Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Fox News' Phony Obama "Enemies List" Scandal

If you've spent any time watching Fox News lately, you've undoubtedly seen a report about how a Mr. Frank Vandersloot has been a victim of President Obama's "enemies list" merely for donating to the Mitt Romney campaign. But while Fox has been eager to team up with Vandersloot to demonize Obama, they've been much less forthcoming about some other details: such as the fact that Vandersloot is not just some small businessman who, after exercising his right to partake of the political process, found himself the victim of a smear campaign (as Fox suggests). Instead, he's a Romney campaign official with some real-life smearing mojo of his own.

Rachel Maddow did an in-depth investigation into this latest faux Fox controversy and the result speaks volumes about how Fox gets into bed with Republicans, adopts their messaging without skepticism and - oh, what a coincidence - allows itself to be used as a fundraising tool for them, too.

Video via Huffington Post:

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Showing 6 reactions

Mike Raymond commented 2012-05-18 19:55:50 -0400 · Flag

This is how the Republicans are going to conduct their campaign: lie, lie a little more loudly, lie a lot, and lie even after your lie is found out. They are sick in the head and have nothing to offer the nation at large. They only want to help the rich get richer. Republican politicos care nothing about the average American.

Ellen commented 2012-05-18 02:02:04 -0400 · Flag

I knew there was something fishy about the Vandersloot story – especially when he kept popping up everwhere on Fox with it. But I could never get the scoop (though admittedly, I didn’t do a ton of digging) until now.

Aria Prescott commented 2012-05-17 15:27:33 -0400 · Flag

I haven’t been able to check the network the last couple days for it, but they’re running a couple scams on Obama at the websites. I’m finishing up on the one where they’re trying to say all of Reagan’s tax fairness quotes were apparently planted by Obama officials.

Both took about 10 seconds to debunk, so unless you’re Mark Koldys or dumber (assuming that’s possible), you were just watching Maddow for the witty wording. Too bad Fox News viewers are too afraid of facts to spend even that much time around them.

Kevin Koster commented 2012-05-17 13:28:38 -0400 · Flag

The Maddow piece was quite helpful in illustrating this sham. Vandersloot has been repeatedly waving this flag, even before his name popped up on a blog. And the blog mention was legitimate, since he’s a National Finance co-chair (read fundraising organizer) for Romney in an official capacity.

And just as soon as that idea had hit the Fox airwaves, when i would have expected Hannity to run with it – instead Hannity jumped back on the Ed Klein bandwagon to trumpet Klein’s latest attack book. (And when Juan Williams challenged Hannity on this, Hannity tried to shout over him that he didn’t have time to actually discuss the source of his latest attack material and only wanted to talk about the attack…)

NewsHounds posted about Rachel Maddow Eviscerates Fox News' Phony Obama "Enemies List" Scandal on NewsHounds' Facebook page 2012-05-17 11:09:55 -0400

This speaks volumes about how Fox gets into bed with Republicans, adopts their messaging without skepticism and - oh, what a coincidence - allows itself to be used as a fundraising tool.