Really? Fox News Thinks Rachel Maddow Is Too Biased To Moderate A Debate

Howard Kurtz, host of MediaBuzz on Fox News, wrote a column today that might have consumed the world’s supply of chutzpah. In the column Kurtz took MSNBC to task for having the audacity to let their biggest star, Rachel Maddow, co-moderate a Democratic debate. Of course, that’s something that Fox has done itself with their hot property, Megyn Kelly, but never mind that. Kurtz is very upset.

Megyn Kelly

The headline of the article asked this pressing question: “Why did MSNBC put Rachel Maddow on the debate stage?” The question was apparently so easy to answer that Kurtz managed to handle it all by himself.

Kurtz: Rachel Maddow did a pretty good job in questioning Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at MSNBC’s Democratic debate last night. (…) She is smart and passionate, a Rhodes scholar with a deep knowledge of the issues. She did not roll over for Clinton during a recent interview on her prime-time show.

Well, with a track record like that she should never be allowed anywhere near a candidate debate. The last thing Fox would want is a smart, knowledgeable, fair person to facilitate a political discussion. That certainly isn’t the way they do it. Fox has taken great pains to make sure that all of their presenters are cut from the same moldy conservative cloth. And yet, Kurtz can still pose this scenario as if it weren’t utterly oblivious to reality:

“Imagine the reaction on the left if the Fox News moderators at a debate were Bret Baier and Sean Hannity, an unabashed conservative. The criticism of Fox for fielding such a team would have been intense.”

Of course, the truth is that Fox’s moderators are unabashed conservatives, which I’ll get to in a moment. But first it is important to note that Kurtz couldn’t simply praise for Maddow without qualifying it by insisting that, despite her evident skills “she shouldn’t have been on that stage as a moderator,” and that “she should not have been put in that position,” because “she is an unabashedly liberal commentator who rips the Republicans every night on her program.”

If that is their criteria for choosing debate moderators then Fox has some explaining to do. Their own debate moderators have included relentless liberal bashers like Megyn Kelly, one of the most stridently partisan purveyors of propaganda on the Republican PR channel (aka Fox News). She spreads more lies about Benghazi than any of her Fox colleagues (and that’s saying something). She was caught leading a discussion that was based on a series of “Fox Facts” that were cribbed directly from a Republican National Committee press release. She made a point of informing her viewers that it was a fact that both Jesus and Santa Claus were white.

Media Matters did a survey a couple of years back that showed that Kelly “has hosted conservatives (56%) significantly more often than progressives (18%) and has surpassed even Fox’s Hannity in its divide between guests on the left and right.” That’s the same Hannity that Kurtz used in his imaginary scenario about unabashed conservatives. And in March she will host her third debate on Fox News.

Also moderating for Fox was Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck of business news. His first question in the debate he moderated asked the candidates which of their economic plans God would endorse. He has made it his mission to castigate low-income Americans as sponges and leeches who are actually living the good life at the expense of the one-percent. He is a committed climate-change denier. And he frequently has segments about alleged government waste that usually turns out to be completely bogus (like this on about the famous shrimp on a treadmill).

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

With blatantly biased moderators like this on Fox, Kurtz has the gall to complain about Maddow, even as he admits that she has all the qualifications for a moderator and that she acquitted herself well. What more does he want? His complaint obviously doesn’t have anything to do with Maddow’s ability to perform with proficiency and fairness, so the only thing left to explain why he would devote a column to this whining is his own bias and partisanship. Or perhaps he was ordered to do it by his boss, Roger Ailes, as a slap at Megyn Kelly’s time period competition. Expect to see more of this Maddow bashing on his Sunday morning program.

WTF? Donald Trump Tells Businesses To Go F**k Themselves (Video)

In the seven months that Donald Trump has been a candidate for the Republican nomination for president, he has succeeded in promoting bigotry, insulting his GOP colleagues, inciting violence, lying incessantly, and demonstrating an abject ignorance of every subject on which he speaks. His campaign has been a textbook example of how to offend and humiliate a political party and a nation. And now he has taken it another step over a line that he crossed months ago.

Donald Trump

At a rally in New Hampshire, Trump was railing against local companies that moved their operations out of the country. This is a standard bit of chum that Trump throws to his bottom-feeders during his stump speeches. But in the course of expressing his distaste for off-shoring, he let loose an awkwardly whispered F-Bomb aimed at the New Hampshire business community.

“We’re gonna bring businesses back. We’re gonna have businesses that used to be in New Hampshire that are now in Mexico come back to New Hampshire, and you can tell them to go f**k themselves because they let you down and they left. We want the businesses that stayed.”

This is the sort of dignified, presidential behavior that endears Donald Trump to his zealous followers. This is the type of character that many Republicans regard as appropriate for national leadership and diplomacy. This is a freakin’ embarrassment. How anyone can take this cretin seriously is a mystery that exceeds any comprehension.

And setting aside Trump’s boorish assault on decency, he doesn’t even come close to making any sense. The problem of off-shoring manufacturing is real and there are effective solutions available. But Trump isn’t addressing any of them. Instead, he is promising companies that return to New Hampshire a profanity-laced tongue lashing after they come back. He is riling up the locals to unleash their hatred on the prodigal employers. That is not exactly the sort of incentive that will persuade a rush back to the homeland. It does, however, illustrate how little Trump knows about international economics and trade. That was also shown as he continued this demented rant.

“It’s hard. We’re the highest taxed nation in the entire world. It’s hard for them to stay and they stay. Those are the ones we have to cherish and love. These people are great.”

So Trump cherishes the great people at the companies that stayed and he hates those that left, and he will tell them so as soon as he brings them back. But he excuses them somewhat by noting how hard it is to stay in “the highest taxed nation in the entire world.” And that would be a good excuse except for the fact that that it isn’t true. Many countries have higher effective tax rates for corporations and the U.S. rate is less than the average of all developed countries.

Not only is Trump wrong, he fails to acknowledge that his own businesses left the U.S. for cheaper labor in China and Mexico. If he wants to bring jobs back to America he could start now with his own suits and ties and other Trump-branded crap without being president. But this hypocrite has refused to do that even after it has been pointed out to him numerous times since he announced his candidacy. In fact, David Letterman pointed it out to him over three years ago

What he hasn’t refused to do is check his undignified conduct and incivility. In addition to this most recent profanity, Trump recently said that he would “bomb the sh*t out of ISIS.” Just yesterday he said “I was going to say [politicians] are really full of sh*t. But I won’t say that.” That was a demonstration of his passive-aggressive verbal abuse, something he used against his Fox News nemesis recently when he tweeted “I refuse to call Megyn Kelly a bimbo, because that would not be politically correct.”

[Update 2/8/2016: At a rally in New Hampshire Trump repeated something someone in the audience shouted about Ted Cruz (video). “She said he’s a p*ssy. That’s terrible,” Trump said, pretending to disapprove and demonstrating once again his oh-so presidential demeanor]

He just can’t help himself. Donald Trump is a classless, ignorant, bigoted, narcissistic, wannabe dictator. He would turn the United States into a reality TV joke. The respect for America that President Obama painstakingly restored following the disastrous administration of George W. Bush would be rolled back to lows our nation has never seen. And he would preside over a cult-like pack of disciples who exemplify the pathetic misanthropes who propped up Hitler.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.