Judging from Tucker Carlson’s middle-school-level insults hurled at Stormy Daniels attorney Michael Avenatti, Fox is very worried about the man who could possibly bring down Donald Trump.
Avenatti, as you probably know, has opened a can of whoop-ass on Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. You know Cohen: he’s the guy who allegedly paid or maybe didn’t pay the Stormy Daniels hush money out of his own pocket. Before that could be sorted out, Avenatti released documents this week showing a river of suspicious funds flowing into the same LLC Cohen used to pay off Daniels in what smells like a pay-to-play scheme.
Even Trump sycophant and Fox host Melissa Francis found the revelation troubling (when she wasn’t distracted by how much it made her think of Hillary Clinton). But by the next day, Fox was in attack mode. As Think Progress pointed out, Laura Ingraham and Bill Hemmer pointedly raised questions about who is funding Avenatti, though the answer is easily found in Avenatti’s pinned tweet. (Sean Hannity was too busy undermining the Mueller investigation and cheering on torture to get to this chore. Yet.)
Carlson, however, came up with the classy tactic of calling Avenatti a “creepy porn lawyer” whose “eyes are too close together.”
Last night, Carlson doubled down on his playground rhetoric.
CARLSON: The world’s creepiest porn lawyer has gotten very famous recently by attacking Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen. That’s probably been good for his business. On the downside, all this has invited heightened scrutiny of his own past business ventures.
A report by Fox correspondent Trace Gallagher told us about a coffee shop Avenatti bought which Gallagher claimed was a “pump and dump” operation that has been sued multiple times. Avenatti has denied the claims, according to Gallagher. There was no investigation into any facts that might help viewers decide for themselves. However, Gallagher made a point of noting tax liens against the coffee company and Avenatti, personally, supposedly to the tune of $1.5 million.
Of course, none of that has anything to do with Avenatti’s legal maneuvers against Cohen and Trump nor the validity of the material Avenatti released this week. The fact that neither Carlson nor Gallagher challenged that material strongly suggests they have nothing to disprove it.
Trump’s multiple failed businesses, on the other hand, reflect directly on his management skills, or lack thereof, yet I can’t recall ever hearing a word of concern about his disreputable history on the show. But I digress.
Not even Carlson seemed able to link Avenatti’s business history to his current efforts on behalf of Stormy Daniels and beyond. Nor did Carlson name any other porn stars linked to Avenatti. But that didn’t stop Carlson from his juvenile taunts:
CARLSON: Last night we mentioned the creepy porn lawyer you’ve just been hearing about, the one you’ve seen on TV recently threatening people and it got us thinking. So we checked. According to the Washington Free Beacon, between March 7th and yesterday, that guy appeared on CNN and MSNBC a hundred and eight times. That’s according to one source. The real number could be higher than that. Anyway, it’s a lot of CNN and MSNBC and we thought we would add a little diversity to his media diet. Diversity, of course, being our strength. So we invited the creepy porn lawyer onto this show. We called his office or what he said was his office. It may have been a booth at a Wendy’s in Passaic, maybe a White Castle, you never know. In any case he turned us down flat, Too bad. It would have been fun. Maybe when Jeff Zucker tires of him over at CNN he will reconsider our offer. That won’t be long.
Carlson brought on Democrat Julian Epstein (a NewsHounds favorite) in an attempt to link Avenatti and Democrats. Epstein did his usual terrific job and I’d say Carlson’s effort failed.
So, at the end, Carlson took one more laughable shot at Avenatti.
CARLSON: One last question and please answer honestly. Picture yourself standing in your kitchen at night, getting one last glass of water from the kitchen sink, and you look out to the backyard and there’s creepy porn lawyer. How do you respond?
Watch Carlson’s desperate antics below, from the May 11, 2018 Tucker Carlson Tonight.