Category: FoxNews

Sign the petition: Denounce MAGA GOP's baseless impeachment inquiry against Biden

NEIL CAVUTO: All right. For the better part of six hours, I have been following these hearings, save an hour off to do my Fox Business show earlier today. I don't know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours. Welcome, everybody, I'm Neil Cavuto. I want to put in perspective here, though, and we are going to legally go through all the details, but James Comer, the Oversight Committee chairman, had said that there would be presented a mountain of evidence against Mr. Biden, he was referring to President Biden, but none of the expert witnesses today presented—yet—any proof for impeachment.

You think that's bad? He was just getting started.

Now to be clear, this was not about impeachment; this is about launching an impeachment inquiry. But it is worth pointing out that none of the witnesses today were fact witnesses. That means that none were involved in the investigation into the alleged activities in the first place. What's more, none of the witnesses testified today of direct knowledge of what Republicans have been claiming about Joe Biden.
In other words, that this—the way this was built up, where there's smoke, there would be fire. Again, I'm not a lawyer and I'm going to be talking to some darn smart ones in a moment, but where there's smoke today, we just got a lot more smoke.

We also say that the best they could say now, after this six-plus hours of testimony back and forth, is that they're going to try to get more bank records from Joe Biden and his son, says that they're needed to determine if a crime was committed. Understood. But none of that was presented today, just that they would need those records to further this investigation today, even though this occurs after months of Republican probes that failed to provide anything resembling concrete evidence.

That's Fox News’ initial reaction to Rep. James Comer's absurd and evidence-free "impeachment inquiry," as delivered by Cavuto after the hearing's close. Will Cavuto now get calls from network executives excoriating him? Will ex-host Tucker Carlson try to call in a few remaining network favors to get him fired for inappropriate truth-telling?

Honestly, it's not likely. Sean Hannity and a few of the network’s other most rabidly shameless hosts might give it a go, but there's no polishing this turd. Republicans still seem to be forgetting that at some point, in this tit-for-tat attempt at impeaching Joe Biden in retaliation for the two impeachments of Donald Trump, you do have to come up with some actual evidence for your frothing claims. Even Fox News might cut these turkeys loose at this rate.

Republican impeachment inquiry gets off to a perfect start

Watch AOC perfectly get to the point in sham impeachment hearing

Coming soon: A sham impeachment, brought to you by Fox News

Posted on September 24, 2023 by Dartagnan

Twenty-seven years ago, Fox News made its first appearance on American television screens. In October 1996, it would have seemed foolhardy to assume that this tacky corporate creature—an embarrassing facsimile of actual journalism, patently dedicated to serve as a mouthpiece for the Republican Party—would eventually metastasize into an impermeable, alternative universe for millions of Americans. Few would have guessed that within two decades we’d actually witness the core functions and operations of our government appropriated, coopted, and bastardized simply to promote that network's constant spigot of inflammatory lies and misinformation, even when the very lives of its own viewers were literally put at risk as a result.

That transformation reached its apotheosis during the COVID-19 pandemic, as Fox’s fountain of rank COVID denialism was duly parroted day after day, month after month, by elected Republicans. As the pandemic spread into the so-called “heartland” of America, the bacillus of Fox News proved itself as insidious as the virus itself, with its viewers absorbing and internalizing its preposterous science denial and anti-vaccination rhetoric. This doubtlessly led (as suggested by several studies conducted afterward) to the sickness and premature death of many Americans.

The saddest and most depressing aspect of all this, however, was that no one seemed surprised. By that time, Fox’s tentacles had already infiltrated nearly all of our nation’s institutions, transforming our entire political system with a malignancy that has proved impossible to eradicate. Even now, the remainder of our media seem unwilling to acknowledge the wholesale degradation Fox has inflicted on this nation, its discourse, its politics, and its institutions.

During his entire tenure, Donald Trump huddled with and spoke through his willing vessels at Fox News; the Republican Congress has conducted pointless, wasteful political show trials based on Fox-driven fantasies; and even the conservative federal judiciary began to blatantly regurgitate Fox’s hyperbolic, fact-challenged talking points in its legal opinions. Yet, despite its corrosive influence, the media continues to treat Fox News as simply another legitimate player in the information ecosystem, something to be envied, even emulated, occasionally criticized, but never truly called to account. The first rule about Fox News for the rest of the media, it seems, is that you don’t talk about Fox News.

Now it appears likely the American people are about to witness the consequences of that neglect, in the form of a wholly contrived, factually baseless presidential impeachment, with no purpose other than to satisfy Fox News’ hyperpartisan fever-dream agenda. It remains to be seen, what, if any, response the “reality-based” journalistic community is prepared to give to this coming travesty.

As explained by Matt Gertz, writing for Media Matters, the carnival barkers thinly disguised as journalists on Fox News have been pushing for an impeachment of President Joe Biden since before he was even elected.

The right-wing propaganda network’s stars have long demanded a Biden impeachment as both retaliation and political cover for Donald Trump’s various impeachments and criminal indictments. Since those Fox commentators wield more power within the GOP than most of its putative leaders do, a Biden impeachment inquiry has seemed inevitable, with the only question being what they’d end up backfilling as its rationale. And somehow, they’ve settled on taking a shot with the Hunter Biden minutiae they’ve all spent years feverishly rehashing (but that no one can parse without a PhD in Sean Hannity Studies).

As Gertz reminds us, Fox News “personalities” such as Mark Levin were agitating for the impeachment of the “next Democratic president” long before Biden even secured the nomination. Levin knew he didn’t need to articulate an actual reason for this drastic action to his audience; the plain fact that Trump himself was about to be impeached for acting on Fox News’ unfounded assertions that Biden had somehow corruptly influenced the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor was reason enough. Because Trump’s impeachment was literally the result of a phony narrative that Fox News itself (with the assistance of right-wing dark money groups) had promoted and pushed, it obviously struck far too close to home.

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans

As Gertz himself reported in 2019:

Fox’s role -- and particularly that of Sean Hannity, the network star who also privately advises the president -- was central to every phase of the story. The network was the source of the president’s long-held animus toward Ukraine, the vector of Giuliani’s disinformation campaign, a common former employer of some key figures and a unifying factor of others, and the fountainhead of arguments that Trump and his House Republican allies have used to try to minimize the scandal.

And the impeachment talk at Fox continued to snowball from that point, again, in nearly every circumstance, stemming directly from “reporting” that originated in Fox’s own fetid swamp of fact-challenged propaganda. Fox had relentlessly pushed the Hunter Biden story throughout the run-up to the 2020 election, in a failed effort to help Trump win. But even as November 2020 approached, their hosts were carefully “setting a predicate,” as Gertz puts it, in the event Trump lost. Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery floated in late October the prospect of an immediate Biden impeachment over the amorphous Hunter rabbit hole the network had been hawking for months. As Gertz reports, these sentiments were echoed by Fox showboats Jeanine Pirro and Greg Gutfeld only days before the 2020 election, and reemphasized by Hannity in December 2020—as Trump was allegedly scheming with his cohorts to overturn the election well after it became obvious he’d lost.

In fact, Hannity came up with a remarkable quote (particularly the last sentence).

“What are you going to do if -- you know, all these people that impeached Trump, how do you not impeach if it's Joe Biden one day? How do you not do it? It's a foreign -- it's a family foreign crime syndicate. Got an email provided to the FBI pointing out that Hunter hadn't paid taxes on some of the Burisma payments and that's just the tip of the iceberg, with -- now they're talking about money laundering as well. You know, pretty amazing stuff, I've got to tell you. Amazing times we're looking -- living in. They all have an agenda. You know, the difference between us and them is we're just honest about who we are.”

After Republicans eked out a narrow House majority in 2022, Hannity once again bloviated about impeachment, setting the stage for his most ardent fan, Trump, to begin turning the screws on members of the newly (and narrowly) Republican-led House. As reported by Kristen Holmes and Eric Bradner, writing for CNN, the screws have turned harder as the criminal indictments began to pile up for Trump.

Donald Trump has publicly and privately encouraged House Republicans’ push to impeach President Joe Biden ahead of their potential rematch in 2024, two sources close to the former president said.

Trump has kept close tabs on the matter, the sources said – including speaking by phone with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the House GOP conference chair, about the party’s impeachment strategy shortly after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced on Tuesday that he is calling on his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden.

Gertz notices a pattern here:

The year that followed has been marked by three overlapping trends: repeated indictments of Trump on state and federal charges, fruitless congressional efforts to uncover damning evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s businesses, and demands from Fox for Republicans to retaliate against Democrats for the former, including by turning the latter into fodder for impeachment.

Fox’s Jesse Watters weighed in on June 9, the day Trump was hit with 37 felony counts in the Southern District of Florida, saying that the Republicans should welcome the “distraction” of impeachment. And on Aug. 2, Watters probably revealed more about the Republicans’ nakedly political purposes than he realized.

“[W]ithout the impeachment, you have back-to-back-to-back-to-back Trump trials. The media’s not going to cover anything else. Biden’s going to hide and Trump is going to be criminalized on TV. But if Republicans time this right and follow the evidence where it leads, impeachment is going to run counter to the Trump trials next year.”

Or as Gertz sums it up: ”Rather than picking [a presidential candidate] who isn’t looking at four state and federal trials on scores of charges, they want to tear down his opponent by ginning up a scandal and hoping that the mainstream press fails to make clear what they’re doing.”

The Republican Party’s impeachment efforts against Biden, egged on by Fox News, are without any legitimate basis. They are premised wholly upon a vendetta urged by Trump, who is facing actual, real criminal liability in several actual, real courts of law. The complete absence of any legal justification to pursue impeachment proceedings against this president has even been obliquely acknowledged by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy himself. In reality, what Republicans are pursuing—and what it seems that Americans are going to be forced to witness—is an impeachment by Fox News itself, fraudulently justified by the same lies and fact-free innuendo in which the network habitually traffics.

A network that didn’t consider it necessary to modulate its grievance-driven political rhetoric even when that rhetoric threatened to kill or sicken its own viewers obviously has no compunctions about subverting our constitutional system. Nor would it spare the slightest thought for the personal anguish it will inflict on Biden or his family, who have to watch as their (obviously troubled) son’s name is dragged through the mud by the Republican charlatans who will outdo themselves with pre-packaged, Fox-friendly soundbites. They know that’s what their base voters are conditioned to look for.

But the non-Fox-viewing American public doesn’t have to play along with this cheap and disgusting farce. They can be shown exactly what it is, if the rest of the media—the ones not in thrall to Rupert Lachlan Murdoch’s propaganda network—finally do their jobs. That means doing a lot more than “fact-checking” Republicans and their statements. Fox viewers will never, ever see those fact-checks (and if they did, they would disregard them). This impeachment will mostly be an exercise in Republicans preening for the cameras and making declarative speeches, which will be edited into tight soundbites and run alongside nothing but approving nods and supportive chatter from Fox’s talking heads. And while we can expect Democratic House members to do yeoman’s work exposing this travesty during the hearings themselves, none of their rebuttals will make Fox’s highlight reel.

“Fact-checking” is simply a cop-out. What the media should really do here is explain who is telling the lies, why the lies are being told, and what motivates the lies. Explain how each Republican is following a template laid down by the likes of Hannity and his ilk. Explain who pays for Hannity and his ilk to spread their manure, and where their true interests lie. Explain how every Republican lives in mortal fear of a primary challenger promoted by Trump. Explain how Trump’s situation has influenced this sham impeachment’s timing and presentation, the selection of witnesses, and the things those witnesses will say. Explain who’s not called as a witness by Republicans, and ask why.

Above all, the media must expose this travesty for what it is: a “distraction,” as Fox’s Watters so eloquently put it, from the “back-to-back-to-back-to-back” Trump trials, pending in real criminal courts, before real judges and real jurors, not a group of corrupted, political hacks terrified of getting on the wrong side of Donald Trump.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Republicans ignoring Boebert: ‘Come on’

Posted on September 22, 2023 by Hunter

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a little exasperated with Fox News and with House Republicans after one of the loudest, Rep. Lauren Boebert, was thrown out of a theater production of Beetlejuice after vaping, recording the performance, and fondling her date. That's normally the sort of behavior that would result in a humiliated resignation, but as we all know, Republicans can break basic social norms with abandon.

And it is just so, so tiring. In a TikTok video, she said:

All I gotta say is, I can't go out to lunch in Florida in my free time, not doing anything, just eating outside, and it's wall-to-wall Fox News coverage. And then you have a member of Congress engaging in sexually lewd acts in a public theater—and they got nothing to say.
I danced to [the band] Phoenix once in college, and it was, like, all over the place. But putting on a whole show of their own at Beetlejuice and it's—and there's nothing? I'm just saying be consistent. That's all I'm asking for. Equal treatment. I don't expect it—but come on.

Yes, we all know the same people shrieking over books about crayons or that Anne Frank once wrote "penis" in her diary won’t have a thing to say about a Republican being tossed out of a theater for pawing her date in an audience full of families. Fascism means you get to break rules far in excess of what you'd tolerate from the powerless. That's the whole deal.

And yes, we know it won't change. Democrats can't throw Boebert out of Congress, and Republicans won't have a peep to say about it, but at the least Democrats need to avoid the news channel that's as infamous for brushing off repulsive Republican behaviors as it is for creating faux-scandals when a Democrat goes to lunch.

Conservatives unleash conspiracy theories about Lauren Boebert's lewd date

Senate Republicans offended by gym shorts, less so by public groping

We did it! And it's all thanks to Molech! We're devoting this week's episode of "The Downballot" to giving praise to the dark god himself after New Hampshire Democrat Hal Rafter won a critical special election over Republican Jim Guzofski, the loony toons pastor who once ranted that liberals make "blood sacrifices to their god Molech." Democrats are now just one seat away from erasing the GOP's majority in the state House and should feel good about their chances in the Granite State next year. Republicans, meanwhile, can only stew bitterly that they lack the grassroots fundraising energy provided by Daily Kos, which endorsed Rafter and raised the bulk of his campaign funds via small donations.

Latest arrest puts a big Jan. 6 conspiracy to rest. Who will they blame now?

Posted on September 19, 2023 by Mark Sumner

On Tuesday, former Marine, former wedding venue operator, and current hermit Ray Epps was indicted for his actions during the Jan. 6 riot. This single charge should lay to rest an elaborate conspiracy theory that originated with online supporters of Donald Trump and spread across right-wing media. It should … if conspiracy theories were affected by facts.

Epps, a 61-year-old former president of the Arizona branch of the Oath Keepers militia and adamant supporter of Trump, flew from Arizona to Washington, D.C., in response to Trump’s call for a ‘wild’ time. Videos of Epps on Jan. 5 show him shouting for Trump supporters to take the Capitol. On Jan. 6, he marched toward Congress, urging others to do the same.

When the FBI created a website where it posted photos of individuals being sought for their involvement in the insurgency, Epps’ face was one of the first to appear. But when Epps’ photo was taken down and no charges immediately followed, claims emerged that Epps was secretly a government agent who had infiltrated Trump supporters to entice them into breaking the law. Those claims spread from QAnon to right-wing media and may have reached a peak when Sen. Ted Cruz and then-host Tucker Carlson parroted the claim on Fox News.

Carlson’s embrace of the theory, which he repeated on multiple occasions, was enough to generate waves of harassment against Epps from his fellow Trump supporters. He and his wife were forced to sell their wedding-venue business in Arizona and live “in hiding” at a trailer somewhere in Utah. In an interview with People, Epps’ attorney said the couple “received a number of credible and serious death threats, which become worse each time someone on Fox or Tucker Carlson talk about Ray.”

Epps became such a fixture of the right-wing conspiracy landscape that Republican politicians weren’t just mentioning him on Carlson’s show. They were yelling about him in a House hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“I want to turn my attention now to this fella, this character, Mr. Ray Epps,” said Texas Republican Rep. Troy Nehls. “We’ve all heard of him. We’ve heard of Mr. Ray Epps. He was number 16 on your FBI most-wanted list. He was encouraging people the night prior and the day to go into the Capitol. And Mr. Ray Epps can be seen at the first breach of Capitol grounds at approximately 12:50 p.m.”

Epps was never on the FBI’s most-wanted list. When it comes to the FBI’s Jan. 6 website, Epps’ photo was removed because he reached out and turned himself in after seeing that the FBI was looking for him. Following that first contact, Epps was told he would likely face charges.

But when Wray refused to say that Epps would be arrested, Nehls responded angrily. “It appears to me you are protecting this guy! I strongly recommend you get your house back in order!”

In July, Epps filed a lawsuit against Fox News and Carlson accusing them of defamation. The lawsuit was filed in the same Delaware court where Fox News ended a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems by reaching a last-minute agreement to pay a $787.5 million settlement. Not long after that settlement, Fox News fired Carlson. But that move didn’t come in time to avoid another $12 million that Fox paid in June to settle a hostile workplace lawsuit by a former employee on Carlson’s show.

Carlson is truly the gift that keeps on giving.

In August, Fox News moved to dismiss Epps’ lawsuit, with a claim that Carlson painting Epps at the center of a fantastical conspiracy theory was “exactly what the First Amendment protects.” According to the Fox News motion, Carlson’s statements were “protected opinions, not assertions of fact.” That motion has not yet been decided. Fox News attorneys asked for a hearing on the motion in a court appearance on Monday afternoon.

While it’s safe to say that statements of fact were hard to find on Carlson’s show—and remain so on the programs of other Fox News pundits—it’s hard to see how viewers were supposed to get that just-an-opinion vibe from Carlson bringing up Epps in nearly 20 different episodes, in which he told his audience there was “no rational explanation” for the failure to charge Epps other than him being a federal agent.

In the indictment filed on Monday, Epps faces a single charge of engaging in “disorderly and disruptive conduct” in a restricted area with “intent to impede and disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business.” He is not known to have entered the Capitol, and no evidence has emerged that he assaulted the police or of any act of vandalism. He was one of several people photographed holding a very large Trump sign which was thrust toward the police line, but he hasn’t been charged with an offense connected to that action. One other man who was charged for being one of those holding the sign was found guilty on nine other counts, but acquitted for his part in holding the sign.

The method in which Epps was charged suggested he had already reached an agreement for a plea. NBC News has reported that Epps will enter his plea over a Zoom call on Wednesday afternoon.

The charges against Epps make him one of just a handful of people to be charged in relation to the insurgency who did not enter the Capitol or engage violently with the police. His wait for this charge is far from exceptional. Over 200 defendants have been charged in the past year, with 42 sentenced since July. There are still many more cases to come. The FBI seems to have simply prioritized those who entered the Capitol, assaulted the police, and engaged in violent conspiracies.

But don’t expect any of that to make it safe for Epps to leave his trailer. Conspiracy theories can always adapt to ignore facts. And don’t be surprised if Republicans in Congress continue to use Epps in their tirades. Unlike Fox News, the speech and debate clause of the Constitution is always there so they can defame and endanger anyone—as the founders intended.

Epps’ actions on Jan. 5 and 6, his ardent support for Trump, and most of all his involvement with the Oath Keepers show that he is anything but a model citizen. And maybe it’s only fitting that the MAGA crowd should turn on one of their own. But in the end, the conspiracy against Epps isn’t about Epps, or even the FBI. It’s about what’s most important to Trump supporters: avoiding any responsibility for their own actions.

Kerry talks with Drew Linzer, director of the online polling company Civiqs. Drew tells us what the polls say about voters’ feelings toward President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and what the results would be if the two men were to, say … run against each other for president in 2024. Oh yeah, Drew polled to find out who thinks Donald Trump is guilty of the crimes he’s been indicted for, and whether or not he should see the inside of a jail cell.

Watch Republican congressman tie himself in knots presenting Biden ‘evidence’ on Fox

Posted on September 15, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

The far-right wing of the Republican Party has compelled House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to call for an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. The biggest problem with this move? After nine months of Republican-led House committee investigations into the president and his son Hunter, the GOP has come up with bupkis.

Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo took time away from purposefully misinforming the public about Trump’s false election-fraud claims to discuss the impeachment inquiry into President Biden. Her guest was Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith. In a clip tweeted by journalist Aaron Rupar, Bartiromo asks Smith what he thinks is “the most damning evidence that you all have to suggest bribery.” She proceeds to reiterate some vague circumstantial evidence as well as some completely unsubstantiated claims made using big financial numbers.

And Smith responds, “Those are all great questions that we need answers to.”

How about that for mental jujitsu?

Gone are the days when Smith was calling the evidence-based impeachment of former President Donald Trump “outrageous attacks from the liberal mob majority that consistently puts politics before people.” He said that Trump’s “impeachment circus should have never been started” and was “a complete disgrace to our country,” but when it comes to Republicans starting their own “circus,” he has no qualms whatsoever.

Here are a couple more times Republicans had a chance to offer up real evidence:

Rep. James Comer has spent most of the Biden administration’s time in office running an investigation into the Biden family—and he’s turned up nothing.

And here’s Florida man Matt Gaetz, who represents the Sunshine State’s 1st Congressional District, arguing that the non-evidence he has is, actually, indeed evidence. You just have to look at it the right(-wing) way.

Sign the petition: No to shutdowns, no to Biden impeachment, no to Republicans

Impeachment inquiry reveals pathetic truth about 'what MAGA is fighting for'

Another day, another outright hoax promoted on Fox News

Posted on August 29, 2023 by Hunter

Fox "News" is a propaganda outfit intended to manipulate public opinion by bending the "news" to preferentially be whatever the Republican hard right would most like it to be. Sometimes this means reporting real news with a conservative edge to it; sometimes it means peddling hoaxes, often in tacit coordination with the Republicans who invented them to begin with. We're supposed to believe that if Fox only promotes a certain percentage of fake stories, they still retain legitimacy as a "real" news outlet, but there's never a number put to that. Can a legitimate news outlet run one completely made-up story a day and retain legitimacy? Is it fine if the hoaxes run mostly during prime-time hours? Can a network promote $790 million worth of fake news, but not $795 million?

Do tell, American pundit corps, because the rest of us remain mystified.

Over the weekend, Fox News showed us how they operate—again—with nearly three hours of gaudy coverage of a straight-up news hoax. This one was a throwback to the specific Rudy Giuliani-spread anti-Ukraine, anti-Biden hoaxes that got Donald Trump impeached when Trump attempted to solicit support for the hoax from the Ukrainian government in exchange for an end to his holdup of congressionally mandated military aid to the country.

Remember discredited former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin, the man ousted from the government after international pressure over what was seen as Shokin's, ahem, lackluster interest in fighting Ukrainian corruption? He's back, thanks to Fox News bobblehead Brian Kilmeade.

That it was left to one of the glassy-eyed “Fox & Friends” hosts to interview the disgraced Shokin should tell you just how little appetite there was among Fox’s "legitimate" news team to appear on camera with the buffoon; Kilmeade certainly has no reputation for "journalism" that could be tarnished. This is the conspiracy that resulted in the complete dismantling of conservative faux-journalist John Solomon's waning career, after all, and there's not many media figures outside the “Fox & Friends” lineup who want to be the next John Solomon.

The media insistence on propping Fox News back up again is getting so, so tedious

In the interview, Shokin regurgitated the same conspiracy theory that Giuliani attempted to import to the United States the moment it appeared that Joe Biden would be Trump's presidential opponent: the notion that he was the victim of a Biden plot to oust him when, in fact, his removal was spurred by an international campaign and by official United States government condemnation of his failures. Giuliani sought to boost the theory with the help of pro-Russian (read: treasonous) Ukrainian oligarchs that Ukraine's post-Shokin anticorruption efforts had targeted. That not a shred of this theory turned out to be true—and a whole lot of it was manufactured outright—was hardly a surprise.

That Trump himself would soon attach himself to the hoax, using the powers of his office to demand the Ukrainian government announce they were "investigating" the false charges, was ... also not a surprise.

Media Matters tallies up the Fox promotion of Shokin's completely hoax-premised claims against Biden, and between "teasing, airing, and analyzing" the interview it amounted to "at least 50 segments across 19 different programs." That's a heavy media push, and it coincides with a new House Republican push to mount an impeachment trial against Biden to act as a counternarrative to Trump potentially landing his ass in a prison cell on a host of federal and state charges.

Why would Fox News be resurrecting a Giuliani-boosted hoax immediately after Giuliani himself has been indicted for attempting to corruptly undermine an American election? What's the "news" value in rerunning one of his most notorious anti-Biden campaign scams?

There isn't any, as the interview itself made clear. But it allowed conspiracy-minded Fox News hosts to run the footage as if the claims were new, and to speculate on whether House Republicans would use Shokin's claims to help justify a Biden impeachment. That is of tremendous use to Republicans, even if Shokin himself remains an utterly discredited fraud-promoting huckster.

That brings us back to our original question, then. What percentage of the Fox News day can be booked with actual, known hoax-pushers before the "journalism" side of the business can be discredited? We've been told repeatedly by other media figures that the "news" side of Fox News is on the up-and-up, no matter how many times their anchors make partisan asses of themselves during "real news" hours. It's up to those media figures, then, to share a number with us. For CNN, for NBC, for The Washington Post, for The New York Times: What percentage of completely fake "news" can your journalism include, per segment or per page, and still retain its “real news” label?

Do tell. The rest of us simply don't seem to understand "journalism" with enough nuance to put some numbers to these things, so stop beating around the bush and just give us your answers, straight up. How many intentional hoaxes are "real" news outlets allowed to promote?

Faux News strikes again: Hannity promotes verifiable Biden hoax

Fox News keeps playing journalists, and journalists keep letting them

Joe Biden reminds Fox News’ Peter Doocy that he’s a lousy reporter

Posted on August 10, 2023 by Walter Einenkel

On Thursday morning, “Fox & Friends,” a show featuring a handful of people you would be shamefaced to call your “friends,” ran with a video of an exchange between President Joe Biden and Fox News’ nepo-baby reporter Peter Doocy. In the video, Doocy asks the president, “There’s this testimony now, where one of your former business associates is claiming that you were on speaker phone a lot with them, talking business? Is that … wha–” at which point Biden cuts him off, saying, “I never talked business with anybody, and I knew you’d have a lousy question.”

Doocy feigns surprise at being called full of shit, but frankly, Biden was being nice. It was a lot worse than a “lousy” question. Doocy asks why it is a “lousy” question, and Biden rightfully answers, “Because it’s not true.”

Sign if you agree: Fox News is a waste of your brain cells.

Doocy is manipulating the well publicized and fully available testimony of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer. He’s posing a question that asserts a falsehood. Archer very specifically testified that Biden never under any circumstances—even tangentially—discussed business with his son Hunter, or with Hunter’s associates.

But if you are stuck in the moral spitoon that is the right-wing media world, you’d think that Doocy’s question and its pathological false premise are somehow fact-based. Doocy and his conservative uniform are used as some kind of proof that this lie has been researched. It is the reason Republicans wanted Archer’s testimony done away from the cameras: It’s easier to lie about what someone said when your audience is unwilling to read.

There’s one response that I think sums Doocy up. Mr. President, would you do the honors?

Forever and always: pic.twitter.com/DPcXg3cQAb
— Lucille Bluth’s Martini (@justdrew404) August 10, 2023

Jen Psaki, sick and tired of transphobic BS, stumps Doocy with a question of her own

Peter Doocy tries to bring the War on Christmas into White House press briefing—it doesn’t go well

Jen Psaki feeds Peter Doocy crow for Thanksgiving after he asks about Biden's holiday plans

Fox News says House GOP says it has proof of Biden corruption

Posted on August 9, 2023 by Laura Clawson

House Republicans remain in a frenzy of insinuations, half-truths, and outright lies about President Joe Biden’s connection to his son Hunter’s business dealings, and Fox News is, as always, there on the spot to promote the claims. This is all part of the Republicans’ push to impeach the president even though they have turned up no evidence that he has engaged in wrongdoing. Impeachment has been the plan all along, and the strategic distraction is doubly urgent now that Donald Trump is facing so many federal criminal charges.

Let’s take a look at how Fox News uses smoke and mirrors to make it sound like the Bidens’ accusers have far more evidence than they do. Here’s the latest bombshell report from the “news” network. (Unless otherwise indicated, the quotes come from various Fox News personalities.)

“A new set of bank records linked to the Bidens ...” Linked? How are they linked? To the Bidens? Which Bidens?

“Those who contributed to Hunter’s ventures were then seemingly rewarded with access to his father.” Seemingly? The Fox News chyron here reads, “GOP says it has proof of $20M sent to Bidens,” but then we get “seemingly.” Hmm.

“All that flies in the face, Dana, of what the president and his staff have been saying on repeat.” No it doesn’t, unless you have more than “linked to” Bidens other than Joe and “seemingly.” So far, more than 45 seconds into the clip, we have absolutely no solid information, just insinuation.

“The question is, what was Hunter Biden doing to earn access to this money.” Asked and answered, guys: He had the last name Biden and the ability to create what his business partner Devon Archer testified to the House was the “illusion” of access, putting his father on speaker phone when he was with business associates but not talking about business. It’s not laudatory or inspirational, but it is what it is, and it is not Joe Biden being involved in corruption in any way.

“Republicans on the House Oversight Committee say the new records detail a pay-to-play scheme, proof of $20 million sent to the Bidens from foreign business sources.” Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have said a lot of things, many of them verifiably false. They are claiming here to have evidence of the pay, but what’s the play that’s being paid for? And again, “the Bidens” is not the president—if they thought they had him here, they’d be saying it.

“The committee says Russian, Ukrainian, and Kazakh oligarchs funneled money to companies tied to Hunter Biden. A Russian billionaire sent $3.5 million to a shell company associated with Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer.” Whoa, whoa, whoa, we’ve gone from $20 million to the Bidens to money going to companies “tied to” Hunter Biden in the sense that they are “associated with” Devon Archer? That’s a flimsy connection to Hunter, let alone his father.

“Then-Vice President Biden dined with the billionaire in Washington.” According to Archer’s testimony, Joe Biden attended two dinners, one in 2014 and one in 2015, that included some of Hunter’s business associates. “I believe the first one was, like, a birthday dinner, and then the second was ‑‑ I think we were supposed to talk about the World Food Programme,” Archer said. So over the course of more than a year, Joe Biden went to a birthday dinner for his son and another dinner to talk about the World Food Programme, and did not control the guest list at either dinner. Got it.

“Another example has Ukrainian money going to Archer and Hunter Biden. Later, Burisma put Hunter Biden on the board.” 1.) Does money that went to Archer count in the previously mentioned $20 million to “the Bidens?” 2.) I think it’s well established that Hunter Biden was on the board of energy company Burisma. We all know that because of Trump’s efforts to extort Ukraine into a sham investigation of Joe Biden and because of Trump’s resulting impeachment.

Next we see House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer alleging that, “The process involved a foreign country or foreign national wiring money to a fake company. Then the fake company would then turn around and wire the money to the Biden family members. They did this to hide the source of the revenue because they weren’t supposed to get money from many of these countries.”

“Republicans are trying to draw a line from these payments to the president,” the Fox News guy chimed in. Republicans have been investigating this for the better part of a year and they are still trying to draw a line, any line, to the president.

Now to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy: “This isn’t about Hunter Biden. This is about paying to play for the Biden family. Because the money goes to nine different members, through shell companies, much like the informant said.” So, again, not Joe? It’s not about Hunter Biden, McCarthy says, but he apparently doesn’t feel he can make any direct allegations about Joe Biden.

Back to the Fox News talking head: “The committee says a Kazakh oligarch transferred $142,000 to Hunter Biden for a sports car. Democrats contend there’s no wrongdoing by the president.” Look, I think we can agree that Hunter Biden’s business dealings have sucked. But once again Fox News used a denial of wrongdoing by the president to substitute for any direct allegation that the president engaged in wrongdoing. “The son did this not-great thing. The father denied wrongdoing on his own part.” How are those things linked, except by a desperate desire to mention the father while lacking any concrete allegation to make against him?

“Some Republicans talk impeachment. The GOP says this is just not pay to play but pay to dine, and drive.” Again, what’s the “play” part here? Right now, Republicans have a lot of evidence that Hunter Biden got paid—although even there, they seem to be trying to pin money on Hunter that really went to Devon Archer. They don’t have any evidence that anyone got anything in exchange for their money. They got to hear Joe Biden’s voice on a speaker phone not talking about business, or see him at his son’s birthday dinner. Republicans have claimed that Hunter got Joe to push for the ouster of Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin because he was investigating Burisma—but the reality is that Shokin was not actively investigating Burisma at the time he was forced out, and Joe Biden was one of a chorus of world leaders involved in a concerted effort to get rid of a corrupt prosecutor. So the closest thing to a concrete claim of Joe Biden being on the “play” end of a “pay to play” scheme with his son turns out to be false on multiple grounds.

If Republicans had anything on Joe Biden, we’d know about it. They don’t. And, as Marcy Wheeler points out, all of this screaming about $20 million to Hunter and his business associates is happening when we know that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner parlayed his time as a White House adviser into $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. Jared had an official White House role. Hunter never has. Jared delivered for Saudi Arabia from his White House perch. Hunter has never been in a position to do that for his benefactors and there’s no evidence his father did it for him. Jared got $2 billion. Hunter got some unknown slice of $20 million.

Republicans were desperate to impeach President Biden before they ever took control of the House, but their desperation has increased as Trump’s legal jeopardy has become more apparent. They’re looking to impeach Biden in part so they can claim that Trump’s prosecution on dozens of federal criminal charges is some kind of flimsy distraction. In reality, of course, they are the ones trying to cook up a distraction.

McCarthy tells Hannity that Biden investigation is ‘rising to the level of impeachment inquiry’

Posted on July 25, 2023 (Updated July 25, 2023) by Joan McCarter

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is cementing the narrative that he will tell anyone whatever it is they want to hear. Whether or not he can deliver is a different story. McCarthy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity what every Fox viewer wants to hear: He’ll get vengeance for the Donald Trump impeachments by initiating an impeachment inquiry against Joe Biden.

“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. But Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy said Monday.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Monday night said the House's investigation into the Bidens is "rising to the level of impeachment inquiry." pic.twitter.com/uMFXWA9JSj
— The Recount (@therecount) July 25, 2023

Revenge for twice-impeached Donald Trump. That’s what this is really about, not whether anyone believes President Joe Biden had anything to do with Hunter Biden’s leaked dick pics or whatever it is that House Republicans are “investigating.” McCarthy, however, pretended to Hannity that all of this is a very real scandal rather than the fever dream of Rudy Giuliani.

The “information” McCarthy is referring to, as Mark Sumner wrote last week, consists of: “Seventeen audio tapes that don’t exist; One WhatsApp message that’s a fake; One “informant” who has been dead for over a decade; One “informant” who is on the run from international authorities after skipping bail; One disagreement by a disgruntled IRS employee who thought he deserved a promotion.”

But sure, go ahead and do an impeachment. The government is two months—and just 16 legislative work days—away from running out of funding. How can the American people expect the Republican House to do the work of governing when they have this Donald Trump agenda of revenge to carry out?

Is anyone who doesn’t watch Fox News or exist on a right-wing media diet really clamoring for the impeachment of Joe Biden? Not even close. CNN’s Bakari Sellers sums up what the rest of American is wondering: WTF? “I am not sure where Joe Biden falls in any of this,” Sellers said Tuesday morning. “I think most of America is like, what are we doing? Are you impeaching Hunter Biden? That appears to be decently asinine.”

Kevin McCarthy made another stupid promise that's coming back to bite him

Watch AOC let loose on Clarence Thomas on ‘The Daily Show’

Posted on April 18, 2023 (Updated April 19, 2023) by Walter Einenkel

This week, longtime “The Daily Show” correspondent Jordan Klepper is taking his turn in the guest host seat. He kicked the week off with a bang, scoring an interview with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her home turf of New York City.

And while the interview began as a conversation about violence and social services in America, it ended up touching on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ ethics failures, the fight for reproductive rights, and Donald Trump being the only person who is crying for Donald Trump.

After Klepper joked about a theoretical Beyonce Knowles collecting Third Reich memorabilia, Ocasio-Cortez brought the interview back on track and succinctly drilled down to the bottom line:

“Supreme Court justices are required, if they are receiving money from people—they shouldn't even be receiving money from people. This is why we pay salaries to public servants. And if they want to live that kind of lifestyle, then they can resign from the court. They can retire.

Before Klepper ended the interview, he brought up the orange elephant in the room. Did Ocasio-Cortez think people “were crying,” as Trump claimed, during his recent arraignment on charges of falsifying business records?

“Maybe George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene were, but not me,” Ocasio-Cortez said. She went on to say that Trump’s indictment is a symbol of the deep inequalities in our justice system, as she watches “people get treated far worse for doing far less” than Trump. “If you hurt one person, you get ten years in prison. But if you hurt millions of people, you get your name on a building.”

You can watch the whole interview below, as well as read a transcript of the interview.

The Clarence Thomas scandal keeps growing

Clarence Thomas’ lavish vacation getaways are so corrupt, even Republicans think they're bogus

Justice Clarence Thomas has reported up to $750,000 in income from a company that doesn't exist

Transcript:

Jordan Klepper: I considered going into the medical profession. I thought I could play a handsome doctor on TV. Didn't pan out. While we were on the subject of national embarrassment, I had to ask the congresswoman about Clarence Thomas and his BFF Nazi, swag collector, Harlan Crow. I want to talk a little bit about Clarence Thomas. You've said you would even draft articles of impeachment for the things that he's done. Has there been any quid pro quo? And I said quid pro quo, partially because it took all that effort to learn what quid pro quo meant back in the Ukraine days, and it feels apropos of now. And I don't think I used apropos correctly.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think that quid pro quo is this bar that doesn't even need to be met. The justice is required by law to disclose something like that. And he hasn't been.

Jordan Klepper: Can you empathize, though? If Beyoncé came through here, wanted to take you on a sweet vacation, wouldn't you say, “Yes.” And let her show you her Nazi memorabilia.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Tell someone about it. But hey, don't! Don't put Bey's name on that.

Jordan Klepper: I'm not saying she has. I'm saying if she invested in Nazi memorabilia to show that she hates Nazi memorabilia, she'd want to show it off.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: And that whole thing is just, I mean, bizarre. You also don't keep the linens around …

Jordan Klepper:--All the Nazi linens?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Who does that?

Jordan Klepper: Don't you think if you had $1,000,000,000 and you bought everything, you'd probably eventually get to Nazi linens?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: This is the distraction of that whole issue.

Jordan Klepper: You're right. We're just focused on that as opposed to all the money that's going over to Clarence Thomas. Although if you're a billionaire, can't billionaires have friends?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: They can. Supreme Court justices are required, if they are receiving money from people—they shouldn't even be receiving money from people. This is why we pay salaries to public servants. And if they want to live that kind of lifestyle, then they can resign from the court. They can retire.

Jordan Klepper: Now I want to talk about the court. It's looking as if the Supreme Court is going to rule on some of the conflicting rulings around mifepristone. Who do you think is going to write the final decision that takes away these vital rights from women? Is it going to be the guy who cried over beer or was it going to be the buddy with the Nazi memorabilia guy?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: You know, my hope is that they—we do not get to that point. But we also have to face the reality that the Supreme Court has chosen to give up huge swaths of their own legitimacy. Chief Justice Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, the Republican Party: In them giving up trying to take seriously the legitimacy, the standards, the integrity of the court, they have given up a very large degree of their authority.

Jordan Klepper: The new news in Florida this week is the six-week abortion ban. How do women approach that or fight back against something like that that's happening in Florida?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Of course, there's the standard, like, vote and mobilize. But I'm going to put that aside for a second. We do not have to accept tyranny, and this is a form of tyranny. It is a form of violence. Women will die. People will die because of this decision. And it will be, by and large, the men who signed these laws that are killing the women that will die by them.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: And we have a responsibility to help one another, whether that is supporting organizations that mail mifepristone, which has significantly reduced risk, certainly safer than medications like Viagra. But ultimately, we cannot continue to accept people in power who will abuse others for their own gain.

Jordan Klepper: Indictment week was last week. It might also be a month from now, too. We could have a lot of indictment weeks. How do you think New Yorkers treated former President Donald Trump?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: I think they treated him like a Florida man. He don't belong to us no mo’, okay? You're not from Queens anymore. He's a citizen of Mar-a-Lago at this point.

Jordan Klepper: And you said New Yorkers treated him as such?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yeah. Why wouldn't we?

Jordan Klepper: Do you think people were weeping when he was booked, as he claims?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Maybe George Santos and Marjorie Taylor Greene were, but not me. Take it back to LaGuardia.

Jordan Klepper: Take it back to LaGuardia, which is in your district?

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Yes, it's in my district. And so is Rikers. And so we have, I have to go in every single day watching people get treated far worse for doing far less and then, you know, it's like this red carpet that gets rolled out. I mean, if you hurt one person, you get ten years in prison. But if you hurt millions of people, you get your name on a building.

Jordan Klepper: Congresswoman, thanks for talking with us.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: Thanks for having me.

On today’s episode, Markos and Kerry are joined by a friend of the podcast, Democratic political strategist Simon Rosenberg. Rosenberg was one of the few outsiders who, like Daily Kos, kept telling the world that nothing supported the idea of a red wave. Simon and the crew break down his strategy for Democratic candidates to achieve a 55% popular vote in all elections—a number that a few years ago would have seemed unattainable, but now feels within reach.