There’s a major race scandal broiling around incoming House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA). It involves revelations of his paid speech to a white supremacist group and threats from that group’s founder, David Duke, to name other politicians he has ties to if the Republicans throw Scalise under the bus. But you probably don’t know about it if you only get your news from Fox.
As Huffington Post notes, the news of Scalise’s attendance at a 2002 meeting of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, a group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, went viral this week. Scalise’s claim not to know whom he was speaking to is not exactly being accepted without question. Nevertheless, House leadership is standing by Scalise, at least for now.
One can imagine the kind of coverage on Fox News this would get if a Democratic leader were caught having addressed the New Black Panther Party, e.g. But a white Republican leader? Not so much.
From a Mediaite post time-stamped about two hours ago:
(Fox News) mentioned the Scalise story once since it broke, during the America’s Newsroom 9 a.m. hour, for a brief 20-second segment that included Scalise’s initial response. That’s it so far.
My guess is that Fox was waiting for a signal from the GOP as to how to react. Now that the Republican leadership has taken a stand on behalf of Scalise, Fox almost surely will, too. In fact, I’ll bet that Scalise will be getting a nice dose of Republican Rehab on Fox sometime within the next 24 hours, quite likely on prime time tonight.
(H/T reader Eric J.)
Then they of course brought up all the false comparisons they could about Robert Byrd or whatever Democrat they wanted to attack, which looks like the Fox News Line of the Day for tomorrow or later. Idea being that hey, Scalise didn’t do anything any more wrong than stuff the evil Dems did, and look what they did to poor Trent Lott over so much less than this! And the simple answer they’d rather not hear is – “Your guy did an event with a modern Klan group in 2002. The complaints you’re bringing up are from decades before then. Do you have anything from within this century?”
http://www.cnn.com/2014/12/29/politics/michael-grimm-to-resign-soon/
Way to go, GOP! You haven’t even taken control of both houses yet, and you’re ALREADY making the news — though likely unintentionally.
(This is what you voted for. Thanks teabaggers.)
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I’ll bet that’s 20 seconds more than Fox spent on Sarah Palin palling around with an Alaskan Secessionist group . . .
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Michael Steele, former RNC chairman, filled in for Chris Matthews on MSNBC tonight, and he presided over a pretty good discussion with Ed Rendell and a GOP “strategist” apologist. Steele was on Rendell’s side in thinking Scalise should resign or get kicked out of GOP House leadership.
The GOP strategist kept shrieking “Scalise isn’t a racist!” which may well be true, but that isn’t the point. Most GOPer pols aren’t actually racist (some are) but they’ve long been more than willing to court racists if they vote.
Rendell kept pointing out that Trent Lott had to resign some years ago for a much less egregious thing.
