In the wake of a bombshell New York Times story showing that Donald Trump may well have avoided paying any taxes for the last 20 years, Fox & Friends got to work on his behalf this morning.
Cohost Abby Huntsman, in line for a permanent cohost spot, must have earned some brownie points with her spin. She managed to both claim that the article won’t matter to voters and praise Trump for paying nothing, all in one comment:
HUNTSMAN: You kind of have to wonder, do the voters that matter right now in these swing states, these voters that haven’t really made up their minds yet that are going to impact who ends up winning in November. Do they actually care about this headline?
[…] I think a lot of people see [Trump] as someone, if they were to be successful and make it in life and make a lot of money, that Donald Trump is living a life that they would say, you know what? I would probably get a plane, I would probably try to pay less taxes if I could. And I think Donald Trump has been pretty transparent about that, not trying to hide who he is, which is pretty different than what we saw with Mitt Romney, who was really trying to be someone that he wasn’t. But the bigger question is do people even care at all?
You may recall that Huntsman also recently called Fox News "a great place for women."
Cohost Ed Henry got in a plug for Trump. Henry recently returned from a disgraced leave, supposedly barred from political reporting. But, apparently, nobody is barred from spinning... on behalf of Republicans.
HENRY: Right, and as the Times itself is saying, if these are his tax returns – if - he followed the law. He didn’t break the law by claiming these losses.
[…] So, he also said, his statement, look, his campaign said, “Look, he wants to fix the tax laws. If you think rich people should be paying more, let’s figure out the whole system.”
Huntsman also suggested that the Times was being unpatriotic by doing its job of reporting (as if Huntsman and her colleagues would not feel the story was vitally important had it been Hillary Clinton's taxes).
HUNTSMAN: But to your point, this is exactly why we don’t have other good people that want to run for office because everything is so public. You can’t get away with anything in life.
(Transcript via Media Matters, with some light edits)
Watch the Fox News propaganda below, from the October 2, 2016 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
I hate to agree with any of the R-Souls, but Rick Perry in the last election said he would rewrite the tax code so it could fit on the back of an envelope. Without even putting in more reasonable brackets, can you imagine how much that would change the landscape?
A genius? Um, no. That’s spin and you know that. If this was truly a stroke of genius he would have been bragging about this long ago. Believe me, believe me.
The New York Times is protected by the First Amendment, so the question is, who leaked this? Somebody call G Gordon Liddy and his plumbers. If you don’t know, Liddy and his plumbers were the ones who broke into the Watergate Hotel. They were called plumbers because their job was to stop leaks for Nixon.
tRump is a hero of the $30k/yr truck driver paying 20% of his salary to taxes, yet “Mr. $700 million” last year pays $0 — and the rubes think he is smart.
Krueger-Dunning Effect on full display…
NN, even lying American soldiers into a needless war is not enough to warrant a cross republican word.
Perfect Con on the least sympathetic rubes.
- declared multiple bankruptcies
- repeatedly stiffed people he owed
- avoided paying taxes for twenty years
- and reportedly lost $916 million in one year
as a crook and a cheat.
Not in 2016. In 2016, we call them a “smart businessman” and a “presidential candidate” . . .
.