If anyone was wondering how Fox "news" was going to react to the news that Mitch McConnell squelched the reports that the Russians interfered with the presidential election back in September, well, we've got our answer.
Here's how they covered the story on this Saturday's Fox & Friends, with no mention of McConnell's name, but reading straight from the talking points he used prior to the election, where he said that "he would consider any effort by the White House to challenge the Russians publicly an act of partisan politics."
Here's Fox's Garrett Tenney, Pete Hegseth, Clayton Morris and Abby Huntsman doing exactly that and basically accusing the CIA of being politicized under the Obama administration:
HEGSETH: Well, president Obama not willing to accept the election, calling for a full investigation into allegations that Russia hacked and changed the outcome of the election.
HUNSTMAN: But president-elect Donald Trump is not buying that.
HEGSETH: Our own Garrett Tenney live from Washington, D.C. To break it all down for us. Good morning, Garrett.
TENNEY: Good morning y'all. You know, even within the intelligence community, there is still a lot of disagreement exactly over who it was that was hacked and why. But The Washington Post is now reporting that the CIA has concluded in a secret assessment that Russia intervened in the election to help Donald Trump win the race.
The agency shared its conclusions with key senators in a closed door briefing last week, according to the Post, and one key piece of evidence that led them to that conclusion was the findings that the Republican National Committee was also hacked, but never had any of its emails made public. Now, the RNC has consistently said its networks were never compromised, so there was nothing to be leaked.
And throughout the campaign and again yesterday, president-elect Donald Trump has dismissed the intelligence community's findings that Russia is responsible for the cyber attacks. In a statement, his transition team went right after the intelligence community, saying “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The election ended a long time ago in one of the biggest electoral college victories in history. It's now time to move on and make America great again.”
All of this comes after the White House announced yesterday that President Obama has ordered a full review of the hacking that took place in the election, which he wants completed before he leaves office. Republicans are criticizing that move though, saying the White House is simply trying to give some political cover to Hillary Clinton for losing the race, an assertion the administration denies.
WHITE HOUSE SPOKESPERSON: This is not an effort to challenge the outcome of the election. Worry not calling into question the election results, we are taking seriously our responsibility to protect the integrity of those elections.
TENNEY: The White House went on to say that this review will extend beyond this past election to look at cyber attacks on the U.S. political system as a whole and it says it wants to have that report ready for the next administration to be able to take action. Back to y'all.
HUNTSMAN: All right. Thank you, Garrett. Well, we were talking about this earlier this morning. I do think there is a general concern regardless of where you fall politically about hacking and about what Russia can do in terms of getting into our systems and our emails and everything else. This time it was Democrats. But who knows, in four years it could be Republicans. This is something that effects everyone across the board.
MORRIS: Or could be national security. Forget looking at DNC emails or RNC email. Who cares. Looking at national security emails, or looking at CIA itself.
HEGSETH: Well, there are so many dedicated professionals at the CIA and elsewhere, so you never want to impugn their motives. But at the same time, we have seen politicized departments and politicized processes from the Obama administration. So, and it's not as if all the intelligence assessments in the The Washington Post piece, it goes on to point out, that not everyone agrees with these assessments, and there's no direct evidence this was directed by the Kremlin, even though we know they have ten tentacles all over the place, but still, bad no matter what. You don't want them attempting to interfere, and clearly they tried at many levels.
HUNTSMAN: A lot of people just do not want to accept the election results, and so they'll use any opportunity to point fingers, or blame, wherever that is.