Justin's Political Corner
A new book from Jonathan Alter claims that Fox News President Roger Ailes told producers to cut off the microphone used by Fox host Geraldo Rivera as he pushed back against Fox’s politicization of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Appearing on Fox & Friends the day before the 2012 election, Rivera accused The Five’s Eric Bolling of being “a politician trying to make a political point” with Bolling’s claim that the government did “nothing” in response to the attack.
The New York Times reports that Alter writes in the upcoming book The Center Holds: Obama and His Enemies that “Ailes called the control room and told the producers to cut Rivera’s mic.”
Mediaite reports that their sources claim that Ailes never called the control room, but that Fox News Executive Vice President of Programming Bill Shine did. They go on to write, “Shine did not order Rivera’s mic to be cut. Instead his call was to urge the show to move on because the segment had come to its conclusion, as the EVP seemed to believe that two Fox personalities calling each other liars with an escalating tone made for bad morning television and could potentially alienate their audience if it continued.”
h/t: MMFA
- Concerned Women For America CEO Penny Nance on the 05.02.2013 edition of FNC’s Fox and Friends.
Fox News guest: Scientific ‘enlightenment and reason’ led to the Holocaust (via Raw Story )
A Fox News guest on Thursday slammed President Barack Obama’s transportation secretary nominee, connecting him to an 18th century scientific movement that embraced reason, which she said was partially to blame for the Holocaust. Fox News host Steve Doocy asked Penny Nance, CEO of the Christian activist…
A Fox News analyst invoked the discredited “death panels” myth to stoke fears that cancer clinics are turning away patients as a result of the 2010 health care reform law, even as those clinics say they are being forced to turn away patients because of automatic across-the-board budget cuts that took effect last month.
On April 5, Fox News analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. appeared on Fox & Friends to discuss the story and blamed not only sequestration, but President Obama’s health care reform law, saying: “This is about people dying as a result of Obamacare and as a result of the sequester.” Johnson then claimed that Medicare growth reduction, which is in the Affordable Care Act (ACA), would lead to similar problems for Medicare patients. Later, Johnson used this situation to push the right-wing myths about “death panels” under the ACA.
ohnson’s claim that the ACA resulted in cancer patients losing chemotherapy treatment is groundless. The Post’s Kliff explained in her post how sequestration is solely responsible for this reduction in care.
Johnson’s claim that the ACA will cause reductions in care for Medicare beneficiaries is also false, and haslong been pushed by right-wing media. The ACA does not cut Medicare benefits - it actually reduces future payments in areas seen as inefficient or wasteful, and health care experts have said that it shouldn’t negatively affect the quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries.
Finally, Johnson’s “death panel” fearmongering stems from a baseless right-wing myth that has persisted since mid-2009.
Fox & Friends Sunday hosted a small business owner to disparage the Affordable Care Act without disclosing his membership in the anti-health care reform group National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB).
Co-hosts Clayton Morris and Tucker Carlson identified their guest David McArthur only as a “small business owner” while interviewing him about the impact the Affordable Care Act might have on his small bakery in St. Louis. Morris asked, “Do you feel that these plans, Obamacare specifically, limit growth in this country and [are] holding back the economy, because small business owners like yourself are afraid to hire and afraid to grow?” McArthur replied, “Well, certainly it does.”
Fox News never disclosed that McArthur, who has repeatedly appeared on the network, is a member of the NFIB, a group that has spent millions to overturn the Affordable Care Act.
The NFIB was the lead plaintiff suing to overturn the Affordable Care Act before the Supreme Court. In a post titled “The Group Trying To Kill Obamacare,” Salon.com’s Alex Seitz-Wald reported that the group spent at least $2.9 million in 2010 alone working to overturn the law.
This is not the first time Fox has hosted undisclosed NFIB members to criticize the Affordable Care Act.
From the 02.13.2013 edition of FNC’s Fox and Friends:Gretchen Carlson: Higher Minimum Wage May Be “Bad For Small Businesses.” On Fox & Friends the morning after the president’s State of the Union address, co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed “[Obama] also wants to increase minimum wage, and of course, that would be great for people who are working at those jobs, but possibly bad for small businesses who have to pay higher wages.” [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 2/13/13]
For more on Fox’s baseless attacks on minimum wage, click here and here.
h/t: MMFA
(via Think Progress: RNCTV’s Latest Sexist Attack Against Hillary: ‘Face Lift, Perhaps?’)
Fox and Friends host Steve Doocy took a shot at outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Wednesday morning, speculating that she underwent a face lift in the last two weeks. In a quick headline roundup, Doocy quipped that Clinton’s new website featured her “glamorous new face,” while Fox showed a side-by-side comparison of her website photo and a photo from Clinton’s exasperated testimony at the Senate’s hearing on the Benghazi attacks.
Is this the face of presidential ambition? Days after retiring as Secretary of State, somebody has launched a website for her, showing off this glamorous new face. Face lift, perhaps? Well, that’s fueling rumors about a run for president in 2016, but her aides say it’s simply a way for fans and the media to reach her.
Typical FNC.
Fox News attacks Gore for selling to ‘anti-American’ Al Jazeera instead of Beck (via Raw Story )
The hosts of Fox & Friends on Friday slammed former Democratic Vice President Al Gore for being a “great American businessman” and selling his Current TV network to the “clearly anti-American” Al Jazeera network instead of former Fox News host Glenn Beck. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal…
Michelle Maglagang Malkin, you are a pathetic fuckwad excuse of an American citizen!
Poor, poor Wayne LaPierre. He’s just been treated so unfairly by that evil “liberal media” that they love to demonize over at Fox. I wonder when Michelle Malkin is going to talk to her Uncle Rupert, because it seems there’s a problem with some mixed messaging when it comes to whether NRA head LaPierre is being treated unfairly or if we should rightfully believe he’s nuts.
Maybe someone can ask Malkin to go read these headlines first before she pretends it’s just liberals that have a problem with LaPierre and his organization: New York Post, Daily News Blast NRA Speech (PHOTOS).
Regardless of what Rupert’s publication thinks, here was Malkin on Fox & Friends this Saturday, attacking liberals for rightfully going after LaPierre and his bizarre, tone deaf press conference this week, and right in there with wingnuts like Rick Perry and company that want to arm school teachers.
Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin weighed in on Fox and Friends this morning about yesterday’s remarks from NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre, which have triggered outrage among liberals and gun control advocates.
In the group’s first news conference since the Sandy Hook massacre last Friday, LaPierre addressed the press, calling for every school in the United States to implement a protection program, saying that guns in the hands of “good guys” is the only means to stop evil among us. […]
Malkin believes the NRA has been demonized by the “crazed, anti-gun, liberal media,” adding that the ideas proposed by LaPierre have been embraced by some school districts, specifically in Texas and Oklahoma where teachers legally carry firearms in school.
Malkin also called out hypocrisy on the left, especially among celebrities who hire armed guards themselves at times, but then criticize the NRA’s position that possessing a firearm is necessary for self-defense.
“There’s this attitude of ‘armed guard for me, but not for thee,’” she said. Malkin went on to address another topic: the fights that have erupted in malls over Air Jordan sneakers in several states, including one incident in Texas where two people were killed.
I guess Malkin doesn’t realize that there’s a difference between armed security guards who are trained and specialize in providing security for someone, and the NRA’s position which is to just put as many guns as possible into the hands of anyone that wants one, no matter how or if they’re trained to handle the weapons, if they store those weapons safely, if they’re emotionally and mentally competent and regardless of their background. Just arm everyone and anyone with any weapons they want is always the NRA’s solution to everything.
And it’s a hell of a leap to compare celebrities who can afford private security to wanting to force school teachers to do double duty and carry firearms in our schools. We all know Republicans hate those “union thugs” and want their wages slashed and their unions busted. Now they think they should have to provide armed security for their students as well. And as Lawrence O’Donnell reminded us Friday evening, that armed sheriff`s deputy at Columbine High School years ago didn’t do those students a bit of good.
Fox News host Steve Doocy misrepresented President Obama’s proposal to avoid the possibility of a federal government default on its financial obligations in order to claim that the president has proposed changing the Constitution.
Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed that Congress should pass a law giving the president authority to avoid default by raising the ceiling on how much the federal government can borrow. Under the proposal, the president’s authority would be subject to a vote of disapproval by Congress. Geithner’s proposal was based on an idea originally put forward by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Geithner’s proposal is urgent because the federal government is expected to reach the debt ceiling early in 2013, meaning that if Congress does not act, the federal government will begin defaulting on some of its obligations for the first time in history.
On the December 7 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, Doocy interviewed Republican Sen. John Thune (SD) and opined that it was “good news for the Republicans” that there would soon be a fight between Obama and congressional Republicans over the federal debt ceiling because Republicans would “obviously have the upper hand on that.” Thune responded in part by saying that “what we’re told is the president is even thinking about what he might be able to do to raise the debt ceiling without going through Congress, which would be a huge mistake and ought to be unconstitutional.”
Rather than amend the Constitution or change the way it has been interpreted, Obama has proposed legislation that would amend the current statute that puts a limit on the federal government’s borrowing.
The debt ceiling is merely a provision of law passed by Congress, which can be amended or repealed at any time through ordinary legislation without any change to the Constitution.
H/T: MMFA
Fox’s Stuart Varney hid the fact that the relative tax burden of the richest Americans has decreased as their wealth has skyrocketed to label AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka a “turkey” for saying the wealthy need to start paying their fair share in taxes.
In recent remarks regarding the 2012 presidential election, Trumka said that the election showed that voters sent a message that “we should start making the wealthy” pay their fair share in taxes. Varney responded by saying Trumka deserved to be called a turkey because the union leader supposedly ignored the fact that “the top 1 percent pays 40 percent of all income taxes.”
From the 11.21.2012 edition of FNC’s Fox and Friends:
In fact, the wealthiest Americans have seen their wealth skyrocket in recent years while their tax burden has declined.
Simply put, contrary to Varney’s claim that only a “turkey” would argue that the rich aren’t paying their fair share, income has been piling up on the plates of the wealthy while their tax burden has been carved down to the bone.
h/t: MMFA
