Fox News Shamelessly Politicizes Petraeus Resignation

This afternoon Gen. David Petraeus resigned as Director of the CIA with a letter that cited his having had an extra-marital affair.

Petraeus: Yesterday afternoon, I went to the White House and asked the President to be allowed, for personal reasons, to resign from my position as D/CIA. After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair. Such behavior is unacceptable, both as a husband and as the leader of an organization such as ours. This afternoon, the President graciously accepted my resignation.

Despite the specificity of his letter, Fox News immediately began speculating as to the timing of the resignation and suggested that it had something to do with the investigation of the murders in Benghazi, Libya, and his scheduled testimony before congress next week.

Surprisingly, as Fox anchors were rumor mongering about Benghazi, Chris Wallace emphatically shot down such talk pointing out that Petraeus is a man of integrity who should be taken as his word. Wallace went on to point out that nobody tries to cover up political matters by confessing to cheating on their wife. But that moment of sanity was short lived.

The news broke on MSNBC at about 2:51pm ET, but Fox didn’t report it until 3:00. Then they spent about ten minutes stewing in Benghazi sauce without mentioning the Petraeus letter or the affair. It was clear they wanted to clutch onto the conspiracy theory that Obama must have orchestrated the whole thing to cover up his complicity in Benghazi-Gate. At one point Fox’s Trace Gallagher cryptically referred to Petraeus’ reason as “what we will now say is ‘unknown,'” which is evidence that he knew more than he was saying. And even after Wallace’s rational refutation, the conspiratorial ravings continued on Neil Cavuto’s program and The Five.

It simply doesn’t matter what the issue is. If Fox can’t pervert it into something that tarnishes President Obama, then it isn’t news. It couldn’t be more obvious that Fox intends to escalate their journalistic distortions in the coming second term of Obama. But it is repulsive that they would exploit this personal family tragedy as just more scandal bait to titillate their juvenile and easily manipulated audience.

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8 thoughts on “Fox News Shamelessly Politicizes Petraeus Resignation

  1. And to think that not so many years ago they were attacking the left for criticizing Petraeus!

  2. I have a niece in Texas and a sister in Ohio who are just licking their chops because they are SURE that Obama will be impeached for ‘killing those four Americans!’ I guess Bush ‘killing’ thousands was A-OK, while President Obama sending squads in as soon as he could is an impeachable offense. I do wish somehow we could get Fox off the air. They have done more damage to this antion than the Taliban ever could. Anyone else remember after 9-11 when bin LAden was reported to have said that America would be beaten from within: economically and politically? Fox is doing their best to tear this nation apart with their lies. It is traitorous.

  3. The crazy talk on the right never ceases to amaze me and journalism at Fox is nonexistant. They are like a bad comic parody of a news organization. Something like what you might see in a Stanley Kubrick film.

    • This was the most idiotic biased article I’ve ever seen . Do you liberals really believe that it’s just a cooincidence that this affair became public just before his testimony . Hillary won’t be testifying either she’s too busy unfortunately . This story is sickening ! Can’t you Obama worshipers just admit Obama’s been lying through his teeth and he’s doing everything he can to cover it up ?

      • Pat, all shameless politicization goes one way here, get used to it. It’s called liberal hypocrisy and there is plenty to be found here.

        • Oh sure it does, the problem is, it goes the way of fact and evidence. Petraeus’s admittance of an extramarital affair in no way is evidence for any sort of coverup on Benghazi, yet Fox and the guy you are trying to defend are saying that it IS, and their only argument? Conspiracy theories…again!

          One reason why it’s probably better to be on the side which the so-called politicization around here goes is because this side is based on getting the facts and discussing based on those, as opposed to the other “way” that your friend above has taken. That way goes in the opposite direction.

          Tell you what, why don’t you help him in answering the second question I put up, it would make your defence that much stronger if you can.

      • And I’d like to ask you the question in reverse, can you believe that it’s NOT a coincidence? And if so what proof can you show about how a confession by Petraeus at this time about an extramarital affair, something unrelated to the incident, = to a Benghazi Coverup?

        I know the answer to the first question is yes, I believe that the answer to the second question would be long in coming, if ever at all. You own biased partisanship AGAINST Obama is shown clearly here by your willingness to embrace a “not a coincidence” evidence-free position in order to show up us “Obama worshippers” as you partisan right wingers like to call people on the left who not only do not worship Obama but regularly criticism him.

        The difference between you and them? The things they criticize Obama for are gerounded in fact and evidence. Your criticism are grounded in conspiracy and “some people say”.

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