Fox News followed up Sean Hannity’s disgraceful and misinforming interview with Donald Trump Wednesday night – not by correcting Trump’s dangerous falsehoods about the coronavirus (COVID-19), but by having “straight news” anchor Shannon Bream team up with a guest to suggest they were accurate.
As Media Matters nicely summed up, “Bream portrayed Trump’s remarks to Hannity as a rebuke of mainstream media. She then interviewed Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), who downplayed the virus.”
Bream began by suggesting that criticisms of Trump’s response are illegitimate and only borne out of hatred for Dear Leader. She highlighted some of the (non-Fox) headlines and played Trump’s response boasting about how he “closed the borders against the advice of a lot of people and it turned out to be a very wise decision.”
Then Bream brought on Republican Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN). You may recall that last week, we caught Braun covering up Trump’s coronavirus ineptitude by making irrelevant attacks on Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY).
Not surprisingly, Braun pulled the same ploy again Wednesday night. When asked, “Are some of these critiques valid?” he talked about being at a committee meeting with “experts in the administration” and then quickly said, “Chuck Schumer, I don’t think was there. I think he was at the microphone or either on the floor talking about it.”
Bream said nothing at this obvious attempt to distract.
So Braun continued to avoid the question by talking about the “number of deaths from the common flu – millions of cases.”
Braun moved on to call the criticism “emblematic of impeachment” (a distraction he also used last week), still without challenge or interruption from Bream. Laughably, Braun said, “When you’ve got a weak case, you don’t talk about the merits, you try to sensationalize it or distort it or do something that’s gonna take the attention off the real information.” Ya think?
Still avoiding the question, Braun went on to say that the coronavirus is not impacting young people – as if the deaths of older people is no biggie.
Bream nodded silently, even as Braun went on to claim, “We could not be more alert to it and more well prepared, simply due to the agencies and the infrastructure we got in place.”
FACT CHECK: A Foreign Policy article called “Trump Has Sabotaged America’s Coronavirus Response” explains that that is not the case because Trump has destroyed a chain of command.
But Bream never questioned a word. She didn’t even ask for specifics. Instead, she made her own effort to suggest the criticism of Trump is unwarranted because of an AP fact check on Democratic criticisms of Trump’s readiness. But she left out the part in which the article noted that closing the borders is not the way to address an outbreak!
Instead, Bream cited a Washington Post column urging Democrats to pounce on Trump’s missteps. It was a clear suggestion that the column somehow proves that all criticism of Trump is just political and therefore, she and Braun were absolved of any responsibility to question Dear Leader.
Braun reiterated what a great job Trump is doing without any follow-up questioning from Bream.
Then Braun went back to attacking Schumer.
You can watch the snow job – with Bream helping to shovel the snow – above, from the March 4, 2020 Fox News @ Night.
Posted with permission from News Hounds.
