Bernard McGuirk, the guy who famously called African American women basketball players “some hard-core hos,” declared on Fox’s Outnumbered show today that Donald Trump was “not credibly” accused of sexual assault. Kudos to Democrat Marie Harf for her spunky responses.
The fact that Outnumbered chose McGuirk as the show’s “one lucky guy” on a day that sexual assault and harassment is front and center speaks volumes. You may recall that McGuirk, who has a long history of making inflammatory racial comments, was fired, along with Don Imus, from WFAN-AM after an infamous discussion in which female basketball players were referred to as “nappy-headed hos” and “hard-core hos.”
Cohost Harris Faulkner, normally blindly loyal to Trump, all but asked for a discussion about Trump’s long history of alleged sexual misconduct with her question, “So why is the president silent at this point” about Roy Moore?
Faulkner was speaking to cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy. She replied, “I don’t think the president is the best person, he’s not the greatest messenger…”
“Because he’s repeatedly been accused of doing worse with women,” Harf broke in.
“Not credibly,” McGuirk shot back. That set off a rather epic confrontation between Harf and McGuirk. Transcript excerpt below via Media Matters:
HARF: You don’t believe these women?
MCGUIRK: Not the ones that—the ones in The New York Times, no.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: When the ones from The New York Times came out—the ones from The New York Times came out and said that they actually—
HARF: No, no, no, let me get in here. It is convenient that you believe every woman who accuses a Democrat, and then suddenly—
MCGUIRK: No, I believe the Roy Moore women.
HARF: Please let me finish my sentence. Please.
MCGUIRK: No, you made it—misstated a fact. I believe the Roy Moore woman.
HARF: You do?
MCGUIRK: Yes.
HARF: All of them?
MCGUIRK: I believe—maybe not the fifth one, the Gloria Allred one. But the other ones, I think, are credible.
HARF: How do we—we either believe women that come forward—they don’t get anything out of this. They get pilloried.
MCGUIRK: Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick?
HARF: You know what? I—
MCGUIRK: Do you believe Juanita Broaddrick?
HARF: I think we should believe these woman. Yes.
MCGUIRK: Yes you do? OK. And you worked for a woman who smeared her after her husband—
HARF: Who did I—I didn’t work for Hillary Clinton.
MCGUIRK: Didn’t you work in the State Department under Hillary Clinton?
HARF: Under John Kerry.
MCGUIRK: Oh, OK, my mistake.
HARF: It’s OK.
MCGUIRK: So Hillary Clinton smeared the woman, Juanita Broaddrick, who you supported—
HARF: I can’t—again, we need to believe women, and we need to hold men accountable. And we need—
MCGUIRK: Yes. That’s right.
HARF: And so that needs to go for President Trump, who has been credibly accused by over a dozen women. It needs to start at the top.
MCGUIRK: Not credibly. No.
HARF: Why not credibly?
MCGUIRK: No. No. The Access Hollywood tape, by the way, that was just locker room talk. They other women, they were not—they’ve been debunked.
HARF: No, no, no. Your double standards are stunning.
Harf repeated her “double standards are stunning” line twice more for emphasis. Harf, the truly outnumbered one on this four-against-one panel didn't have time to note that Trump's "locker room talk" was really a boast about committing sexual assault:
“You know I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait.”
“And when you’re a star, they let you do it,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
“Whatever you want,” says another voice, apparently [Billy] Bush’s.
“Grab them by the p---y,” Trump says. “You can do anything.”
FACT CHECK: Unfortunately for McGuirk, there are 16 women who have come forward to validate Trump's boast. He and daughter Ivanka Trump have admitted that he barged in on Miss Teen USA contestants' dressing rooms while they changing.
Watch Harf call out McGuirk below, from the November 17, 2017 Outnumbered, via Media Matters.
But let’s note that he’s doing the lowest form of whataboutism in this segment. He gets called out for his vicious comments, and how does he respond? Going to the nonsensical stories about Juanita Broaddrick. First of all, those have been debunked multiple times in the past. Second of all, they are irrelevant to the discussion at hand. But he brings them up to try to derail the discussion Harf is having and pull everyone into the weeds.
A few points of reality, which Fox News and its personalities would prefer we forget:
1. Al Franken’s photo with Tweeden was certainly piggish, and he apologized for it. And he’s appropriately being called to account for it. Tweeden accepts his apology and says its up to Minnesota voters to say if he should be re-elected. Given Franken’s popularity, it’s likely that he will continue as the junior Senator from that state for at least another term, regardless of the wishes of Fox News and AM radio. So, nice try on the attempt to remove a Dem from the Senate.
2. Roy Moore’s situation continues to worsen, given his vicious behavior and comments, and given his unrepentant stance on his conduct. There is a real possibility that Jeff Sessions’ seat could go to a Dem as a result – which is why the Right Wing is so panicked about Moore. The situation is bad enough that the Pence White House is clearly afraid to make any further comments about it. Franken’s nonsense is irrelevant to Moore’s impending disaster, no matter how many times Fox News tries to scream otherwise.
3. Bill Clinton’s past issues have been repeatedly litigated in and out of the media since the 1990s, and there is no point to bringing them up today, other than to play that old whataboutism game. And it’s part of the record that Juanita Broaddrick’s story had a bunch of problems, mainly due to the fact that she changed the story multiple times. She now would like everyone to think that she was raped. But that’s not what she said at the time, and given the multiple versions, it’s difficult to understand what really happened. And that doesn’t mean that she may not have a case – it’s that she herself sabotaged it and cast doubt on the whole matter. The other Clinton accusers have similar issues, and again, all of this was litigated in the past, finally culminating with the embarrassing spectacle of the impeachment, which everyone knew was happening purely for political theater and not for any other purpose. (The upcoming special counsel appointment on the Clintons and the inevitable perp walks from that process will also be political theater, and I’m sure Fox News will run the tape on that footage for decades to follow. I particularly enjoyed Fox News pushing a New Hampshire Republican’s opinion this weekend that the previously held Dems’ fundraising dinner should have the Clintons’ name removed from it.)
4. Donald Trump’s past issues have not gone away, no matter how many lies the Right Wing tries to foment about them. There are 16 women who have described horrible conduct by Trump, and that doesn’t even include his own comments and actions as we have seen them. If Fox News wants to continue to lie about this matter, they will be held accountable by history just as harshly as they will for constantly pushing Pence White House propaganda when this epoch is mercifully completed and we have an actual President back at work in the Oval Office.
Asking for one entire gender and the more human half of another.