Less than a week after Donald Trump admitted to Fox host Maria Bartiromo that he is deliberately blocking funds for the Postal Service in order to prevent mail-in voting, Fox Friend Steve Doocy pretended that Trump and his unqualified crony running the Postal Service are really just trying to “make it work better.”
With Americans outraged over Trump’s blatant sabotage of the United States Postal Service, Crybaby-in-Chief Trump ran to his favorite morning show for some rehab today. Too bad Doocy couldn’t help out without deceiving viewers in the process. The two cohosts, including “tough journalist, not in the tank for Trump” Ainsley Earhardt, sat in complicit silence until the end.
Instead of asking why Trump put unqualified and conflicted fatcat Trump donor Louis DeJoy in charge of the Postal Service, Doocy framed concerns about DeJoy’s mismanagement into anti-Democratic tribalism - while feeding Trump a talking point:
DOOCY: [Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi] sent a letter out to her colleagues, to the Democrats, and said, “Alarmingly, across the nation we see the devastating effects of the president’s campaign to sabotage the election by manipulating the Postal Service to disenfranchise voters.”
We know that the Postal Service has not been efficient for decades and we know you hired a guy to try to streamline and make it work better, uh, but at the same time, fewer people are using the post office because we’re doing email for so many things and the Postal Service sent out a note and said, you know, hey, different states have different requirements. Some states, you can request a ballot three days before the election and we don’t know that we can get them, the ballot and get it back in time. So, can you explain how you are “sabotaging” the Postal Service.
Of course, it’s supposed to be Doocy’s job to explain why Pelosi said so but by outsourcing it to Trump, Doocy was able to posture as a questioner when he was really acting as a PR agent or infomercial host.
TRUMP: Yeah, well, no, I’m just making it good. We have a very, very good business guy running it and I want to make – I jokingly say, but it’s true, I want to make the post office great again, OK?
That’s a blatant lie. Trump told Bartiromo, Doocy’s own colleague, that one of the reasons he is blocking a COVID relief package is because it contains money for the Postal Service to help with mail-in voting during the pandemic. Trump said on August 13, “Now, if we don’t make a deal, that means they don’t get the money. That means they can’t have universal mail-in voting. They just can’t have it.”
Doocy didn’t mention that, not surprisingly.
Instead, he let Trump ramble on with BS about how, “We’re making it so it is going to be good and we’re going to take care of our postal workers above all.”
And, of course, Crybaby Trump whined that he’s the big victim.
TRUMP: This isn’t a Trump thing. This has been one of the disasters of the world, the way it’s been run. It’s been run horribly and we’re going to make it good. Now, what am I supposed to do, let it continue to run badly? So, if you fix it, they say, oh, he’s tampering with the election. No, we’re not tampering.
Nobody hates America more than Trump
Trump followed up by spewing a blizzard of hate on the country he claims to love. After praising Florida’s absentee ballots (which he and his wife just requested), he attacked Democratic states conducting mail-in voting:
TRUMP: New Jersey … it’s going to be a disaster. Look at Nevada, what’s going on over there, it’s going to be a disaster… Take a look at what happened in New York, disaster. Patterson, New Jersey, disaster. Virginia, disaster, it’s, it’s a disaster what’s going on.
Doocy’s colleague Chris Wallace did a deep dive into mail-in voting for Fox News and found “no history of fraud at all.” But Doocy not only ignored Wallace’s work in order to let Trump’s disinformation go unchallenged, Doocy’s “follow up” fed Trump his next, anti-Democratic next talking point,
DOOCY: One follow up to that is, do you think part of this is because Nancy Pelosi has been unable to get her very expensive, I think $3.5 trillion coronavirus bill passed, but in that bill is $25 billion for the Postal Service to make sure they’ve got the resources, although the Postal Service has put out in financial statements that they’ve got enough money to run through next year, summer of next year, so is this just another way of trying to get that great big corona bill passed by the Democrats?
Surprise! That’s exactly what Trump thinks! He called the Democratic relief package “a con game by Pelosi and [Chuck] Schumer.” That was a prelude to start spewing more hate on American states he doesn’t like.
TRUMP: [Pelosi and Schumer] really want, uh, one trillion dollars to bail out their badly-run states like New York State, which is horribly run. … Take a look at California, the money they lose. Illinois is a disaster, it’s just a disaster. … The Republican states are doing phenomenally well.
…
So instead of just accepting that, I fight for the nation.
“Postal-Service-loving” Trump went on a rant about how he wants to raise the postal rates on packages – as he pretended everyday Americans, still in the middle of the pandemic, wouldn’t be the ones shelling out more. He complained that Amazon (which just happens to be owned by the same guy who owns The Washington Post) is making too much money off the Postal Service. “I said, you got to raise the rates … This guy’s supposed to be so wealthy, so raise the price, let him pay for it. Why is the post office paying for delivering for Amazon and, in all fairness, for other services like that?”
Doocy's cohosts help the campaign messaging, too
Finally, “tough journalist” Earhardt had something to say, and surprise! it just happened to feed Dear Leader another talking point. “We want to make it clear we’re not – we love our postal workers, the ones that deliver our mail," she prompted.
“The post office gets 91% approval,” Doocy chimed in.
“Yeah, exactly,” Earhardt chirped, “so we appreciate what they do.”
Cohost Brian Kilmeade delivered the nut of the campaign message the three lapdogs were there to promote: “It’s the business model.”
Not one of the four mentioned any concern about Americans suffering during the pandemic, for any who rely on the mail for prescriptions or checks or anything else, while complaints mount about deteriorating postal service.
You can watch Trump’s Fox Friends act as if their job is to coach Trump through campaign talking points received in advance below, from the August 17, 2020 Fox & Friends.