Fox Business correspondent Connell McShane joined the “fair and balanced” effort to exploit the New York and New Jersey terrorism to promote Donald Trump as the beneficiary. Unfortunately for both of them, the facts don’t bear that out.
McShane visited Fox News’ Your World show yesterday to discuss the impact of terror attacks on the stock markets. As the interview was ending, McShane echoed Eric Shawn’s FNC shout-out to Trump of Saturday night. Shawn all but openly praised Trump’s terrorism acumen for having shot off his mouth that the explosion in New York was a bomb. Here, McShane took a swipe at Clinton for first criticizing Trump’s response and then acknowledging the explosion had been caused by a bomb. Yet McShane “forgot” to point out that Clinton, unlike Trump, waited for the results of an investigation.
“She’s trying to play both sides of this because those swing state polls have certainly gotten so much closer,” McShane opined. “Now this is going to be the big issue, and the polls, when we take them and other people have taken them, show that when terrorism is the question, the polls, often times, that’s favored Trump not Clinton.”
Host Neil Cavuto nodded and said, “Yeah.”
Not really.
The Huffington Post reported yesterday:
Clinton leads Trump 49-45 percent among registered voters when it comes to who would do a “better job of handling terrorism and national security,” according to a new CBS/New York Times poll. Likewise, a new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows Clinton leading Trump by 9 points among Americans asked who they trust more to handle terrorism. That’s the same margin by which Clinton led in a late-August Fox News poll. Most August polls showed Clinton leading on the topic.
One poll did find Trump doing better: A September CNN poll found that 51 percent of registered voters think Trump would handle terrorism better than Clinton, who wins the confidence of 45 percent of Americans. In May, Clinton held a 5-point lead over Trump when CNN asked registered voters the same question.
Media Matters did a deeper dive into the dat and found that polling following terror attacks in San Bernardino, CA; Paris, France; Orlando, FL; and Nice, France does not substantiate such a claim.
Watch this attempt to exploit this serious issue for political gain, below, from the September 19, 2016 Your World.
The reality that most people trust Clinton more to handle serious issues like these is not one that fits within the bias that Fox News has shown throughout their existence.
Let’s not forget that this frantic pushing of Trump as a strongman leader is happening in the light of Trump and his campaign making repeated bizarre gaffes over the past few days, including the ridiculing of GOP-admired Robert Gates, jumping the gun on the weekend attacks and the really strange one where Trump’s son used the offensive Joe Walsh image comparing refugees to Skittles.
I’m really curious what the polling shows later this week, and what happens after the debate, again assuming that Trump will show up for the debacle. I expect the Fox News and right wing radio attempts to bolster Trump will only become more panicked and frantic from now until November.
