Fox host – and devoted Trump worshipper – Harris Faulkner "analyzed" former President Barack Obama’s speech blasting Donald Trump with White House adviser Mercedes Schlapp. But when Schlapp didn’t attack Obama sufficiently, despite a passel of pro-Trump falsehoods, Faulkner helped the cause along.
If anything, Schlapp’s take on Obama’s speech was surprisingly muted given how strongly our 44th president took on Trump (We have the video of Obama’s speech below).
SCHLAPP: President Obama had eight years to complete his hope and change in America and the only real change agent has been President Trump. We’ve seen, for example, that President Obama, who’s taking credit, apparently, for the economic miracle is the one that spent billions of dollars in stimulus money while creating a stagnant economy.
FACT CHECK: From The Washington Post’s Fact Checker: “Trump’s economy owes largely to trends started in the Obama era. By almost every economic measure, the upward trends ... began while Obama was still in office.” Plenty of charts and data are provided to back up this conclusion. Even if you think Trump deserves more credit than he gets, it’s simply not true that Obama created “a stagnant economy.”
Yet Faulkner – who pretends to be a neutral news host - did not challenge a word coming from Schlapp.
Schlapp went on to tout the stock market and other areas of the economy: “Wages rising, American families benefitting from the tax cuts.”
FACT CHECK: Real wages have been flat for most of the last decade and have even fallen in the last year when adjusted for inflation. Corporate profits, on the other hand, have skyrocketed. Trump’s tax cuts remain unpopular.
Still, Faulkner did not challenge Schlapp.
Schlapp went on to urge Obama to come to a Trump rally to see where “the real energy” is.
FACT CHECK: Certainly Schlapp knows that Democratic enthusiasm for voting in the midterms is significantly stronger than Republicans’. Obama has consistently remained more popular than Trump, too.
You can probably guess that Faulkner still failed to challenge Schlapp.
So Schlapp continued by calling the Democratic platform “very dangerous to American values” because of such policies as “Medicare for all.”
Apparently, that wasn’t anti-Obama enough for Faulkner. So she went after him and the anonymous Trump administration official who ripped Trump’s fitness for office in a recent New York Times opinion piece, herself.
FAULKNER: It’s ironic that we’re hearing from Barack Obama because he’s one of those who went after his enemies and there were prosecutions and he went after those people who were talking in whispers and working against him. The president was very patient early in his presidency. We talked about it. We’ve talked about it on Outnumbered. It sounds like the president’s patience has run out. And again, I want to double down on it because I really want to understand it. How does it put national security at risk to have an op-ed person not be named?
FACT CHECK: Donald Trump has recently attacked the U.S. Department of Justice for showing more loyalty to the law than to himself, a fact that doesn’t seem to bother Faulkner. As for others in the Trump administration, Bloomberg notes, “The Trump White House has seen far more resignations and dismissals than other recent administrations. About half of the people who’ve held top jobs have left.” Furthermore, Trump can hardly go a day without attacking a person or institution that crosses him.
Schlapp said she “can’t comment” on the investigation into the editorial but she said the author “obviously doesn’t know the president and doesn’t engage with the president in the same way that those of us do every single day. We see President Trump in his meetings where he is the one making the final decision, where he brings in a group of advisers to have very robust discussions on a variety of issues."
FACT CHECK: That does not rebut what the author wrote: He or she spoke of “reckless decisions that have to be walked back,” “erratic behavior,” “bad decisions” aides have kept “contained to the West Wing,” and “whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment” which is a means of removing a president from office.
Instead of pointing out the truth, Faulkner said, “I understand.”
Watch the pathetic attempts to discredit Obama below, from the September 7, 2018 Outnumbered Overtime.
“Is this the Christian thing to do? I could never get such a well-paid gig anywhere else. This is only a tiny fib. Have to outdo the blondes in my trumpistry. It’s not my fault I’m this dirty, shameful colour. How do my family feel? What would they know anyway? They’re probably not watching. Wonder whether I could get a face-whitening treatment like Michael Jackson’s?”
Asked about this ‘treason’ Schlapp babbles on about loyalty to Trump. Faulkner appears to accept this on face value. No follow-up. Seriously?
Is Trump really more patient than Obama? Trump has been investigating staff over leaks from the early days of his administration. No win there. Worse, Trump, unlike Obama, is a total snowflake prone to meltdowns and he’s been ranting about leakers for just as long. Faulkner’s spin is Trump’s patience is proved by his administration not prosecuting leakers but that’s not an artifact of Trump’s patience but the fact these leakers are only releasing embarrassing truths, not national secrets. So there’s nothing to prosecute.