Fox & Friends forgot how much they cared about U.S. troops dying in Benghazi in order to excuse U.S. deaths caused by Donald Trump’s failure to respond to Russian bounties on American troops in Afghanistan.
Fox & Friends has never stopped politicizing the 2012 Benghazi tragedy, in which four Americans died in an attack on an American compound in Libya, in order to blame the Obama administration for their deaths. In 2013, cohost Brian Kilmeade said accusingly, “the U.S. government knew an attack was imminent and didn't do a thing about it.” Cohost Steve Doocy lamented that Hurricane Sandy knocked the inquiry into what happened off the front page.
The Benghazi so-called scandal has been completely debunked. But as recently as January, Fox & Friends pundits were still on their high horses about it, claiming to care about the deaths of Americans.
Oh, but that was so President Barack Obama ago! With the news that Trump was given intelligence that Russia was offering bounties on American troops in Afghanistan and has done nothing other than to deny it – why, there’s no reason not to believe him and shrug off the deaths the intelligence community thinks the Russians caused!
“This is playing politics with intelligence,” Kilmeade declared this morning.
Super Duper Christian (and likely adulteress) cohost Ainsley Earhardt (she didn’t join Fox & Friends until 2016, years after the Benghazi attack) all but yawned over the loss of American lives in Afghanistan: “This is not anything new,” she said, after quoting Republican Rep, Michael Waltz.
Then she absolved Trump of any responsibility for not knowing about it:
EARHARDT: The point here is, if it's not verified by our 16 intelligence agencies — that's their job, that's what they do — it doesn't get to the president's desk. The president, he has to make decisions based on intel that is in front of him. And if he's not briefed on it, then he doesn't know about it. But if he is briefed on it, then he can act on it.
Doocy pointed out to her that The New York Times, which broke the story, reported that the intelligence was in Trump’s Presidential Daily Brief on February 27.
There's no reason to expect Trump to have read it, according to Earhardt!
EARHARDT: But he doesn't — all presidents don't read all of their briefings. … It's a lot.
Doocy was A-OK with that explanation:
DOOCY: A guy comes in and essentially tells the president what is in it. And so, it might have been printed in it, it doesn't mean he actually heard about it. Because you've got to figure, if the president had heard that that was going on, he would've done something about it.
The problem is Trump hasn’t said a thing about doing anything about it now, even after there's no doubt he know about it. He’s only claiming ignorance and whining that it’s “possibly another fabricated Russia Hoax”
Watch the three Trump lapdogs give their support for Trump treason below, from the June 30, 2020 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.
In fact, the briefings BT (before Trump) were usually several pages long and previous presidents were wont to ask for in-depth analyses. UT (under Trump), they’ve had to be reduced to a page or two, which the President can’t be bothered to read. Further, he rarely if ever asks for details or further analysis. Anything that might cast a shadow on his buddy, Putin, bores him to tears.
During UT, the commander-in-chief gives priority to tweeting about stuff only the most dedicated supporters could consider important. Covid-19 is raging throughout the country and people of all ethnic backgrounds are in the streets protesting against police brutality, and the President tweets about the sacred nature of statues commemorating people who fought a war against the USA.
Hmmmm. Didn’t all the agencies (17 in number) agree unanimously that Russia had meddled in the 2016 elections? And didn’t the President – in Helsinki – declare that he tended to believe Putin’s denial?
Whether the President read or heard about the matter hasn’t and won’t make an iota of difference in the extent to which he’ll believe anything bad about Putin.
And If it was really really important, the intelligence community could have put together a two-minute segment for Fux & Friends.
