For anyone who was wondering how Trump's BFFs on the Curvy Couch were going to handle the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe one day before he was due to retire, here you go.
Despite the fact that their network and their allies on the right have been the ones leading the way demanding a purge of anyone in the FBI or Justice Department that they perceive to be a threat to Dear Leader, the hosts of Fox & Friends and guest Geraldo Rivera did their best to distance Trump from the firing and pretend that the constant pressure he was putting on Jeff Sessions had absolutely nothing to do with it.
After reading their report on Sessions firing McCabe, Ed Henry immediately went after other media outlets for their reporting: " You have all kinds of people in the media this morning saying Donald Trump fired McCabe, when in fact it was this non-partisan independent group at the FBI that said he should be fired."
Geraldo Rivera responded by saying that while what Henry said was “all true,” it “was still tacky and it smacks of the Saturday Bight Massacre during the Nixon days. I don't like the way it came down.” Geraldo worried that the firing of McCabe at ten o'clock at night “was harsh and spite full and it has that vibe to me that, you know, this was unnecessary,” but then went onto say he thought McCabe was in some real criminal jeopardy for lying to investigators.
Pete Hegseth asked Geraldo why he thought it was “draconian” to fire McCabe, and Rivera pointed out that he was going to “retire tomorrow and has “been on the bureau for twenty one years” and said he'd wager Hegseth the amount of McCabe's pension that McCabe would ultimately get his pension because “the civil service rules are so pro-worker” even though they “stuck McCabe in the tushy.” Rivera said his real “concern” was for “his friend” Trump because this “makes him look churlish and immature.”
Cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy responded immediately with their latest talking point defending Trump that Henry led things off with which is that Trump isn't the one that fired McCabe, “the FBI did.”
After reading McCabe's statement going after Trump for his firing and for his war on the FBI and Mueller's investigation, and Campos-Duffy again pretended that this had nothing whatsoever to do with Trump's constant demands that McCabe be fired and that he has no control over “civil servants” like Jeff Sessions.
Rivera went onto call McCabe a “Democratic mole within the FBI from the get go” and opined that Trump has now made an enemy of him, and that because he's angry and bitter over the firing, McCabe is now going to say that Trump obstructed justice in Russiagate when he fired James Comey, and that “we have now set the stage for an ugly, ugly bar fight here with broken glass and people playing dirty."
The hosts also read John Brennan's scathing statement about the firing above, and Rivera admitted this isn't the way the matter shouldn't have been handled and that if they'd gone after him criminally after he retired, he still would have lost his pension, but that didn't stop his cheerleaders on Fox from continuing to defend Trump, attack the rest of the media for their coverage of the firing, and to carry water for Nunes' farce of a House Intelligence Committee “investigation” by claiming it proved there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians.
Fox may have gotten a heads up on the firing, since they accidentally published a draft report hours before he was actually fired. I'm sure they were sent a copy of administration talking points as well, which they dutifully read off in the segment above.
Don't expect any consistency from them though. They'll twist in the wind and change their story whenever Trump does.
