Fox News is not just propagandizing, it’s deliberately deceiving viewers and covering up Donald Trump’s guilty behavior regarding Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Even worse, Trump’s informal advisers on Fox News are ratcheting up hostilities by claiming Trump’s critics deserve to be arrested.

There’s still lots we don’t know about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Criminal or not, what’s perfectly obvious is very damning. The Las Vegas Sun summed it up nicely last month:

[Trump] refused to impose sanctions against Russia approved by overwhelming majorities in Congress. He denied that Russia meddled in the election, then uncorked a flat-out falsehood by saying he’d never disputed that it had happened. (He claimed that when he described the situation as a “hoax,” he was referring to collusion between the Russians and his campaign.)

He pitifully said he believed Putin’s denials about Russia’s involvement. “He said he didn’t meddle. He said he didn’t meddle. I asked him again. You can only ask so many times.”

This is a man who’s afraid of Putin, but worse yet is afraid of even any criticism of Putin.

And throughout, he’s failed to do what a president should be doing: rallying Congress and policymakers to protect our balloting systems from hacking and fighting off all efforts to influence the outcome of our elections.

That’s not counting the suspicious behavior of Donald Trump Jr. regarding that June, 2016 meeting at Trump Tower where he was promised dirt from Russians on Hillary Clinton nor the suspicious behavior of son-in-law Jared Kushner regarding a suspicious, secret meeting in the Seychelles between a Trump associate and a Russian fund manager, less than two weeks before Trump’s inauguration. Kushner also attended the June, 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

But not only does Fox rarely, if ever, talk about this, it is involved in an active campaign of distraction and disinformation to blame the “Deep State,” the Clintons and the Obama administration for any and all wrongdoing that viewers should care about. 

Just in the last few days, alone, the following has been presented as legitimate commentary on Fox:

Joseph diGenova, speaking about key Russia-probe figures on Tucker Carlson Tonight: The system of equal justice has been rent asunder by the conduct of James Comey, America’s best-known dirty cop, Andrew McCabe and others, including senior Obama Justice Department officials. Every one of these people should be put in a ‘wanted’ poster at a post office, even though they may never be arrested.”

Host Tucker Carlson offered no challenge to that outrageous statement. Less than a week later, diGenova was reportedly hired as Trump’s lawyer.

RNC Committeewoman Harmeet Dhillon, helped Fox celebrate the firing of FBI former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe by blaming the Clintons: “[McCabe] spends a lot of effort trying to point the finger at Donald Trump who is actually fairly a late comer to this whole debacle. What he should be looking at, and what has historically been the case is that the Clintons manage to somehow destroy everything that they touch. And this man’s sterling career up to the point that he’d gotten involved, with his wife taking money from Clinton sources – that was really the beginning of the end for him in this tragedy. And so no one is, I think, in this type of situation, introspective enough to recognize that and obviously, there’s gonna be some spin machine from the Clintons and others involved in the next phases of this story but Mr. McCabe is clearly in denial as to his own role in this unfortunate situation.”

FACT CHECK: Trump openly campaigned for McCabe’s removal for nearly a year and then openly celebrated it. It just so happens McCabe is a potentially significant witness in the special counsel's Russia investigation. Dhillon made those comments on The Ingraham Angle Friday night but the two supposedly non-partisan attorneys, Jonathan Turley and Alan Dershowitz, uttered not one peep of concern about Trump’s suspicious behavior – much less Fox’s. Maybe their vision is clouded by visions of a Supreme Court nomination via a Fox News audition.

Meanwhile, the Fox News effort to “indict” Obama/Clinton for treason or whatever continues apace. Host Jeanine Pirro has called for Hillary Clinton to be arrested, with the evident approval of Fox News.

Last night, Mark Levin suggested that McCabe, former FBI Director James Comey, Obama national security adviser Susan Rice and maybe even President Barack Obama, himself, deserve to be arrested (transcript via Media Matters, with my emphases):

MARK LEVIN: The problem is, we don’t have a federal grand jury to investigate [McCabe] or Comey. Now, Comey is like the mob boss of the operation. All this was happening under him.

[...]

Mr. Mueller is not investigating interference in the Russia—in the campaign, because if he was, he’d do not only what I said, but he would be investigating Comey and McCabe for interfering in our election.

Here’s the big story. The Obama administration did more to interfere with our election than the loathsome, loathsome Vladimir Putin. Whether it’s unmasking, whether it’s Susan Rice refusing to allow the cyberspace folks to investigate, the Obama administration did more to interfere with our election than the Russians. That’s the story.

Fox Business Host Lou Dobbs and Fox News contributor Sebastian Gorka threw Obama’s attorney general Eric Holder into the criminal pot last night. There’s an actual arrest warrant for Gorka but that was no barrier to him getting a paid gig at Fox. Nor was his suggestion that Hillary Clinton be executed two weeks before getting his contract. (transcript via Media Matters, with my emphases):

LOU DOBBS (HOST): It’s important for everybody to think back to—you know, where do Mueller and Comey come from?

SEBASTIAN GORKA: Yes.

DOBBS: They come from the stable of Eric Holder, who had, in the Clinton years his earliest—in, the earliest influences on them, and then to track their career over the course of a quarter century. This is a—this is beyond a network of corrupt, politicized cronies. This is—this is something close to some sort of organized criminal element within Department of Justice—

GORKA: It’s a conspiracy.

DOBBS: -- Working against the very purpose of the department.

GORKA: Lou, It’s a conspiracy. These are individuals who have committed felonies. None of them should be in the positions that they hold.

Folks, this is extremely dangerous.

(Vladimir Putin caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license)