I wish he had called out a lot more, though.

I know it’s a controversial opinion but long-time readers know I believe that Democrats should go on Fox News, not to allow themselves to be propaganda patsies but to call out the network’s spin and dishonesty. Sadly, most don’t.

Happily, Rep. Adam Smith did some of that nicely.

Guest host Jacqui Heinrich was obviously determined to make racist hay out of the New Year’s terror attack in New Orleans. We’ve been writing about how Fox has been using the attack, by an American-born citizen, to ramp up its anti-immigrant fear mongering. Yesterday, Heinrich added some extra “Democrats are too pro-people-of-color” spin.

She played some clips of President Joe Biden talking about the threat of white supremacist terrorism Since the New Orleans attacker was a person of color, named Shamsud-Din Jabbar, it was hard not to miss her implication.

HEINRICH: Throughout his presidency, Biden believed that white supremacy was the greatest threat to the homeland. But two months before those last remarks that you just heard, the US intelligence community released its annual threat assessment report. It painted a much different picture. The document mentions Russia, 98 times, China, 93 times. Iran, 46 times. North Korea, 25 times. There were 15 mentions of racially motivated violent extremism, but white supremacy was mentioned only once. Did President Biden have his priorities wrong?

Fortunately, Smith smacked that down and took a swipe at Fox while he was at it.

SMITH: No, that was President Biden's intelligence community that issued that report. Whatever couple of clips you may have picked of what the president said, I think the emphasis of his Justice Department, of his intelligence community, of his Homeland Security Department, was always on precisely what that report you just read said it was, it understood the broad threat environment that we face, and did its best to try to confront that threat environment.

Heinrich moved on to suggest that Jabbar escaped notice from authorities because he’s not white.

HEINRICH: Well, the FBI told Congress that the suspect in the New Orleans attack, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, was not on their radar. They didn't have any intelligence on him. He was not someone they were watching. Do you believe at all that the president's belief that white supremacy is the greatest threat to the homeland impacted directives that were sent down to federal agencies?

Smith replied that Jabbar was a radicalized individual who was not part of a group, that he had been radicalized only in the last nine months and had no public links to ISIS. Then he politely suggested that it was time to cut out the partisanship.

SMITH: There was a terrorist attack when Trump was president by a radicalized Islamic terrorist in Florida, at a military base. Okay, do I believe that Trump wasn't paying attention? No. What I hope this makes clear to the incoming Trump administration is the depth of the threats that we face from a variety of different radical organizations. Again, all outlined in that report that you read from Biden's intelligence services, saying we got threats from a whole bunch of different places, and also the lone wolf attack, which has been talked about a long time, an individual who isn't on anyone's radar.

So what we need is, we need to support local law enforcement. We need to support the FBI. We need to support the Justice Department to do their level best, to try to find as many of these as possible understanding - and you've heard this quote before - the terrorists only have to be right once. That's the huge challenge that we face. I hope we'll come together as a country to meet that challenge and not try to turn it into a ridiculous partisan argument based on who's the president. It happened under Trump. It happened under Biden. Let's work together to try to make sure that it doesn't happen again.

This would have been a great time to point out how Trump wants to appoint loyalists, not qualified people to run the departments that are crucial to keeping Americans safe. Sigh.

Heinrich moved on to suggest that the Biden Department of Defense is not adequately dealing with extremism. “Are you concerned at all about a problem with our service members falling prey to radicalization?” she “asked.”

This was an even bigger missed opportunity for Smith. Trump is trying to appoint an unqualified extremist, with a history of out-of-control drinking, to head the Department of Defense (with Fox’s help, no less). Yet Smith either didn’t think of that or else he let it slide.

Still, his answer wasn’t bad, as far as it went. “I'm concerned with the problem of radicalization of people in our country in general,” Smith said. “I think it has happened to people who did not serve in the military. So I think to sort of paint a broad brush of service members as uniquely vulnerable to this type of thing, I think that's somewhat denigrating to the people who serve in the military.” He went on to call for more services, especially mental health services for the military.

After a brief detour to attack the Black FBI agent filling in on New Year’s for putting out wrong information (never mind that Fox put out wrong information that the terrorist was an immigrant and continues trying to connect the attack to the border), and questioning whether there will be enough security for Trump’s inauguration, Heinrich took a gratuitous swipe at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Heinrich played a clip of Jeffries who, as she put it, “made some headlines” when he announced, after Speaker Mike Johnson was elected (barely) and the Republicans applauded, “It’s OK, there are no election deniers on our side of the aisle.”

HEINRICH: But in 2018 Jeffries wrote, the more we learn about 2016 election, the more illegitimate it becomes. America deserves to know whether we have a fake president in the Oval Office. And then he doubled down in 2020 he posted to Trump. Keep pouting. History will never accept you as a legitimate president. What changed?

Oh, the irony! I'm old enough to remember Fox’s “change” after ponying up a $757.5 settlement for promoting what it knew were election-denying lies about the 2020 election. It’s still facing another huge defamation lawsuit about them. In fact, then-Fox host Tucker Carlson and current host Sean “I need God in my life” Hannity tried to get Heinrich fired for telling the truth about the election.

I suppose Smith didn't want to fight over any of that. But he did cut through the BS.

SMITH: I think lot of Democrats made mistakes in terms of complaining about the 2016 election. I remember vividly I was on this network, like, a month after, and this issue came up and said, he won. He won the election. Let's get over it and stop talking about it. …

I do find it interesting that Fox News is only concerned about Democratic election deniers. You know, it seems like the Republicans took that whole thing a little bit more seriously in terms of storming the Capitol, in terms of doing all kinds of efforts to actually stop the election, as opposed to just issuing a couple of comments.

So yeah, people will get emotional about elections. Nobody should try to stop an election from being certified. In fact, tomorrow, snow willing, we will be certifies [sic] in President Trump's election. You will not see Democrats stand up and protest that. You will certainly not see them storm the United States Capitol to try and stop that certification. We accept the election of President Trump, and we will do our best to work with him going forward.

“I would argue that this network covered all sort of election deniers across the spectrum,” Heinrich replied. She just forgot to mention that only one “spectrum” was repeatedly legitimized, even though the network knew it was a lie.

I’m all for bipartisanship. But Donald Trump’s cabinet nominees signal some very dangerous s**t coming down the pike. This is the time to do everything possible to try to avert catastrophe, not declaring a willingness to sing Kumbaya.

I hate to pick on Democrats, especially obviously smart and decent ones like Rep. Smith who, I repeat, did a decent job here. But unless there are some really bad-ass maneuvers going on behind the scenes, I implore you Dems to start fighting like our country and our lives depend on it. Because they do.

You can watch this interview below, from the January 5, 2026 Fox News Sunday.

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