During last night's Democratic candidates' debates, Tomi Lahren attacked Sen. Kamala Harris with a Twitter smear that even her own Fox News colleagues found repugnant. But that smear has been a staple of Fox attacks on Harris and there is no reason to believe Lahren’s subsquent apology was at all sincere or meaningful.
I have previously described Lahren as “Ann Coulter For Millennials, Now With Less Charisma, More Venom!” She certainly fit that label last night with her baseless smear of Harris last night:
Kamala did you fight for ideals or did you sleep your way to the top with Willie Brown?
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) August 1, 2019
As Contemptor noted, Fox’s Kat Timpf and Britt McHenry condemned the tweet:
I am curious to know what you think bringing a woman’s personal/sexual life into this accomplishes. Men do that to us enough as it is. I’m honestly asking. https://t.co/MgO0yMrAHT
— Kat Timpf (@KatTimpf) August 1, 2019
Do you have any idea how damaging this is to women who’ve actually been sexually harassed, assaulted or demeaned in the workplace? How much this weakens our own gender, regardless of partisanship. My goodness.
— Britt McHenry (@BrittMcHenry) August 1, 2019
In last night’s Reliable Sources newsletter, CNN’s Oliver Darcy reported:
I asked a Fox spokesperson if the tweet was in accordance with network standards, but did not hear back.
I did hear from several Fox employees who reached out to me on their own accord. "It makes me sick that I work for the same company as Tomi Lahren," one Fox employee told me. "Mindblowing how we give this woman a job." Another employee texted me the URL to Lahren's tweet, calling it "unacceptable."
This morning, Lahren issued an apology that sounded like it had been dictated by the Fox PR department, not out of any sense of remorse:
I apologize for my comment on Kamala’s personal relationship. It was the wrong choice of words. There are many other things to take her to task for and I will stick to those.
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) August 1, 2019
However, Lahren’s apology came after she doubled down on her smear, which she did not retract in her apology:
I didn’t make this up. Willie Brown admitted it. The truth hurts. https://t.co/WvmhXWa5kO
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) August 1, 2019
Lahren somehow missed the part in the article in which Brown admitting helping Harris’ career along with those of “a host of other politicians,” including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. “Harris is the only one [I ever helped] who, after I helped her, sent word that I would be indicted if I 'so much as jaywalked' while she was D.A.," he said. The article also noted that Harris’ personal relationship with Brown ended in 1995.
Indeed, Lahren's claim that she used "the wrong choice of words" suggests that it was only the phrasing of her smear, not its substance, that was wrong.
Media Matters has more on why nobody should accept Lahren’s apology as legitimate. In a January episode of her Fox Nation show devoted to the smear, “Lahren accused Harris of ‘using an extramarital affair to boost her political career’ and ‘dating [her] way to the top’ during the January 29 edition of Final Thoughts, her weekday afternoon program on Fox’s streaming service. The episode featured the chyron ‘Kamala’s Affair Boost.’”
Media Matters also notes that other Fox personalities such as Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and contributor Newt Gingrich have made snide references to Harris’ relationship with Brown as recently as July. For example, Gingrich told Fox & Friends in January that Harris “may end up with some interesting things to answer.” Regular guest (and almost Trump attorney) Joseph diGenova referred to Harris as ““Willie Brown’s paramour” on the May 1, 2019 The Ingraham Angle.
In other words, Lahren had every reason to believe Fox would have no problem with her smear. And the network obviously was fine with it – probably right up until it was no longer expedient.
Watch Lahren spend the full three minutes of her January 29, 2019 Fox Nation show, Final Thoughts, gleefully promoting the Harris smear below, via Media Matters.
I have heard this exact same attack talking point used by angry Right Wingers, who are being fed this nonsense by Fox News and AM Radio in anticipation of her potentially rising higher. If she prevails and becomes the Dem nominee, you can guarantee that Mike Pence and his childish spokesman will immediately go to this talking point as their first shot. The implication is that they figure she has no actual ability and only got pushed up to this position because she was Willie Brown’s girlfriend once upon a time. In the event she is ever in a debate with Trump, you know he’ll slip this idea in somewhere to see if he can get a response.
When I responded to the Right Winger who tried this smear and reminded him of the actual facts, he laughed and smugly dismissed the truth, saying that nobody would care and that she was a lousy candidate and the Dems better hope she doesn’t get the nomination. (I note that this same response has been given to pretty much every Dem candidate by the Right Wing – they’re literally sharpening their butter knives for every one of them, hoping they can generate something close to the amount of bad odor they tried to gin up around Hillary Clinton. The difference now is that they don’t have 25 years of Right Wing media history to draw from with most of these candidates.)
The only mistake Lahren made here, if she even really made one, is that she got a little ahead of her skis. Fox News is waiting to see whether she gets any headway after the first few primaries before they start lobbing smear grenades like this one. Their hope is to embarrass her at a much deeper point in the campaign and then hopefully brand her with the smear as close to the election as possible. I strongly doubt anyone in the power structure at Fox News is angry at Lahren for repeating this talking point – they just don’t want her spoiling their strategy of how to use it.
https://deadstate.org/tomi-lahren-immigrants-who-seek-asylum-with-their-children-are-shtty-parents/
