Today, despite the multiple fraud and corruption convictions of Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, and Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, Fox News host Greg Gutfeld suggested that the really important news of the day was the arrest of an undocumented immigrant for the murder of missing student Mollie Tibbetts.
Fox’s The Five show addressed all three news items this afternoon. Guest Bret Baier clearly thought Cohen’s guilty plea about violating campaign finance law, “at the direction” of Trump was the most potentially significant and the most damaging to him. It meant, Baier said, that Cohen is “essentially” cooperating with the Mueller probe “and we don’t know how far he may – in addition to that – provide any additional information from his time in the inner circle in Trump world.”
Cohost Dana Perino helpfully suggested that Fan-in-Chief Trump should focus on the arrest of the “illegal immigrant” in the Tibbetts case. And, surprise! That just happened to be the top story on FoxNews.com as I was writing this.
PERINO: To me, thinking about the fact that the Mueller [sic] thing’s a little bit complicated, the Cohen thing is interesting and it is explosive, no doubt, but if you are out there in America and you are watching this and you’re thinking what do we really care about right now? I think the president will probably be talking a lot about that.
“Sure, from a political standpoint,” Baier agreed. He predicted Trump would talk about that as well as his new coal proposal (to make pollution great again!) and “probably not gonna not touch any of this” during his rally tonight.
Baier also cautioned that the issue, especially the “very explosive” news about Cohen, cannot be waived off or ignored. “Over the next 24 hours, there will have to be some response from the administration, from the Trump lawyers,” Baier warned.
But leave it to Gutfeld to put the ass in asinine (again) by suggesting that immigration is more important than a shocking level of corruption in Trump’s “best people.”
GUTFELD: I think that right now, Trump’s main argument has now just been backed up by a very ugly reality and I can’t see how that is – that when you stack that up against these other tax evasions and guilty pleas – for an average American, [the Tibbetts arrest] resonates and I think it’s gonna become a bigger deal as we get closer and closer – when we talk about this stuff, it’s actually – it’s a practical, real world issue. It’s not about these two men who most Americans, you know, know their names, maybe.
Baier smacked that down. Noting that former national security adviser Michael Flynn’s sentencing was just pushed back (signifying further developments) and that the sentencing of campaign adviser George Papadopoulos is coming up - on top of today’s events, which are still ongoing, Baier said, “You have a confluence of things that are happening at least tangentially to Mueller that seems like it’s coming to a head.” He added, “It is going to be a big thing if there is a direct tie, and Cohen can make it, between President Trump, these payments and paying off these women before the election.”
Gutfeld is not a Trump lover. So when former Fox analyst Ralph Peters referred to some of his Trump-shilling ex-colleagues as “prostitutes,” Gutfeld must surely have made the grade.
Watch Fox hosts try to dismiss Trump’s culture of corruption above, from the August 21, 2018 The Five.
Originally published at Newshounds.us
Karoli adds: Fox News went with this theme all Tuesday night. Never mind that two of Trump's closest aides succumbed to Magic Number 8 and climbed on the guilty train, because there was a murder in Iowa of a young college girl at the hands of a man who also happened to be an undocumented immigrant.
Unfortunately, Fox News failed to tell their viewers that said immigrant was a long-term (4 years) employee of a Republican farmer active in Republican politics who lost a narrow primary race for agriculture secretary. Read all about it here.
Finally, I have to wonder why it is that Fox News is lit up about this murder and not the murders of a young pregnant mother and her children in Colorado at the hands of her white husband. Oh, wait.
