Fox News stepped into the GOP presidential campaign to reposition Donald Trump’s finger away from pointing at George W. Bush for 9/11, even though he was the actual president at the time, and urged Trump to malign Bill Clinton, instead.
Never mind that Bush was sworn into office nearly a full nine months before 9/11 happened. And, of course, it doesn’t’ count that, as the 9/11 Commission reported, the CIA was warning that the systems was “blinking red.” Nor that on August 6, 2001 – more than a month before the attacks – Bush received a presidential briefing titled, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US.”
No, the only “fair and balanced” blame for the attacks belongs to the president who was gone from office nearly a year before: Bill Clinton. At least that's what Fox wants Trump to say and you to think.
Media Matters caught the Fox & Friends hosts not so subtly trying to rejigger Trump's talking points so that he stopped criticizing Republican competitor Jeb Bush for saying that brother George "kept us safe" while he was president and pointing out the obvious truth that he didn't:
BRIAN KILMEADE: In reality though, you have to think about 2001. When we walked in to -- when the president walked into his four years in office, Al Gore and George Bush weren't even debating Al Qaeda, even though Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996. And most of those hijackers overstayed their visas, so unless he came in and the first thing that President Trump would have done is said, 'I need the CIA to talk to the FBI.'
ELISABETH HASSELBECK: Immediately.
KILMEADE: 'I need you to mix and match and merge lists, and find out if there's anybody here who have overstayed their visas.' That was not the talk of the country because we were on the air at that time and in 1996, he declared war on us. You might be madder, Donald Trump -- and we're going to ask him in an hour -- at Bill Clinton for not taking a legitimate shot at somebody who declared war on us in the '90s.
On Fox News, the buck stops anywhere but with a Republican.
Watch it below, from the October 19 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters:
We’ll blame Clinton for 9/11 (even though it occurred nine months after he left office), if you’ll blame George H.W. Bush for the FIRST WTC terrorist attack in Feb. ’93 (even though it occurred 30 days after he left office.)
I figure it this way: if the Foxites insist that planning for 9/11 took place during the previous administration, the one that ended almost a YEAR prior, then planning for the ’93 WTC attack DEFINITELY occurred barely a MONTH prior . . .
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All bogus wars based on lies and bad intel that killed thousands of Americas brightest and wounded tens of thousands of others aside.. I sure didn’t feel too safe as my neighbors houses were being foreclosed on all around me, as so many others were losing their jobs in droves and the nation headed into the greatest economic recession in our lives. ESPECIALLY when the Republican mantra at the time was ‘let them fail’ when it came to businesses that employed tens of thousands of people around the nation.
Heck of a job Brownie.
I did not feel safe at all.. All bad wars, destabilization of the Middle East, starting illegal gun walking programs to Mexico, and deaths of our kids aside.
