Hooray for Democrat Joel Payne! On a recent Tucker Carlson Tonight, he spoke truth to power and then some!
Brian Kilmeade, filling in for Tucker Carlson, reported on the recent release of e-mails from the computer shared by Huma Abedin and her ex-husband Anthony Weiner. Kilmeade could barely contain his glee when he introduced his guest, Tom Fitton, president of the right-wing Judicial Watch which had requested the emails. Judicial Watch is a group which is dedicated, in large part, to destroying Hillary Clinton and to peddling debunked conspiracies.
Most of Fitton’s commentary was about how the FBI had been in the tank for Clinton: “You have to wonder why it is the FBI and the Justice Department let Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin off the hook after, you can bet the FBI knew there was classified information late last year when Comey cleared Hillary Clinton yet again. Why it is that they let her off the hook?” He claimed that the Obama Justice Department was “protecting Hillary Clinton and targeting President Trump.”
Kilmeade nodded in agreement and, working in a slew of Clinton smears, claimed that she (not Trump) is still talking about the election and blaming everybody else for her loss. “Clearly, she has some problems that have to be looked into,” Kilmeade said.
After the Fitton interview ended, Kilmeade introduced his next guest, Payne, a Democratic strategist and former Hillary for America staffer. To Kilmeade’s question of whether Payne is curious about the content of the Abedin emails, Payne was not intimidated. He described this newest Clinton email controversy as a “nothing burger.” Then he continued to deftly respond to the propaganda:
PAYNE: I can’t believe - you guys have spent 30 million dollars, you guys being Judicial Watch and all these other conservative activists that have been going after Hillary Clinton for years. 30 million dollars chasing a ghost on Hillary Clinton, chasing something that doesn’t exist…
Later, Payne did what every Democrat on Fox should do: he reframed the discussion and called out the network’s tactics:
PAYNE: The bottom line here is that you’re trying to distract from this president, what he’s doing, in terms of distracting from the Russia investigation. … This is a very smart ruse, by the way, by conservative activists and Fox News, the network, to try to treat this as top news story for the first 15 minutes of your show. It’s not. You’re trying to confuse the American people, you’re trying to confuse your viewers. This is a non-story. It’s been litigated.
A visibly irritated Kilmeade pivoted back to Clinton’s “slipshod way” in which she handled the emails. He raised his voice, “What is not newsworthy about this?”
Payne gave us an oh, snap moment: “It’s not newsworthy for you to be chasing a private citizen who had another private citizen working for her for something that’s been litigated by the FBI.”
Payne cited Fitton’s desire to disassemble the FBI and asked Kilmeade if he thought that the FBI is “infiltrated by Clinton Democrats.”
While praising the FBI, in general, Kilmeade alluded to “disturbing things that are being unmasked.”
That led to another Payne smackdown:
PAYNE: Yeah, Jim Comey and Bob Mueller who were George W. Bush’s FBI team. Yes, they were coordinating with the Clinton campaign to defeat Donald Trump. That sounds like a really reasonable, believable argument.
A rather defensive Kilmeade tried to trip Payne up about the Clinton e-mails but his efforts fell flat when Payne said he was “more worried about what he (Trump) thinks and not what you think.”
It’s not easy to be a Democratic guest on Fox, but Joel Payne was clearly up to it!
Watch Payne below, from the December 29, 2017 Tucker Carlson Tonight.