Even Donald Trump’s Fox News cheering squad tacitly acknowledged he was lying through his teeth when he told ABC News, “I always like to be truthful.” So they did their best for Dear Leader by suggesting that Trump is just as honest as Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and ABC News. Sadly, neither of the two liberal panelists challenged the agenda.
The panel erupted in laughter after the clip was played of Trump telling ABC’s Jonathan Karl, “I try. I mean, I do try … You say things about me that are not necessarily correct. I do try and I always want to tell the truth. When I can, I tell the truth. I mean, sometimes it turns out to be where something happens that’s different or there’s a change, but I always like to be truthful,”
Cohost Dagen McDowell cringed theatrically when asked to comment. But she quickly pivoted to characterizing Trump’s dishonesty as exaggerations and suggested that we should be more outraged by a few old falsehoods made by Democrats years ago:
MCDOWELL: He likes to exaggerate, OK? We clearly know that. But again, I think it highlights - I was sitting up in my office thinking every politician lies. What are the greatest fibs, lies, falsehoods that you can think of? “I never had sex with that woman,” “This is a vast right-wing conspiracy,” “If you like your doctor, you can keep him,” “If you like your health plan, you can keep it.” And then, this year, it’s been “The top 1% got 83% of the tax cuts.” That’s patently false but you see it. You see it in press releases, the Democrats say it all the time. So I think that people love to get their trousers in a twist over President Trump but I think that it’s an example of all politicians.
Funny how she left out the Bush administration's “Iraq has WMDs” or “I don’t think anybody could have predicted” that the 9/11 hijackers would have flown airplanes into the World Trade Center. How about Trump’s “Mexico will pay for the wall?” There’s also PolitiFact’s 2017 lie of the year, Trump’s claim that Russian interference in the 2016 election was a “made up story.” Also, his claim that his tax cuts are “not good for me” and will “cost me a fortune.” And yes, the top 1% were by far the greatest beneficiaries of the Trump tax cuts.
Cohost Melissa Francis sneered, “Let’s take a little trip down History Road” before playing a pre-prepared video of Hillary Clinton on 60 Minutes saying, “I’ve always tried” to tell the truth to suggest that Trump’s 3084 falsehoods since January 20 2017 (as of October 23, 2018) were excusable because of that.
Cohost Lisa Boothe argued that Trump’s comment was taken “entirely out of context.” She suggested that it’s really the fault of the supposedly dishonest media: “Sometimes you are only as good as the information that you have in front of you,” Boothe said with a straight face. Trump was right, she argued, when he said that sometimes ABC News was not true. She just forgot to mention which one told the vast disproportion of untruths.
Almost as disturbing as the sycophants' deflections was the failure of the two liberals, each on the Fox News payroll, to call out the dishonest tactics. Juan Williams, the show’s #OneLuckyGuy, correctly said, “It’s the magnitude, it’s just constant” that distinguishes Trump’s lies from the others. But Williams never pointed out the dishonest whataboutism.
Neither Williams nor Democratic cohost Jessica Tarlov noted the seriousness of the lies that Trump has told. In addition to those about Russia interference, his tax cuts, or the cost of the wall he wants to build, he has also lied about "thousands" of Muslims cheering 9/11, he used inauguration funds to redecorate his residence instead of donating them to charity as promised – I could go on and on. But Williams and Tarlov never even approached the point and treated it like a lighthearted matter.
“Donald Trump has broken the fact-checking machine,” Tarlov quipped.
“You don’t think the Clintons have?” Francis shot back.
“Or Obama?” Boothe jumped in.
Tarlov responded by noting that Trump is “still maintaining that he won the popular vote and his crowd size at the inauguration. I mean, he can’t even about the most basic things, he can’t tell the truth.”
McDowell interrupted to demonize the left as a whole. “This is what I call though, asymmetric outrage on the left.”
And that’s the thing about Fox News. Even when it’s clear nobody has much of a defense of Trump, the lickspittles turn it around to make the Democrats or the left or the media the bigger villain. And the liberals almost never confront such tactics. Indeed, they help validate those shenanigans by going along with the charade that the whole thing is a legitimate news debate.
Watch this particular charade below, from the November 1, 2018 Outnumbered.
A media outlet should be holding all politicians accountable, not making excuses for their favorites, or acting like uttering one falsehood is equivalent to uttering 10,000