Tuesday night, news broke that the Donald Trump aides "were in constant touch with senior Russian officials" during the 2016 presidential campaign. Amid growing concerns about Trump's murky ties to Russia, this was significant breaking news. But not to Fox News.
Similar reports broke from both CNN and the New York Times. From The Times:
Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.
American law enforcement and intelligence agencies intercepted the communications around the same time they were discovering evidence that Russia was trying to disrupt the presidential election by hacking into the Democratic National Committee, three of the officials said. The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.
The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.
But the intercepts alarmed American intelligence and law enforcement agencies, in part because of the amount of contact that was occurring while Mr. Trump was speaking glowingly about the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. At one point last summer, Mr. Trump said at a campaign event that he hoped Russian intelligence services had stolen Hillary Clinton’s emails and would make them public.
The officials said the intercepted communications were not limited to Trump campaign officials, and included other associates of Mr. Trump. On the Russian side, the contacts also included members of the government outside of the intelligence services, they said. All of the current and former officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the continuing investigation is classified.
Coming as this does against the backdrop of the resignation of National Security Advisor Michael Flynn over his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump was sworn in, Trump's false claim he didn't know about reports of Flynn's discussions and concerns about Trump's own ties to Russia, this was big news.
But not on Fox News.
NewsHounds' Richard got the screen grabs so I didn't have to. You'll see that both CNN and MSNBC went live with the news. But Fox stayed with a pre-recorded Hannity show:
The story was the same on the networks' web pages:
It's one thing for Fox News to ignore a story that is unflattering to a Republican president. But this story suggests treason may have been committed by someone in or close to the White House. Sure, Fox will get around to reporting and discussing it - probably once the network has decided how to spin it and/or received talking points from the Trump administration. But meanwhile, Fox's silence speaks volumes about where its own loyalties lie.
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Not yet one month in yet. I know there is some kind of Grande Karma afoot what with the best World’s Series and the best Superbowl played within one year with an absolutely rotten election sandwiched in the middle.
https://twitter.com/RonBrownstein/status/831711793240227840
But then I watch “The O’Reilly Factor” and “Hannity” then realize Donald Trump has the sweetest, sugary tasty ass and all of us should kiss it. ;-)