It’s only been one day since the bombshell report that Donald Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. His plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller provided new information about Trump’s collusion with Russia. But already Fox News is spinning it in the most frantically defensive manner possible. And it isn’t just the primetime “opinion” hosts doing it. It’s smack in the middle of the midday “news” block and buttressed by so-called “journalists.”
Mollie Hemingway is a regular guest on Fox News and writes for the ultra-conservative Federalist. Her appearances on Fox are consistently pro-Trump no matter what new atrocity he has committed. So it isn’t especially surprising that she was called upon to help soften the blow of the new wrinkle in the Cohen scandal (video below). What’s surprising is the tack she took to disinform the willfully ignorant Fox viewers. She began with a nonsensical legal argument:
“If someone has evidence of something wrong, then they should bring that forward. But in this country we don’t decide that someone’s guilty and then go on a fishing expedition until they find something that they did.”
Since when do investigators “bring forward” everything they have accumulated prior to the completion of the investigation? She seems to think that law enforcement should tip off criminal suspects before all the evidence has been gathered. And contrary to Hemingway’s suggestion that Mueller is on a “fishing expedition,” he is actually just following the evidence wherever it takes him.
And that’s what’s worrying Fox News most of all. Because the evidence is invariably pointing to the guilt of Trump and his crime family. Facts are stubborn things. And the more that come out, the more trouble Trump is finding himself in. And the more desperate and fearful he behaves. Even to the point of accusing Mueller of McCarthyism. But Hemingway has taken this tactic ten steps further:
“It’s not that Donald Trump was a businessman that we need to find out. We already know that. We know that he’s a global businessman. What was alleged was treasonous collusion, and not just ‘this guy is someone we don’t like so we’re gonna punish him and anyone that worked with him.’ That’s a very Stalinist approach to criminal justice. It’s not how we’re supposed to do things in this country.”
Stalinist? So Hemingway thinks that the special counsel, who is a lifelong Republican, appointed by a Republican Deputy Attorney General that Trump chose, and working for Trump’s Justice Department, is a Stalinist operative? What does that say about the Republican Party – and Trump? Also, this isn’t about whether Trump was a businessman. He was, and really bad one with multiple bankruptcies. But this is about Trump lying about the business he was engaging in.
More to the point, Mueller is following the code of law to the letter. There is nothing remotely resembling the totalitarian methods of Stalin’s dictatorship about this probe. Stalin would have simply ordered his critics executed. Mueller is just asking people associated with the President’s campaign some questions. Oh, The Horror!
What’s more, the only similarities to Stalin in any of this are coming from Trump. He is actually using Stalin’s own words when he calls the media “the enemy of the people.” And Trump has banned reporters from the White House. He has maligned them as “fake,” “stupid,” “dangerous,” “dishonest,” and “sleazy.” He recently imposed a set of behavioral conditions that he is forcing them to follow. Now that is a very Stalinist approach.
Trump’s aspirations to tyranny are evident in all of this, along with his deranged worship of America’s authoritarian enemies like Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. If Hemingway wants to make references to Stalin in her sycophantic defense of Trump she should at least be cognizant of the fact that it’s Trump who is acting out the role of dictator, not Mueller. And if Stalin were around to see this, Trump’s words and deeds would make him proud – and perhaps a little jealous.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
On Fox, The Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway calls the Mueller investigation “Stalinist.” pic.twitter.com/UXIJIs22PN
— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 30, 2018
Clearly the Faux propagandists don’t understand the US legal system. Evidence is collected y a prosecutor, and then presented at a trial. It IS NOT! bandied about by the media to chortle over, dissected and citicized. A Judge or a jury will determine if the evidence is of sufficiency to find a GUILTY decisions.
Do these blow-hards really think they have a place in the decision as to the validity of the evidence?
“But in this country we don’t decide that someone’s guilty and then go on a fishing expedition until they find something that they did.”
Of course, that is EXACTLY what Ken Starr did against Bill Clinton, which is how an investigation into a piece of land turned into a search for a piece of a$$.
And, that is EXACTLY what the FucksPods constantly pulled against Obama AND Hillary.
To FucksPods, a “fishing expedition” is only permitted when NOT against Trump and his worshipers.
It is like a religion, all right. It’s amazing that the MAGAts don’t see themselves as others see them. They are, it seems to me, a lot like the people we have soldiers fighting and dying against in the Middle East. If they can’t have everything, then they will have a scorched earth policy that beheads everyone who is not with them. The Rebublics have NO shame. Not a bit. Bet their Jesus is proud of them for allowing themselves to be manipulated for the benefit of the ruling class and the Pharisees.