this point that the default assumption on any given morning is that if Trump is suddenly tweeting about an unexpected topic, it was covered on Fox News within the prior hour. But often Trump leaves no question about that link, directly mentioning Fox News or “Fox and Friends” in his tweets.

We looked at 135 examples of his doing so over the course of 2018, including only tweets with such direct mentions (and excluding tweets where he mentions specific Fox News hosts that he happens to be watching). Thirty-four of those tweets were plugs for upcoming Fox New coverage, usually interviews with himself or his allies. Thirty-nine, though, were tweets amplifying Fox’s coverage of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference or the FBI investigation on which that probe was built. Ten dealt with immigration; 12 with the economy. Another 13 were expressions of thanks for people who appeared on the network to offer praise for Trump.

Fox News host Pete Hegseth received money for event with GOP candidate then repeatedly interviewed him for the network

Credit: Sarah Wasko, Media Matters

Fox News host Pete Hegseth was paid roughly $10,000 by Republicans in Michigan to speak at a fundraising event with then-Senate candidate John James. Fox News then allowed Hegseth to repeatedly interview James and promote his candidacy on its network.

Hegseth, a Republican who has said that he doesn’t consider himself a journalist, co-hosts Fox & Friends Weekend. ​The Washington Post reported in March that “Hegseth has been a confidant of Trump’s, who watches his Fox News show and frequently calls him to discuss veterans’ policy.” On Fox & Friends, Hegseth interviewed Trump during a rally to support Republican candidates ahead of the midterm elections.

Fox News recently claimed that it “does not condone any talent participating in campaign events,” which is a blatant lie. In reality, Fox News personalities regularly appear at events for candidates and political parties and sometimes get paid to do them. Media Matters reported last month that Fox News host Jeanine Pirro received more than $200,000 in speaking fees from 13 Republican organizations in the past two years. Other Fox News personalities who have headlined GOP events since President Donald Trump took office include hosts Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld, and contributors Sebastian Gorka and Karl Rove.

View the complete December 7 article by Eric Hananoki on the Media Matters website here.

Roger Ailes ‘Was Never Sorry About Anything’

In her new film, director and producer Alexis Bloom examines the life of the late Republican Party kingmaker and controversial Fox News leader who, before his death, was forced out amid multiple sexual harassment allegations. “He was a heat over light kind of guy,” Bloom tells Political Theater of Roger Ailes. “He dealt in psychological tropes very deftly. He was ruthless.” Even conservative political commentator Glenn Beck, once a Fox host, is astonished by Ailes’ confidence in his own political influence.

View the complete December 5 post by Jason Dick on The Roll Call website here, where you can subscribe to his podcast.

Why New York’s District Attorney Should Reopen That Fox News Investigation

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website August 28, 2018:

Roger Ailes, chairman and CEO of Fox News and Fox Television Stations at the Television Critics Assn on July 24, 2006. Credit: Fred Prouser, Reuters,/File Photo

For well over three decades, Robert M. Morgenthau served as the Manhattan District Attorney. A law enforcement legend, Morgenthau became renowned for his zealous pursuit of white-collar offenders.

He believed that “crime in the suites” deserved to be punished just as consistently as crime in the streets — and as a former federal prosecutor, he ignored minor issues such as jurisdiction when he thought justice needed to be done. And he sought expansive interpretations of law wherever he saw the federal government failing to do justice.

Recently I asked a ranking federal prosecutor who once worked for D.A. Morgenthau whether his old boss would have allowed Fox News Channel executives to escape accountability for the crimes of Roger Ailes and their alleged concealment of those crimes from auditors and shareholders.

View the complete article here.

Bill Shine Backstory: Why Did The Federal Probe Of Fox News Go ‘Dormant’?

The following article by Joe Conason was posted on the National Memo website August 26, 2018:

Bill Shine

With national attention now directed toward state and federal law enforcement agencies in New York — which are reported to be investigating Donald Trump and his associates — perhaps we will learn at last what happened in another troubling investigation, involving Trump’s cronies at Fox News Channel.

Among those cronies is former Fox News vice president Bill Shine, who has since ascended to oversee White House communications as deputy chief of staff to the president. Shine served for years as the top deputy to Roger Ailes, the late Fox News chief fired over his horrific mistreatment of female employees at the network.

Back in 2016, when the indefatigable Preet Bharara still served as the United States Attorney in Manhattan, his office opened a probe of secret and illicitly concealed financial payoffs to the women Ailes had abused. To protect the Fox News chief from the consequences of his own horrific misconduct, the network had paid out as much as $100 million in settlements to those women — and concealed those massive expenditures from its own stockholders.

View the complete article here.

On Fox News, Robert Mueller is often a bigger bogeyman than Vladimir Putin

The following article by JM Rieger was posted on the Washington Post website August 15, 2018:

Some Fox News pundits now say special counsel Robert S. Mueller III represents a bigger threat to the United States than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Some Fox News pundits now say an ex-Marine Corps officer is more dangerous than an ex-KGB officer. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)

When conservative radio host Mark Levin appeared on Fox News’ “Hannity” last week to discuss the latest in the Russia investigation, he ended up baffling even some of his most conservative allies.

“Robert Mueller is a greater threat to this republic and the Constitution than anything Vladimir Putin did during the campaign,” Levin said. “And I am no fan of Vladimir Putin.”

While bringing up a basket of old claims about the Mueller investigation, Levin did not say specifically what made Mueller a larger threat than Putin.

View the complete article here.

Report: White House is waiving ethics rules so former Fox co-President Bill Shine can talk to the network

The following article by Grace Bennett was posted on the MediaMatters.org website August 13, 2018:

An August 13 story in The Daily Beast reported that the Trump administration has chosen to waive ethics laws so that newly appointed Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications Bill Shine, who formerly served as co-president of Fox News, can communicate with his former colleagues at Fox. According to The Daily Beast, the administration claims that it is in “the public interest” for both Shine and economic adviser Larry Kudlow (who formerly worked at CNBC), to be “excused from provisions of the law, which seeks to prevent administration officials from advancing the financial interests of relatives or former employers.” The article continued:

“The Administration has an interest in you interacting with Covered Organizations such as Fox News,” wrote White House counsel Don McGahn in a July 13 memo granting an ethics waivers to Shine, a former Fox executive. “[T]he need for your services outweighs the concern that a reasonable person may question the integrity of the White House Office’s programs and operations.”

Kudlow, a former CNBC host, received a similar waiver allowing him to communicate with former colleagues.

View the complete article here.

Laura Ingraham insists she’s not racist, then doubles down on racism

The following article by Zack Ford was posted on the ThinkProgress website August 10, 2018:

Laura Ingraham Credit: Chip Somodevilla, Getty Images

Fox News host Laura Ingraham wants everyone to know that she’s not racist. Unfortunately, she made that clarification by expressing more racism.

Ingraham opened her show Thursday night with some clarifying remarks about her opening monologue Wednesday night. “A message to those who are distorting my views, including all white nationalists and especially one racist freak whose name I will not even mention: You do not have my support,” she said. “You don’t represent my views and you are antithetical to the beliefs I hold dear.”

The “one racist freak” she didn’t name was former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, who praised her remarks as “one of the most important (truthful) monologues in the history of MSM [mainstream media].” It’s not hard to see why he found affinity with the way she had bemoaned how the “massive demographic changes” from immigration were making it “seem like the America that we know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” a claim that bears a strong resemblance with the white supremacist “14 words” slogan.

View the complete article here.

Fox News Hosts Stunned As Giuliani Twists Himself into Knots About a ‘Second’ Trump Tower Meeting: ‘It Still Doesn’t Make Sense’

The following article by Elizabeth Preza was posted on the AlterNet website July 30, 2018:

Rudy Giuliani called into Fox News and divulged details about a second Trump Tower meeting.

Credit: Chris Kleponis, picture-alliance/dpa, AP Images

During a live TV interview on Monday, Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani called in to Fox News’ “Outnumbered” in an effort to clear up statements he made earlier in the day—and ended up confusing the hosts even more.

Giuliani on Monday appeared to move the goal posts on Russian collusion, insisting that Donald Trump could not have committed a crime because he didn’t personally carry out any hacking—a far cry from claims there was “no collusion.” He also told CNN Trump never attended the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, a claim that raised questions as no reporting has placed Trump at that meeting.

Giuliani told Fox News his bizarre statements Monday morning were not a departure from his previous position, telling Harris Faulkner he’s “been saying from the very beginning” that “my client didn’t do it and even if he did it, it’s not a crime.”

View the complete article here.