While Fox News manufactures outrage over Sen. Charles Schumer’s condemnation of anti-abortion Supreme Court justices, there was no objection from Fox's Shannon Bream over Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick’s not-so-veiled threat against Beto O’Rourke for advocating a ban on assault rifles

As Media Matters explains, Schumer’s comments came during an abortion rights rally in front of the Supreme Court as it contemplates overturning those rights: Schumer said, “I want to tell you, Gorsuch, I want to tell you, Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” It’s pretty clear that Schumer was not threatening anyone with physical harm. But, not surprisingly, the disingenuous right-wing poutrage has been ubiquitous on Fox News. Media Matters has a good round-up of the whining as well as an explanation as to how it also serves to distract from the very real threat of anti-abortion violence.

Not surprisingly, Bream’s show, Fox News @ Night, has helped gin up the manufactured controversy.

Yet supposedly “straight news” anchor Bream said nothing when she trotted out Patrick – without revealing his history of inflammatory antagonism toward fellow Texan O’Rourke and the Obama administration – to comment on the Democratic Super Tuesday primary and former Vice President Joe Biden’s alliance with O’Rourke on gun laws. She didn’t even mention that Patrick is the Texas chair of the Trump campaign; he did, about halfway through the discussion.

As if she had no idea she was prodding an inflammatory response from her guest, Bream played a clip of Biden, at a Texas rally the night before, saying that he’s “counting” on O’Rourke to “lead” on “tak[ing] care of the gun problem with me.” Afterward, she said, “If memory serves me, Beto talked about the fact that confiscation would not be necessarily a bad idea.“

Predictably, that set Patrick off. He said, “Yeah, [O’Rourke] said he was coming to take our AR-15s. I have one, so I want to invite him to my house first and see how that goes." He added, “Joe Biden says a lot of dopey things. ... The dumbest thing he has said is that he’s going to put Beto O’Rourke in charge of getting our guns. I’m telling ya, that just added two or three points to President Trump’s victory in November if it’s the Biden and Beto show.”

That sounds like a threat. But Bream not only failed to challenge it, she let it go by without remarking.

In fact, an assault weapons ban is popular even among Republicans. But Bream didn’t mention that, either.

You can see the Fox News double standard for rhetoric below, from Fox News @ Night’s early morning March 4, 2020 coverage of Super Tuesday.