Donald Trump threw a very un-presidential temper tantrum today with veiled threats against the press after he was caught in a lie about donating money to veterans after a fundraiser last winter. But most of the damning facts were covered up by Fox’s five-person Outnumbered show. Fox “liberal” Eboni Williams, praised Trump’s anti-American behavior as “a complete boss move” by him.
The backstory of Trump's promised but undelivered veteran donations
In case you missed it, The Washington Post exposed Trump’s lies about the money last week, on May 24.
As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was false: Trump had not.
In recent days, The Washington Post and other media outlets had pressed Trump and his campaign for details about how much the fundraiser had actually raised and whether Trump had given his portion.
The candidate refused to provide details. On Monday, a Post reporter used Twitter — Trump’s preferred social-media platform — to search publicly for any veterans groups that had received Trump’s money.
By Monday afternoon, The Post had found none. But it seems to have caught the candidate’s attention.
You really need to read the entire article to get the full thrust of Trump’s bullying and his attempt to cover up his lies.
Today, Trump continued the same behavior in his press conference to address the issue. The New York Times reported that Trump “dismissed a CNN reporter as ‘a real beauty’ and an ABC reporter as ‘a sleaze,’” and promised the same kind of behavior in the White House briefing room if he becomes president.
Furthermore, Trump blamed the delay on “a need to scrutinize the charities beforehand — though the recipient of his largest donation is well-known to him. And he expressed a newfound bashfulness about his donations, saying that he ‘didn’t want to have credit’ for them — though he had promised the donations in a speech carried live on national television.”
Also according to The Times, Trump said his largest gift was $1 million to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation whose vice chairman just happens to be the managing director of the Trump SoHo hotel.
And it just so happens that, as AP reported, about half the charities that organization was able to contact reported that their checks had arrived in the last week, typically on May 24, the day The Washington Post story came out.
How Fox News' Outnumbered spun Trump's attacks on the press and his lies about the veteran donations
On Fox’s Outnumbered, nobody seemed to think any fact checking of Trump’s bogus claims were necessary.
Here’s how cohost and Trump cheerleader Harris Faulkner introduced the discussion:
FAULKNER: Trump, with some tough words for the media. You may recall, he said in January he was going to raise millions of dollars for veterans’ charities, including $1 million of his own cash. But then there was a lot of scrutiny about what happened to the money. Today, he says he raised $5.6 million and that it’s all been paid out and that more money is coming. He went on to say he wanted to keep it all private but that the media just wouldn’t let up.
She played a clip of Trump attacking the press and pretending he was doing so on behalf of veterans.
TRUMP: The press should be ashamed of themselves. And on behalf of the vets, the press should be ashamed of themselves. They are calling me - and they are furious because I sent people checks of a lot of money – and I’m going to give you the names right now, which is what you want – and instead of being like, “Thank you very much, Mr. Trump” or “Trump did a good job,” everyone said, “Who got it? Who got it? Who got it?” and you make me look very bad.
I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job.
Faulkner likes to think of herself as a journalist but she didn’t utter a peep of objection to Trump’s attempt to bully the press or his argument that there's something wrong with a press not making him look good. Instead, she said Trump “answers his critics.” Then she asked Trump supporter (and likely VP hopeful) Scott Brown, “How did he do?”
“I thought he did very well,” Brown predictably said. He echoed the bogus “vetting” excuse: “When you raise that kind of money, there are a couple of things you need to be aware of. Number one, who you gonna give the money to? You just can’t give it willy-nilly because then that will be the story, that you gave it to some group that’s not doing proper and good things for veterans.”
Brown moved on to say, “Let’s compare that to the Clinton Foundation.”
That prompted an enthusiastic “Interesting!” from Faulkner.
Cohost Sandra Smith seemed to find the presser a masterpiece. “It was riveting!” she gushed. “And he sat there, I don’t know for how long, listing off every organization and every dollar amount to which he donated to those organizations.” Because who cares about the truth?
Eboni Williams, who claims to “fall left on most issues,” was another gusher:
WILLIAMS: This was a complete boss move by Trump today. Here’s why. …There are gonna be skeptics that say this was the grand plan, this was all Trump making it about him. But here’s the counter-argument: He was asked the question! You know, from the Clintons, from media people, you know, there were people even in the Republican party that were really questioning where was the money going, was it even raised? So this was his opportunity and he took it in grand fashion to address those questions.
Williams did kinda sorta call out Trump’s attack on the press, albeit in the mildest, most opaque manner possible: “I do think Fox News’ Carl Cameron had a very good point: A question in and of itself is not an attack. And so I don’t really understand why Trump was so viscerally frustrated by just the question.”
Oh, please, Trump wasn’t frustrated, he was caught in a multitude of lies and BS.
Kennedy was a tad more openly critical. “Number one, Donald Trump was the one who talked about how much money he raised,” she began. “I think it’s a fair question to say, well how much money did you raise? He publicly proclaimed it, therefore, it was no longer a private matter.”
But then she pivoted to talk about the Veterans Administration and how Hillary Clinton should be attacking Bernie Sanders over it.
And from there, the discussion moved on to praise Trump’s recommendations to fix the VA.
Watch the propaganda below, from the May 31 Outnumbered.
Since FOX ‘News’ isn’t [news], I can see where they feel free to attack actual news organizations without seeing any irony. I’m watching “CBS This Morning” and I can’t miss the additional irony of former Foxie Major Garrett reporting on #WhinyLittleBitch Der Furor’s latest diaper dump. With all due [dis]respect to Scott Brown who says Trump gave $6 million to veterans groups, Garrett claims CBS News can only verify somewhere north of $4 million.
Sorry, FOX. That’s how real news outfits work. They just don’t take the word of their political buds and promote it as news. They actually investigate claims. Please don’t gasp in horror Foxies. ;^)
I like that Kennedy is using this moment to segue into a ridiculous attack on the VA. Sorry, gal, but there have been charities helping vets long before the VA scandal. Sorry, curvy couch bobbleheads, last time I check your Republican buddies passed voucher legislation so vets could use private treatment and the last news reports I heard is that program is as big a mess as the VA’s peak waiting lists. Maybe your Republican buddies shouldn’t have passed the 2016 Veterans Affairs bill which cut the budget by $1.4 billion. Puts Trump’s couple of million in perspective, eh?
Which is the irony. They whine the government can’t do anything. Yet we have government programs like the VA because the private sector has never been able to deal with the problem via mere charity. Yeah, never.
So let’s abolish the VA, cut the government subsidies to those teat-sucking vets and see how it all works out with the generosity of your flag-waving geriatric viewers and Rush’s flag-waving fanboys giving to charities. Yeah, that’s the ticket! ;^)