Donald Trump renewed his attacks on former Ukraine Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch, this time arguing she deserved to be removed from her post because she refused to hang a photo of him in the embassy. Not one of the three Fox & Friends cohosts indicated any concern over such outlandishness.
Trump’s latest attack on Yovanovitch is another Trump lie. Vanity Fair explains:
Considering this is a guy who used money from his own charity to pay for a portrait of himself, it was perhaps unwise of Yovanovitch to underestimate Trump’s obsession with his own image. Except, according to Yovanovitch’s legal team, the whole story is false. Photos of Trump and his staff were mounted at the Kiev embassy “as soon as they arrived from Washington, DC,” a person connected to the team told NBC News. Indeed, if there was any delay, it appears not to have been on Yovanovitch’s end, but on the White House’s; according to Lewis Lukens, who ran the U.S. embassy in London for much of Trump’s first year in office, it took the Trump administration almost 15 months to send official photos to U.S. embassies—and instructed them not to print substitutes.
But, predictably, Trump’s Fox Friends said nothing to correct the falsehood, much less question the unbefitting nature of the excuse.
The subject came up after Trump called Rudy Giuliani “a great person” and “the greatest mayor in the history of New York and he was the greatest crimefighter, probably in the last 50 years.”
Cohost Brian Kilmeade uncharacteristically pushed back, suggesting that he was deliberately hinting Trump throw Giuliani under the bus. Kilmeade noted that two of Giuliani’s “sources” have recently been indicted and “one of his other sources is looked at as a corrupt figure.” Actually, four of Giuliani’s associates have been arrested of late and Giuliani, himself, is the subject of three investigations.
But Kilmeade did “ask” – i.e. give Trump a chance to spin the impeachment hearing revelations that Giuliani’s pals and the State Department were “working against each other.” In the same “question,” Giuliani added, “And then the accusation comes in that your ambassador is being tarnished by Rudy Giuliani.”
Even by Trump standards, the narcissism, misogyny and petty cruelty that came out of his mouth next was gobsmacking. Never mind that Kilmeade had just offered Trump a golden opportunity to blame Giuliani for the attacks on Yovanovitch.
TRUMP: Look, the ambassador – the woman, she wouldn’t even put up – she is an Obama person. I said, why are you being so kind?
“Well, sir, she’s a woman, we have to be nice.”
She’s very tough. I heard bad things.
And by the way, when I was talking to President Zelinsky, it’s right on the phone, you can read it, he didn’t like her. He brought up her name and he didn’t like her at all.
This is another Trump lie, by the way. The White House readout of the infamous July 25, 2019 call shows that Trump brought up Yovanovitch first and as a signal to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he should support her removal: “The former ambassador from the United States, the woman, was bad news and the people she was dealing with in the Ukraine were bad news so I just want to let you know that,” Trump said.
However, the Fox cohosts let Trump continue ranting and offered supportive murmurs and head nods as he spoke. He segued into how much he dislikes Ukraine because, according to Trump, the country “hated me” and supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. Then he returned to his Yovanovitch smear:
TRUMP: But this ambassador that, you know, everybody says is so wonderful, she wouldn’t hang my picture in the embassy. OK? She’s in charge of the embassy, she wouldn’t hang it. It took like a year and a half or two years to get the picture up. She said bad things about me, she wouldn’t defend me.
And I have the right to change an ambassador. And Rudy didn’t say good things, he wasn’t crazy about it, it wasn’t like a major topic but I have the right to change.
This was an Obama person, didn’t want to hang my picture in the embassy. It’s standard, is you put the president of the United States’ picture in an embassy.
This was not an angel, this woman, OK? There are a lot of things that she did that I didn’t like and we will talk about that at some time.
Cohost Ainsley Earhardt – the self-styled Super Duper Christian who claims she wants to be a tough journalist, responded to this shocking hideousness by saying, “OK,” and then changing the subject to praise Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. You may recall that Stefanik made such an ostentatious show of support for Trump during the impeachment hearings that her 2020 opponent, Tedra Cobb, raised more than $1 million last weekend, alone, with donations from every state in the country.
“There was one woman who was in all of these testimonies this week, who was sticking up for you,” Earhardt said. “Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, she was asking questions, doing her job. She said her constituents want to get to the bottom of what happened with the Bidens.”
In other words, Earhardt's true belief is that “doing one’s job” is to “stick up for” Trump, no matter what he says or does.
Watch Earhardt demonstrate that journalism, ethics and decency take a far back seat to playing on Team Trump, below, from the November 22, 2019 Fox & Friends.
A medical expert on clinical narcissism in dementia patients needs to explain it all to me. From Crowdstrike conspiracy fantasies even Steve Doocy choked on to (accidentally?) admitting he likes corruption this is the sort of comedy entertainment I pull out the popcorn 🍿 with extra butter for.