If you think the MAGAs are hot on the cause of defunding the FBI, wait until you see the blowback against Fox News, once this gets out. Whew. Look for pitchforks and tiki torches going through Rockefeller Plaza and down 6th Avenue to Fox News. This is pure blasphemy.
Two weeks ago today was the raid on Mar-a-Lago. And while we’re getting historical here, 246 years ago today, the British invaded Brooklyn by sea. Seriously.
Concurrent with the anniversary of the FBI executing a search warrant on Mar-a-Lago is this hit piece by Bradley P. Moss, published on Fox Digital. Trump will go ape when he gets wind of this. Fox News Digital:
The truth needs to be set forth plainly and simply, and so let’s get down to brass tacks here. What happened on August 8, 2022, was not tyranny. It was not political persecution. It was not a minor dust up over bureaucratic processes blown out of proportion. It was the criminal justice system operating just like it does with any other private citizen on any other given day ending in a “y.”
Trump was the president and commander-in-chief up until noon on January 20, 2021. The moment Joe Biden took the Oath of Office, Trump became just another private citizen in his 70s who vacations in Florida during the winter months to avoid the bitter cold back in his native home in the Northeast. He was no longer shielded by any privileges or protections of the Office of the Presidency at the point beyond physical security protection. He is subject to the laws of the United States just like anyone else.
What also is true is that Trump had particular legal obligation as the former president to properly turn over presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration. That is mandated by the Presidential Records Act because those records are the property of the United States. They are not Trump’s personal property.
Interesting that this point would be made, since Trump aides have revealed on more than one occasion in the past two weeks that Trump said that he believed that the documents were his.
In a competent White House, this process would have started within days of his election loss and would have been completed well in advance of his departure for Florida on January 20, 2021. It was not.
That’s not even a veiled dig, that’s an open insult. Fox News is ratcheting up its level of alienation from Trump.
The result was apparently more than 25 boxes’ worth of presidential records were shipped to Florida and stored in a basement at Mar-a-Lago. If this were a mere issue of simply recovering unclassified presidential records, though, there likely never would have been a criminal element to this matter. But buried into those boxes were countless properly marked classified documents. Those documents lacked any markings indicating that Trump had ever declassified them. No actual substantiated evidence indicates Mr. Trump ever declassified them. No one viewing those records would have any reason to view them as anything other than properly classified documents. […]
A Trump lawyer swore out an affidavit promising there were no more documents. The government gathered evidence that the Trump lawyer was not being truthful, and on August 8, 2022, a court-authorized search warrant was executed that, sure enough, located several more classified documents.
The op/ed goes on for a bit more. One thing to note here: This article is the most physically difficult to read of any article that I personally have read on Fox News Digital. It’s jammed with photos, clips, and ads. The opinion piece is a trickle of commentary amidst all the distraction.
I don’t know what that’s about. A lot of amateur bloggers will put together a blog that looks this bad on the theory that all those ads are going to make them mega bucks. The reality is that a reader who has to battle through a tide of images to get a sentence here and here is not a reader who will return to a site.
So I don’t know what Fox News is thinking here. Maybe it’s having your cake and eating it, too. Yes, they published a Trump hit piece — but it’s so hard to read that most people will give up.
Just the fact that the piece is there in any form indicates that Trump is no longer the Fox News golden boy. That seems to be a decision which has been carved in stone. There are some pundits who thought Fox News might reverse that stance after the raid and obviously that’s not the way it’s going down. Fox News wants Trump gone and I daresay they will get their wish.
liars are not trustworthy
period
Faux spent how many years puffing and propping up the orange turd and helping create the whole MAG-got movement? Now that they see a more profitable golden boy in Desantis, they’re ditching tfg. While I’m glad to see them dumping him, they’re just going to puff and prop the next autocratic bully that will bring them ratings and cash. After they’ve destroyed American Democracy, the Murdocks will probably go back to Australia and fuck up that country too.
The Murdochs are going to Europe.
We can only hope .
We will hear the shrieking, across the whole country I’m sure, when he or more likely someone else reads what faux wrote. I personally cannot wait for the chaos in Mango Moron Land to ensue. This might even be popcorn-worthy.
Most Trump** cultists would not be able to read (and understand) it even had it not been camouflaged. It has many words of more than two syllables (such as “bureaucratic,”
“privilege,” and “Administraton,” just to name a few).
I can’t imagine why they published it at all – I first thought it was aimed at us, to give us the impression that they are not incorrigible lunatics – but that doesn’t really hold water, since as little as one giggle from Tucker would prove the contrary. It’s a puzzlement.
Fox News Digital? I’m not sure even if the piece wasn’t cluttered in the manner you described it would have reached that many people. Of course, since we are talking about Trump and his goldfish length memory the headline alone would make him blows some seams in that orange hued skin of his and he’d be shooting streams of burnt-steak and “hamberder” shit all over the walls.
I think this is yet another trial balloon. We had Ingraham in the AFTERNOON on someone’s podcase (do people really listen to those things enough to make them significant?) and it didn’t seem to blow up into anything. Now we have this a week or two later. From where I sit the Murdochs are carefully test-marketing, of focus grouping or whatever the fuck they want to call it. The point is that I think it’s clear they are truly serious about not just pulling the plug on Trump but hiring a team to keep hitting the flush handle round the clock until he’s out of sight/mind and/or in prison.
I also still say I won’t believe it until their trio of evening hosts go after Trump like this. If ORDERED to take Trump out they will do so. But only if ORDERED. And it’s something they will have to do in concert and in prime time and do repeatedly until the message gets buried deep in Fox’s viewership that Trump is the past and needs to be shat out of their systems and flushed.
With OAN and Newsmax on the sidelines struggling to stay afloat and “Truth” Social being a fucking joke Fox is remaining the only real force in conservative “news”, or to be more accurate opinion base “journalism” to which conservatives can turn to get their marching orders. Money however matters and while Trump made them (and mainstream outlets too) a lot of money for years he’s cost them in more recent times. So that’s what’s going on. Lot’s of number crunching behind the scenes and quiet discussions with corporate America on getting them back buying ads if they dump Trump. The big question is how quickly those advertisers would come back, especially if as everyone assumes DeSantis were to become Fox’s anointed one.
So I remain of the belief ole Ruppert is taking Lachlan seriously and really, truly looking at moving on from Trump. BUT, they aren’t ready to pull the trigger/hit the flush valve on the fake gold toilet. Not yet. However I think they have decided to test the waters to see if the sewer explodes and if it does how badly and how quickly they can repair it and wash off the shit. IF the answers to those questions are bad, but not catastrophic and repair & cleanup will be quick then Trump is done.
But, and this is the thing, it will ONLY happen if the prime-time lineup does the takedown. Until then it’s nothing more (as far as I’m concerned) than Fox/the Murdochs trying to hedge their bets with a “we’ve been critical of Trump” line of bullshit when they get into court where they face financial losses big enough to make even Ruppert scared.
Well, if Fox “News” (digital or not) were REALLY concerned about Trump’s behaviors the way this piece suggests, they certainly would NOT be fluffing De Santis’s bid since De Santis has basically turned Florida into his own personal fiefdom, ignoring basic civil rights and even trying to strong arm private businesses into doing his bidding. He’s been acting as a dictator, effectively writing legislation that he gets his lackeys in the legislature to rubber-stamp and then simply ignoring judicial actions that go against him. And, of course, his most recent show of force was to *fire* an ELECTED district attorney and replacing him with a judge loyal to De Santis (the district attorney’s crime was to sign a paper in which he wouldn’t prosecute certain actions that De Santis had essentially criminalized, even though NO case has come before that DA’s office yet).
DeSantis has created, or is creating, his own private “militia” composed of all the dregs of society. They will be trained to use weapons, but not provided weapons until he feels the need to arm them. That will undoubtedly be when he loses either the governor race or the presidential race. But he is a fascist bully and needs to be kept far, far away from the White House!!
fun fact:
more American schoolchildren have been killed by guns than by reading Anne Frank