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There are days where watching Fox News is similar to being thrust into a bad horror movie halfway through. You sort of understand who the monsters are after a few minutes and then something happens so utterly dissonant and incredible that the mood is broken and the viewer left wondering what the heck just happened.
So it is with Fox News when they pimp really stupid things like the idea of canning Geithner and replacing him with Donald Trump. Ailes must have been in la-la land when he dreamed this meme up. But dream, he did.
It started with Huckabee over the weekend...
[h/t Heather]
And now they're doubling down and starting the drumbeat, hoping it catches on. Perhaps it might behoove them to think about what the Treasury Secretary does. It's a little bit more than simply accounting for the national debt, after all. I'm certain I wouldn't want Donald Trump anywhere near the Medicare or Social Security trust funds. I'm also certain it wouldn't happen in my lifetime, so what is their point, exactly? They sort of try to make one.
Via Media Matters:
Huckabee: "Bringing Donald Trump In Is A Real Optical Game-Changer." On the August 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy asked Huckabee, "You have got what some have called a game-changer" to replace Geithner. Huckabee responded:
HUCKABEE: Well, I suggested the other day, Donald Trump. The point is that we need someone who has a completely different outlook than Timothy Geithner, a man who didn't figure out Turbo Tax enough to pay his taxes. I said Geithner should have never been confirmed. Now that we have an absolute train wreck in the economy, and O'Leary's cow becoming the new symbol of the dairy industry. Come on. Geithner failed the economy and he failed this president. The president needs to have him walk the plank. If not for policy reasons, he needs to do it for the political optics and bringing Donald Trump in is a real optical game changer. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/11, via Media Matters]
Fox & Friends Asks Trump To Comment On Huckabee's Recommendation.
On the August 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Doocy told Trump that "just about 15 minutes ago," Huckabee "said that you should take the place of Tim Geithner." After co-host Gretchen Carlson asked Trump if he would "do it," Trump claimed if he did "it would be very painful ... for many of the countries that are just ripping us off." Later, Doocy claimed that "Mike Huckabee thinks you're a great negotiator. And that's what it comes down to. We need to negotiate our way out of this." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 8/8/11]
This is all a deflection to turn eyes away from the sh*tstorm they and their Republican politicians caused with the debt ceiling brinksmanship. We don't need a negotiator. We don't need anyone to walk the plank. And whether you like Geithner or not, the idea of Donald Trump somehow replacing him is nothing more than a cynical effort to be so outrageous people forget who is responsible for the "economic train wreck."
But you know what that economic train wreck did do? It took the stories about News Corp's criminal conduct off the front page and out of the attention of the general public. How convenient.
