Those supposed law and order lovers on Fox News don’t need no stinking facts to immediately declare war on the FBI after it raided Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
As Media Matters noted, there are not a lot of details known about yesterday’s FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago but it appears to be related to Trump’s potentially illegal removal of classified documents. But while the FBI and Justice Department are maintaining their usual silence about an active investigation, Trump and Fox News have quickly stepped in, as Media Matters put it, to furiously poison the well:
Trump is using that information vacuum to put his own spin on the events, describing himself in his release as the victim of “prosecutorial misconduct, the weaponization of the Justice System, and an attack by Radical Left Democrats who desperately don’t want me to run for President.” And his loyal henchmen at Fox News quickly adopted his talking points, denouncing the judge-approved search in the most demagogic terms imaginable on their Monday night programs as they sought to poison the well against any potential consequences for their beloved president.
The Daily Beast has a good roundup, including this:
Besides calling for the firing of “corrupt” FBI Director Christopher Wray, who was installed by Trump himself, [host Jesse Watters] seemed to justify any potential violence from Trump supporters in reaction to the raid.
“I think there is going to be some more action you are going to see out on the streets from the base after they see this break tonight,” he declared. “There are a lot of honest Americans that have had it with what this corrupt government and what the FBI has done.”
Steve Bannon wants to defund the “Gestapo” FBI.
Bannon: The FBI is the gestapo pic.twitter.com/nLnEQ4ZOwp
— Acyn (@Acyn) August 9, 2022
Coup abettor Mark Levin called the FBI search “the worst attack on this republic in modern history.”
Not surprisingly, “journalist” Harris Faulkner sounded like Trump had dictated her comments, as Aaron Rupar pointed out. She said, “If this can happen to a former president of the United States, and they just hired, through this monster spending bill, 87,000 IRS agents to come after the rest of us, I mean what could this look like for the American people?”
Harris Faulkner's Fox News show today is literally MAGA propaganda. It's like Trump dictated everything she's saying. pic.twitter.com/bHUPu4Saju
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 9, 2022
But my “favorite” comes from unhinged Dan Bongino. Without knowing a thing about the contents of the search warrant or what classified documents might have been retrieved, Bongino declared it “a dangerous precedent” to prosecute “what seemed to be basically administrative violations.”
BONGINO: Nobody who is an inner-circle Trump supporter, nobody is safe. You do not live in a constitutional republic anymore. And anyone telling you that in the media, is full of crap.
And let me add one more thing. With all due respect, I don't buy this rank-and-file crap either. Throw it right in the garbage. I don't buy it one bit. I was a Secret Service agent, I was the rank-and-file, me. And you know what, I saw something I didn't like. And I left. Every single person involved — no I was just doing my job. You're full of crap. Your job is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States and you know damn well that what you did last night was a disgrace. You used our flag as toilet paper last night! Don't give me this rank-and-file crap! I don't buy any of it. Every single person involved in this needs to be fired immediately.
When President Trump hopefully runs again and takes the White House, every single person at the top of the DOJ and the FBI who cannot raise their right hand and pledge allegiance to our constitution, not to a political party, needs to be fired yesterday! And then when the left starts whining and the media, fire 100 more the next day. Do not even let them breathe. Everyone has to go! You do not live in a constitutional republic anymore, and there is no fixing this, there is only rebuilding it.
…
You know who the real criminal is? Joe Biden. … Why isn’t the FBI raiding Joe Biden’s residence at the White House?
Bongino also ranted about Hunter Biden, Hillary Clinton, Mitch McConnell, how “most Republicans on Capitol Hill are really Democrats” and more. There was not one moment of pushback from any of the three cohosts in the nearly 12-minute rant.
It's worth pointing out that Shannon Bream, host of Fox News @ Night and a lawyer, pushed back on the Trump propaganda on The Tucker Carlson Tonight show last night. She told guest host Will Cain that the FBI and DOJ would almost certainly not have gotten a search warrant without ample cause:
BREAM: It's interesting as what Lara Trump has been saying, I'd be interested to see if the DOJ and FBI also believe, as she said, [Donald Trump’s] been cooperating, he's been working with them. They may likely have suggested otherwise. They may believe otherwise.
Because to go to a judge and get the underpinnings that you need for this warrant to have someone sign off on, they probably had to make some kind of allegation. I would guess that the president has not been cooperating with them, at least not in their definition of cooperation.
…
So, this FBI has clearly made and this attorney general has made the calculation that they think they have enough to move forward and risk the political optics of this, because as you know, and I know you've discussed earlier on the show, there is this, you know, conversation about not pursuing indictments and things so close to an election, that they would have an impact in a way that could unseat or that could upset the political balance.
The fact that Fox pretty much ignored her perspective tells you everything you need to know about how little the Murdoch network cares about truth or the rule of law.
You can watch Bongino’s Murdoch-funded attack on the rule of law below, from the August 9, 2022 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters.