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Fox News Tag

Megyn Kelly returned to the Kelly File last Monday after an eleven day break from her show, and she's made some headlines over the decision to interview, and purportedly "bond" with, Jorge Ramos after he was escorted from a Trump presser after demanding that his question be answered out of turn. In an interview with Ted Cruz, Kelly asked:  “If you have a husband and wife who are illegal immigrants, and they have two children here who are American citizens – would you deport all of them? Would you deport the American citizen children?". Cruz was not willing to address the question as framed, and instead, he accused her of asking a question that "every mainstream media liberal journalist wants to ask" and one that "Barack Obama wants to focus on." Watch:

Today, Donald Trump renewed his public feud with Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over comments made during the first GOP primary debate:
Trump repeated a claim on Twitter Monday night that Kelly is a 'bimbo,' and Fox chief Roger Ailes demanded an apology on Tuesday after the billionaire leveled a new series of attacks on Kelly during her first show following a lengthy break. 'I liked The Kelly File much better without @megynkelly,' Trump tweeted while she as on the air. 'Perhaps she could take another eleven day unscheduled vacation!'
Fox News big wig Roger Ailes came out today with a statement demanding Trump apologize to Kelly:

Thursday night, National Review's Charles Cooke joined author of Adios America!, Ann Coulter, on Sean Hannity's Fox News show. The exchange is particularly interesting because it perfectly illustrates the deep divide in the conservative ranks over Trump's candidacy. The segment begins with Coulter and Hannity exchanging their favorite Trump insults of the day. "He's a funny insulter, but he's more than that," Coulter said. "I mean, he's clearly right about the Mexican wall thing. This is part of what's appealing about him. Not only is he the only one seriously talking about immigration and the only one I think saying, he'll believably build a wall while the rest of them are coming up with nonsense excuses."

Megyn Kelly has not only been a rising star, she is at the top of the Fox News food chain, with the possible exception of Bill O'Reilly. We explored her success -- and anti-Fox News Media Matters' frustration -- in Megyn Kelly’s success must be driving Media Matters crazy-er. Kelly had some uncomfortable on-air back and forth with Donald Trump during the first debate, particularly on the issue of how Trump treats women: That was followed by a multi-day lambasting of Kelly by Trump post-debate, including the infamous (and disputed) "blood coming out of her eyes, or wherever" comment, resulting in Trump being uninvited from the RedState annaual gathering:

PREPARE YOURSELVES, READERS---for debate season is nigh, and Fox News has just released the names of the ten lucky men who will be participating in the first Republican primary debate of the 2016 cycle. My use of the word "men" is justifiable here---Carly Fiorina didn't make the cut. Here's the field:
  • Donald Trump
  • Jeb Bush
  • Scott Walker
  • Mike Huckabee
  • Ben Carson
  • Ted Cruz
  • Marco Rubio
  • Rand Paul
  • John Kasich
  • Chris Christie
Questions? Concerns? Let loose in the comments! This is going to be one barn burner of a debate.

The Republican presidential debate situation is a mess. With far too much talent, and about ten too many contenders, the early presidential debate process continue its devolution into chaos. The first official debate was scheduled to take place August 6. Or at least it was until C-SPAN decided to throw their party first. Unlike Fox New's debate stage which would only hold the top 10 GOP candidates according to national polling, C-SPAN invited all 17 contenders to their "Voters First Forum" to be held August 3. The Hill reports:
Publishers at the New Hampshire Union Leader, The Post and Courier of South Carolina, and Iowa's The Gazette say the forum was prompted in part by Fox's controversial decision to cap the number of candidates in its Aug. 6 debate at 10. “Fox says only the ‘top’ 10 candidates, as judged solely by national polling, will be allowed on its stage,” the publishers said in a joint statement. “That may be understandable later, but the first votes are half a year away and there are a lot more than 10 viable candidates.”

So this happened last night. Sean Hannity had two guests on his show to discuss race relations. Eric Guster, a criminal defense attorney (on the left in the video below), and Pastor Marcus Mosiah Jarvis (next to Guster). Hannity was making the argument that President Obama should refrain from injecting himself into racial incidents because Obama is, according to Hannity, a "three time loser" in such situations. In illustrating this point Hannity mentions the name Trayvon Martin, and that's where the wheels come off. Defense Attorney Guster immediately interrupts Hannity to ask, incredulously, if the show host believes Zimmerman was right in shooting Trayvon. When Hannity responds, "Absolutely," we get a nice pair of flabbergasted head explosions, which Hannity counters actual knowledge of the facts and law of the case. It seems the two guests neglected to avail themselves of the totally free resource: "The Zimmerman Files: Aggregated day-by-day live coverage & analysis", or otherwise inform themselves on the case. The exchange is all in the brief video (1:17) below. (If you're somewhere where video is not immediately an option I've also transcribed the exchange below the fold, but it's faster to watch than to read.)

Obama's obsession with FOX News is well documented. In 2009, shortly after being sworn in as president, his administration said FOX wasn't a real news network and accused FOX News of being a wing of the Republican Party. It doesn't matter to Obama that he's received the most fawning media coverage of any president in the last fifty years; he just can't sleep at night knowing that there's one cable news network that has dared to question him. The president's thin skin was on full display yesterday when he appeared at a "poverty summit" at Georgetown University. While invoking straw men who apparently hate poor people, Obama couldn't resist demonizing his old standby enemy. Transcript via John Nolte of Breitbart:
I think that the effort to suggest that the poor are sponges, leeches, don’t want to work, are lazy, are undeserving, got traction. And look, it’s still being propagated. I have to say that if you watch Fox News on a regular basis, it is a constant venue. They will find folks who make me mad. I don’t know where they find them. They’re all like, “I don’t want to work. I just want a free Obama Phone, or whatever.” And that becomes an entire narrative that gets worked up. And very rarely do you hear an interview of a waitress, which is much more typical — who is raising a couple of kids and doing everything right but still can’t pay the bills.

When Al Sharpton is in front of an MSNBC camera, it's an adventure watching him try to read from the teleprompter ("Resist we much!"). However, when he's in front of other cameras, grandstanding, he does very well. Earlier, Sharpton had a run in with Fox News reporter Leland Vittert. Vittert was doing this odd thing called "journalism" and was attempting to question Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake when Sharpton decided to play palace guard: Sharpton of course, knew it was Fox News and as such, he knew millions were watching... unlike his show on MSNBC. But hey, at least Sharpton is punching up, right?

FOX News is airing a special which examines claims made by the new book Clinton Cash. Special Report host Bret Baier interviews author Peter Schweizer and investigates alleged abuses of power and money by the Clintons from the efforts to rebuild Haiti to the questionable Uranium deal that benefited Russia. The special premiered last night and airs again today at 5 PM, Sunday at 3 PM and 10 PM.

Back in December of 2013, Media Matters for America declared victory in its war on FOX News. Unfortunately for MMFA, American news consumers disagree. According to a new Quinnipiac poll, FOX News is doing just fine:
Fox News Has Most Trusted Coverage, Or Not, Quinnipiac University National Poll Finds; Tina Fey, Dennis Miller Top Choices To Replace Stewart FOX News offers the most trusted network and cable news coverage, 29 percent of American voters say, when asked to compare the major TV news outlets in a Quinnipiac University National poll released today. But when network news is examined on a case-by-case basis, FOX drops in the ratings. In the comparison rankings, CNN gets 22 percent, with NBC News and CBS News at 10 percent each, 8 percent for ABC News and 7 percent for MSNBC, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University Poll finds. When asked, "Do you trust the journalistic coverage provided by FOX News," 20 percent of U.S. voters say "a great deal" and 35 percent say "somewhat." Scores for other networks are:
NBC News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 46 percent "somewhat;" ABC News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 50 percent "somewhat;" CBS News - 14 percent "a great deal" and 50 percent "somewhat;" MSNBC - 11 percent "a great deal" and 41 percent "somewhat;" CNN - 18 percent "a great deal" and 43 percent "somewhat."
The big winner is local television news, trusted by 19 percent of voters "a great deal" and by 52 percent "somewhat." "FOX News may be the most trusted in the network and cable news race, but they all take a back seat to your local news," said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.
Bill O'Reilly made this the focus of his opening monologue last night.

Knocking off a seminal left-leaning media figure was bound to incur backlash. And so it seems we have our response; Mother Jones is out to off Bill O'Reilly. Late this afternoon, David Corn and Daniel Schulman of Mother Jones released a report suggesting Bill O'Reilly has a, "Brian Williams Problem." They then accuse O'Reilly of saying, "he was in a "war zone" that apparently no American correspondent reached." The intrepid reporting duo began their damning tale by explaining (in a roundabout way, anyway) why they targeted O'Reilly:
After NBC News suspended anchor Brian Williams for erroneously claiming that he was nearly shot down in a helicopter while covering the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly went on a tear. On his television show, the top-rated cable news anchor declared that the American press isn't "half as responsible as the men who forged the nation." He bemoaned the supposed culture of deception within the liberal media, and he proclaimed that the Williams controversy should prompt questioning of other "distortions" by left-leaning outlets. Yet for years, O'Reilly has recounted dramatic stories about his own war reporting that don't withstand scrutiny—even claiming he acted heroically in a war zone that he apparently never set foot in. O'Reilly has repeatedly told his audience that he was a war correspondent during the Falklands war and that he experienced combat during that 1982 conflict between England and Argentina. He has often invoked this experience to emphasize that he understands war as only someone who has witnessed it could. As he once put it, "I've been there. That's really what separates me from most of these other bloviators. I bloviate, but I bloviate about stuff I've seen. They bloviate about stuff that they haven't."
Of course they neglect the various other discrepancies between Brian Williams' claims and reality. Then they go on to make their case.

Hysteria among anti-cop protesters reached a fever pitch in Pennsylvania last night when a man tried to run down cops with his car and was ultimately shot dead. FOX News reported:
Man tries to run over Pa. police, shot dead A man who had posted an online video threatening to kill police and FBI agents tried to use his car to run down officers seeking to arrest him on Tuesday so, fearing for their lives, they shot and killed him, authorities said. Police did not immediately identify the man, who was killed in Upper Darby, in suburban Philadelphia, as officers ordered him out of the car and he appeared ready to accelerate at them as they manned a blockade. Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood said the officers feared the man would kill them and they "did what they had to do." He said five officers fired at the man and no officers were injured.
Kimberly Guilfoyle reported live:

The video of Martha Robertson, the Democratic challenger being laughed at when she lobbed a contrived "War Against Woman" accusation at incumbent Congressman Tom Reed (NY-23), has gone viral. It has been picked up far and wide, and as of this writing has over 92,000 views on YouTube, up from 15,000 when I wrote a post about it on Friday, Martha Robertson “not ready for prime time” after War Against Women debate attack:
The line was laughable not just for the contrived way in which it was delivered, but also because it made no sense to anyone with local knowledge of Tom Reed. He is the epitome of someone who does not wage a war against women. He is known to be respectful and thoughtful both in his demeanor and consideration of legislation. Robertson, once again, obviously was just reading from a playbook, but using it against the wrong person. The “War Against Women” attack was a major blunder according the post-debate this analysis on the TV station that ran the debate: ...
“That shows me that Martha Robertson is not ready for primetime.”
The crowd reaction is being held up as part of a broader national narrative of the Democrats "War on Women" being a laugh line that does not reflect the reality that more and more women are siding with Republicans:

Our reader poll turned up strong support for Jason Mattera confronting Lois Lerner in her neighborhood, including following her to a neighbor's door. Based on the comments to that post, I think the general reasoning in favor was that Lerner deserves to have to answer questions, they do it to us (60 Minutes ambush interviews anyone? SEIU?), and we lose when we don't fight back and hold them to their own standards. The general reasoning against was that we are not like the other side, we need to be better, and it was creepy to follow her onto a neighbors' lawn and to the front door. Asking her questions on the street might be one thing, but running after her is too much. Poll Results Lois Lerner Jason Mattera But Greg Gutfeld on The Fives was not impressed with Mattera's performance, viewing it as counterproductive. Bob Beckel went further (surprise!) and challenged Mattera to a fight. TPM reports:
Conservative author Jason Mattera's ambush of former IRS official Lois Lerner has earned plaudits from certain conservative circles, but it was too much for the gang on Fox News Channel's "The Five." Co-host Greg Gutfeld said Wednesday that the video — in which Mattera chased Lerner around a suburban Washington, D.C. neighborhood as she walked her dogs — pulled off the impossible. "Seriously, that even made me feel bad for Lerner, and I can't stand her," Gutfeld said.... In fact, Beckel was so incensed that he's apparently willing to throw down with Mattera.