Not one of the five people on Fox’s Outnumbered show even mentioned, much less criticized, Trump aide Kelly Sadler’s hideous “he’s dying anyway” “joke” responding to John McCain’s opposition to Gina Haspel’s nomination to be CIA director.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, decent people were outraged at Sadler’s remark. But the White House refused to comment and, coincidentally, the four Outnumbered cohosts and their conservative guest were mum on the subject, too. Even though it was just one day after Fox Business host Charles Payne offered what seemed like heartfelt apologies over his guest’s smear of McCain as “songbird John.”
Cohost Trish Regan noted McCain’s opposition to Haspel’s nomination in her introduction to the segment. But she failed to mention any of the right-wing attacks on him after he spoke out against Haspel.
After Regan acknowledged that Haspel’s confirmation is uncertain, Regan reverted back to the all-purpose Fox deflection: Hillary Clinton. Regan “asked” whether Haspel would be “facing the same kind of backlash” had “President Hillary Clinton” nominated her as the first woman CIA director.
“Not from Democrats,” Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery immediately responded. She claimed that would be “an identity politics moment, which is sad.” Of course, she didn’t bother to consider that Clinton probably would have nominated someone else. But as if Democrats had already voted to confirm Haspel for Clinton, Kennedy acknowledged that she thought Haspel’s nomination “raised some really critical questions that I think as a country we haven’t fully answered.”
Kennedy also added that McCain, “having endured torture for five years in a Vietnamese prison camp is the best person to weigh in on this.” Yet not a word about how he had been smeared as a result.
Cohost (and Trump apologist) Lisa Boothe jumped in to diminish McCain’s objections, even as she insisted she has “a great amount of respect” for McCain and his family. Not enough respect to stand with him against the attacks, though! No, Boothe really jumped in to discredit McCain as a hypocrite. “But I do think that there’s a fair frustration, just in the sense that he previously supported John Brennan,” she said.
After Boothe fingered Democratic Sen. Diane Feinstein for the same offense (even though Kennedy pointed out that Brennan’s nomination as CIA director occurred before Feinstein’s torture report), Faulkner interrupted to note that Haspel was significantly lower on the “food chain” than Brennan.
Boothe continued, “I think there is a fair frustration in what looks like a double standard or hypocrisy” in objecting to Haspel’s role in torture and not his."
Boothe conveniently ignored that what McCain called “disqualifying” was not Haspel’s participation in the torture program, though he called that “disturbing.” It was “her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality.”
Memo to Kennedy: If an advisor to Clinton had made a similar remark about McCain or any other gravely ill Republican with such a distinguished record of public service, do you think Fox would be ignoring it?
Could Fox’s reticence have to do with the fact that Sadler has been a frequent guest on Fox? Or that when Trump attacked McCain’s war-hero status, Faulkner and her then-cohosts blamed McCain?
Watch the partisan amnesia below, from the May 11, 2018 Outnumbered.
(H/T Richard)