The five cohosts of Fox News’ Outnumbered show all “forgot” that Mexico was supposed to pay for the border wall as they did their best to justify Trump’s diversion of military funds.
After noting the blistering criticism of Democrats over the diversion of $3.6 billion that will delay or suspend 127 military construction projects, the all-conservative panel went to work either defending the diversion or attacking the Democrats or both.
Guest cohost Jason Chaffetz called Democratic concerns “hogwash.” “Shame on Mr. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi for trying to change the discussion,” Chaffetz chided. “Every year, almost on a monthly basis, money is repurposed for other things. … They’re feeding people a line hoping that they don’t understand how this works.”
Well, that seems to be the dishonorable Chaffetz feeding people a line. Because he left out the part about how Congress, not just Democrats, specifically declined to fund the wall and that Trump’s money grab from the military is a blatant subversion of Congress’ Constitutional power over spending.
Perhaps even more misleadingly, Chaffetz, along with the other four cohosts, failed to mention that Trump repeatedly promised Mexico would pay for the wall. According to The Washington Post, Trump made that promise “at least 212 times during his campaign and dozens more since he took office. And he put it in writing — in a March 2016 memo to news outlets that was then posted on his campaign website.”
Embedded underneath this post is a video The Washington Post put together showing Trump making some of those promises.
Cohost Melissa Francis questioned the wisdom of taking the money from the military. “That seems to fly in the face of one of his major goals, which is to rebuild the military,” she said. Odd that she forgot Trump’s “major goal” of getting Mexico to pay for the wall, eh?
But the ever-opportunistic Chaffetz (the guy who could not “in good conscience” endorse Trump three weeks before he decided to endorse Trump anyway) announced that “building a wall can be justified as protecting the United States of America.” Later, Chaffetz even acknowledged he thought the move was wrong. But he blamed Congress for not writing tougher legislation and giving the president too much authority. “But those that have been the most complicit in making that happen have been Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi,” Chaffetz said. He didn't bother to provide any examples, nor did anyone ask for any.
Cohost Harris Faulkner called the diversion of military funds “swampy” but sanitized it by saying Democratic criticism “is really disingenuous and may be even hypocritical.”
Cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy came up with the propaganda pièce de résistance:
CAMPOS-DUFFY: I don’t think for a second the American voter cares. I mean, I know there’s a philosophical argument here but I think if you really sat down regular Americans and said, here’s this pot of money that’s going to the military, do you want it to go to West Point and some of these other projects or do you want us to build the wall that the president was elected to do, I think most people would say that is a national security issue.
FACT CHECK: Americans have steadfastly opposed the building of the border wall. There’s no reason to think they’ll like taking money from the military to do so.
Lack of public support for building the wall was another fact none of the five cohosts mentioned.
Watch the collective and selective amnesia below, from the September 4, 2019 Outnumbered.
The Fox News sycophants are of course forgetting that there are major lawsuits being brought against this obvious misuse of public funds, which will mean that any expenditures will be tied up potentially until after the 2020 election. (They’re also ignoring that one of the huge problems with this nonsense project is that it would require the Pence White House to declare eminent domain on many Texas ranchers in order to use their land to build this pointless bigoted middle finger at Mexico.)
Fox News loves the idea of doing this – partly because they blindly go with whatever the Pence White House does and partly because the in-your-face nature of it. They love the fact that Pence is just doing what he feels like and daring everyone else to call him on it. And they love that Pence’s childish spokesman will undoubtedly gloat about it in his daily tweeting.
The sheer tonnage of hypocrisy and viciousness from Right Wing media is only getting larger. When this miserable epoch of our history is concluded, hopefully after next November, the Right will have no place to go when they try to either walk back their hatred or try to turn on a dime to attack the next actual President we elect.
