Fox News host Greg Gutfeld surely deserves an award for Most Creative Way To Blame Democrats for the Trump administration’s Russia problems, specifically the fact that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was just caught lying to Congress about his contacts with Russia. Today, on Fox’s The Five, Gutfeld suggested that Sessions was the victim of a trick question by Democratic Senator Al Franken.
In a discussion about the political bombshell that Sessions lied under oath about his contacts with Russia during his confirmation hearing, Gutfeld announced as fact his speculation that Sessions had been set up to lie to Congress:
GUTFELD: This is pure bait and switch. From the start, they were originally asking Sessions about whether he had discussions with the Russians about the campaign. He said, in that context, he did not. They bait and switched the question so now they’re saying, “Wait, he talked to the Russians as a member of the Armed Services Committee.”
Those are two different things. They bait and switched him. If they had asked him about that, he would have said, “Oh, yeah, I talked to all the ambassadors. I talked to 20 ambassadors. That’s part of my job. I talked to them twice. I don’t even know what I talked about. But it had nothing to do with the actual context of the question."
So it was a cheap trick from a party that is bereft of any ideas. This is the whack-a-mole strategy right now of the Democratic Party. They’re going to go after for the next four years anything that they can to hit this administration even when it’s full of crap.
Fact check: The real cheap trick is Gutfeld's ridiculous argument. While it’s true that Sessions was asked about discussions between Russians and the Trump campaign, his answer was unequivocal: “I didn’t have — did not have communications with the Russians and I’m unable to comment on it.”
Secondly, if it’s true that Sessions really did only talk to the Russians as a member of the Armed Services Committee and never talked about Russian interference in our election, that hardly makes Sessions look good. As I wrote in my previous post, Russia’s hacking of the DNC was already known when Sessions met with the Russian ambassador. What kind of U.S. senator and/or campaign national security advisor (which Sessions was to the Trump campaign) wouldn’t mention it in a meeting with the Russian ambassador?
Nevertheless, Gutfeld moved on from blaming the Democrats to suggesting they are the real Russian accomplices and traitors. First, he attacked Democrats for being “riled up” about Russia at all – because President Obama mocked Mitt Romney in 2012 for calling Russia our “No. 1 geopolitical foe.” Obama shot back then, “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Then Gutfeld reached back to the 1960s to deflect from Trump’s very serious Russia problem today:
GUTFELD: And now the Russians are evil. OK, think about the 80s, the 70s and the 60s, when Russia was truly dangerous, under the USSR, during the Cold War. Where was the left? Where were the Democrats? Where were the liberals? They were fellow travelers. They were anti- anti-communists. If you were an anti-communist, you were seen as some kind of prehistoric beast who thought that there were commies under your bed. It turned out we beat them in the Cold War, no thanks to you.
Unfortunately for Gutfeld, we’re dealing with the Russia of 2017. And Putin-apologist Donald Trump’s attorney general either discussed the campaign with Russia’s ambassador and lied about it or was so cavalier about that country’s interference, he didn’t bother to mention it.
But cohost Kimberly Guilfoyle, who has openly admired Putin on the air, said, “That just pretty much sums it up and I like it.”
Sure she does. Because Guilfoyle, who seems to be hoping for a job in the White House, would probably love anything that changes the subject from the increasing troubling questions about Trump’s relations with Russia.
Watch the desperation below, from the March 2, 2017 The Five.
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