Last night, Fox host Jeanine Pirro made an unhinged, anti-American demand on the air that Hillary Clinton be locked up along with a suggestion that former FBI Director James Comey, current deputy director Andrew McCabe and a few top Democrats should all be sent to the slammer, too. Even worse, Fox News is promoting this anti-democratic authoritarianism.
In the wake of the news that an indictment is coming, probably tomorrow, from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, the Fox News effort to deflect and discredit via the bogus Uranium One “controversy” reached a new frenzy with Pirro.
Some excerpts from her opening statement, via RealClear Politics:
PIRRO: It’s time, folks. It’s time to shut it down, turn the tables and lock her up. That’s what I said. I actually said it. Lock her up.
[…]
Jim Comey, he needs to be the target of a federal criminal investigation for his role in the Hillary Clinton email scandal.
For extra Breitbart/Trump/Fox credit, Pirro threw in Debbie Wasserman Schultz and John Podesta. But maybe they were just camouflage for her real target, the FBI. She had already pointed a fnger at Comey. Now, she suggested that Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s current deputy director, should be imprisoned, too:
PIRRO: And Debbie Wasserman Schultz for lying to Congress about not knowing about the money from the DNC for the Trump dossier.
And John Podesta for lying to Congress. Andrew McCabe, deputy director of the FBI, must go. His wife, a Congressional candidate, running with Hillary in 2016 receives $765,000, which unused money’s left over from the campaign she’s allowed to pocket which she got from Terry McAuliffe, one of five directors of the Clinton Foundation.
I’ve previously written about how Fox has tag teamed with Trump surrogates and Republican members of Congress to use the Uranium One deal to destroy the Mueller investigation.
That’s bad enough. But the Fox Trumpers have now gone completely off the rails into very dangerous territory. Thursday night, Trump surrogate Sebastian Gorka suggested Clinton should be executed. Now Pirro is hinting that almost anyone who opposes Trump should be thrown in jail.
Even worse, she’s doing it in the name of democracy:
PIRRO: This isn’t about one defendant, one criminal, or one president. This is about our democracy. It’s about law and order it’s about the Republic and it’s time for the Republicans to step up to the plate to man up and do their job or get the hell out.
Pirro has not gone rogue. Fox is actively supporting her authoritarianism.
Via Twitter:
From @FoxNews official account - quoting a paid FNC host https://t.co/Od6tXVGOMJ
— David Folkenflik (@davidfolkenflik) October 29, 2017
On Fox News Insider:
On the homepage for her show:
If Rep. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) is any guide, Republicans are going along for this ride, too. “That was a pretty strong opening statement. You are right on a number of those things,’ DeSantis said, when he joined her later in the show.
Watch the dangerous demagoguery below, from the October 28, 2017 Justice with Judge Jeanine.
Now that Manafort has been indicted (with more presumably to follow), expect Fox News to press for indictments of the Clintons and anyone else they can use for a distracting public spectacle. If they don’t get a frog march of the Clintons in front of everyone, then they’ll campaign on the basis that it’s wrong for Manafort to be arrested when she wasn’t.
But have no doubt – the anger and the hatred of the Right Wing on this matter is quite real and quite deep.
- When are Carlson and Hannity going to spout this kind of language ?
