Geraldo Rivera did his part for Team Trump by painting Dear Leader as the big victim of the scandal of his own making and validating his wish to execute the whistleblower.
Before Rivera suggested he’d like to put up his dukes, he argued that Trump’s damning phone call to Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was just normal “braggadocio” from a real estate magnate. As if Trump is not supposed to act like a president three years into his term of office. “You know, ‘Hey, we do this, and by the way, you do that,’” Rivera said. “I can just see him in the stream of consciousness. ‘Hey, Zel, what’s up, buddy?’”
Later (in the second video below), Rivera acknowledged the Ukraine scandal is problematic for Trump. “At the very least, he’s got to explain in a very lucid and a comprehensive way what, exactly, he meant,” Rivera said. He was referring to Trump’s request for “a favor” from Zelensky immediately after he asked for military aid which Trump was blocking.
But Rivera also suggested that Trump’s concern about “corruption” was not an attempt to get dirt on his political opponents (as is pretty darned obvious to anyone not in the tank for Trump) but a concern about corruption in Ukraine. “Was the money used to buy weapons or was the money used to line the pockets of the corrupt people that the president is complaining about?” Rivera “asked.”
Cohost Ainsley Earhardt once again ditched her supposedly Christian compass to help the Liar in Chief: “You would have to have proof of quid pro quo,” she declared, despite not being a lawyer and despite the fact that a real legal expert on Fox said an implicit quid pro quo would suffice. Otherwise, “he’s not guilty,” legal eagle Earhardt proclaimed.
“That is what a reasonable person would assess the situation,” Rivera said. He is a lawyer. Then, rather than dwell on the substance of the matter (which Rivera undoubtedly knows looks very bad for Trump) he attacked the whistleblower and the Democrats for daring to care about the issues of corruption and national security.
RIVERA: After listening to the Democrats, they believe that they have it now. That everything else, Russia collusion, Stormy Daniels, taxes, making money on hotels, and all that. They’re going to put everything away and they are going to laser focus on this. This is gonna be what the impeachment is all about, maybe one or two little other things fall in. So it’s going to be the president of the United States in a conversation that was intercepted by a rotten snitch -- I’d love to wap him, but that’s another story. Imagine this poor president, his whole tenure in office has been marked by snitches, and rats, and backstabbers, and it’s amazing how he functions at all.
Watch Rivera excuse the inexcusable below, from the September 27, 2019 Fox & Friends, via Media Matters. Let’s see how long he stands by his man.
