Nobody knows whose cocaine was found in the White House but that doesn’t stop Fox News from endlessly speculating that it must belong to Hunter Biden.
While Fox propagandists work overtime to shrug off Donald Trump’s shocking and dangerous mishandling of classified material as a crime by the so-called Deep State – and try to make it about President Biden and his son, Hunter, the same crew has developed a sudden concern for national security – in order to weaponize the cocaine against Hunter Biden and his father.
Never mind that nobody on Fox knows who left the cocaine at the White House or why, they’re just “asking questions” with very clear signals about where viewers should jump to conclusions.
Yesterday’s The Five included Shannon Bream, supposedly an objective journalist on the network, as one of the opinion show’s cohosts. Although she did not explicitly point any fingers, she was certainly fine with suggesting something foul, including a national security lapse, without any real evidence to make it so:
BREAM: The cocaine mystery at the White House just keeps getting more complicated as the story shifts once again. Officials now say the illicit drug was found near the west executive entrance. That's different than the previously reported West Wing visitor entrance. It is a location that's just steps away from the highly sensitive Situation Room where some of the nation's top secret missions like the raid on Bin Laden take place.
Bream played a clip of White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan saying that the Situation Room has not been used in months because it’s under construction. “The only people coming in and going out of the Sit Room in this period have been workers,” Sullivan added.
So why did Bream suggest otherwise? Nobody indicated any evidence that Sullivan was not truthful. There was not even any apparent effort by the so-called “news channel” to investigate that fact. Maybe because that might have spoiled the conspiracy theory.
The innuendo continued:
BREAM: The investigation is expected to end next week but do not expect any arrests because law enforcement believes the cocaine culprit is unlikely to be found since the area is so heavily trafficked although this is now a less-trafficked area. I don't know. Even the media is having a hard time believing that.
Bream tossed to right-wing cohost Charlie Hurt, all but asking for stronger propaganda. And, surprise! That’s what she got. Hurt snidely claimed he was “not trying to suggest” a cover up to protect “any one individual” as he obviously suggested just that:
BREAM: Charlie, they're losing the press. When you start losing the mainstream media, they were asking questions, this is going to be a headache for them.
HURT: Yes. And if Joe Biden loses the press, he loses his only constituency. But it is kind of interesting how the baggy, the dime bag is kind of moving its way through the entire White House from an area that was, you know, the library is a little bit more secluded and a little bit more, you know, exclusive access to the library. But as it -- as it sort of moves along -- and I'm not saying they're trying to protect anybody, I'm not trying to suggest they're trying to protect any one individual, but I do think it's kind of interesting that it's moved its way all the way over to the West Wing lobby, and then outside of the Situation Room. And then now, they're talking about oh no, but the Situation Room is under construction and so, you know, it was probably a, you know, construction worker.
BREAM: Well, is that the next step in this conversation?
HURT: I think it is. I think they're doing everything they can to try to -- and again I'm not -- would never suggest they're trying to cover up for anybody. I never suggest.
Bream moved on to press Jeanine Pirro, an election liar whose own executive producer described as “nuts,” and currently a personal defendant in Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation case against Fox.
That Jeanine Pirro was now presented as a legitimate expert and truth detector. Sure enough, Pirro delivered the fact-free anti-Biden messaging as truth, without objection from any of her colleagues.
BREAM: Well, I mean, Judge, how many investigations are there? And this -- and this for me as us you know, lawyer types but also as a journalist, the more the position and the -- and the story changes, the more my antenna go up. Like, why are we not getting the straight story the first time? And now we're being told we may never know, so just prepare yourself for that.
PIRRO: OK, so first is, Charlie was referencing it's in the library which is the inner sanctum, you know, and the -- and the first family has access to that area. Then it's on a holiday weekend in a well-traveled area. Karine Jean-Pierre comes out and she makes the circle bigger, all these people came in, it was a holiday weekend, and now it's the Situation Room which is now under construction.
So, they have construction workers - as if they don't have to go through security, as if they don't do drug testing. If you're in construction, you do drug testing because of the kind of equipment you're using.
OK, so let me just tell you that the -- that they are not answering the one significant question that America wants an answer to, can you tell us for once and for all that this did not belong to the Biden family. Her outrage, you know, betrays her.
[…]
And finally, let me just say that when they say we may never figure it out, that means that they don't have an answer, and that even if they had an answer, they don't want to give you an answer. So, this is the ultimate cover-up, an illegal substance in one of the most protected houses in the United States and their inability and their refusal to answer questions is an outrage.
Cohost and lone liberal Jessica Tarlov offered some factual pushback:
TARLOV: Kayleigh McEnany, who obviously knows the White House incredibly well, said Hunter is clear to this. He wasn't there. And they do security sweeps so often that it would have shown up before that if it was Hunter who had brought it in or was even in that specific location.
But facts don’t matter to this crowd. Instead of exploring Tarlov's point, Bream cast it aside. She turned to cohost Tyrus Murdoch for more explicit accusations that the Biden administration is covering up for Hunter:
BREAM: There are very tight visitor logs. For all of us who have been over there and worked over there, you got to get cleared in. Nobody just walks in off the street. This is a serious business. And this is an even more inner sanctum kind of area.
All right, Tyrus, you have some thoughts.
MURDOCH: Yeah, cocaine is a hell of a drug. I've heard of the magic bullet, but we have the magic bag because this thing is everywhere and nowhere at the same time. It's magical. Listen, they told the story, OK, so let me just break it down for you.
Somebody who can go around the White House likes to have a little candy and knew a room that was under construction, take somebody in that room to hang out, have some fun, do some stuff because it's construction. Nobody will know. “My dad runs the place. We can hang out here all we want to, OK.” That sounds like shake your head, wait till your kids to get older, OK.
BREAM: Hypothetically.
MURDOCH: Hypothetically. I'm just speculating here. I thought this was a round table, we could just have thoughts and ideas.
BREAM: Yes.
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They know exactly who did it, where he did it, and why he did it. And that's why they're like, I don't know, because some genius in there seems to say no, the American people will never put this together.
Every parent, any person who's ever bought a dime bag or anything like that knows exactly who took their stash. They know exactly how it happened.
Fox spent about 4 hours last week covering the cocaine story, according to research by Media Matters, published before The Five or Fox's prime time shows aired.
You can best believe that if the coke is found to belong to someone else, especially if it’s a Republican, Fox will drop this story in a hot nanosecond. But just like with the pregnant 10-year-old whose rape Jesse Watters falsely called a hoax, and the real hoax Fox perpetrated about homeless vets getting kicked out of hotels to make room for undocumented migrants, Fox will just move along to the next political smear it thinks it can get away with, without a moment of hesitation or concern for making sure of the truth.
Meanwhile, you can watch some of the frenzy over the White House cocaine below, from the July 7, 2023 The Five.
In reality, the actual criminal matters at hand are the upcoming prosecutions of Mike Pence’s childish former spokesman. He’s been indicted twice on extremely serious felony charges, and there are at least two further major cases about him due to state their indictments later this summer.
Angry Right Wingers are clearly panicked at the potential prison sentences now faced by Trump, so they keep coming up with these whataboutism attempts to distract the public. We can expect their panic to increase as the cases proceed, which means the nonsense in this baggie story is likely to be exponentially multiplied…