Fox News Desperation Grows: As Romney’s Prospects Decay, Anti-Obama Attacks Accelerate

It must be frustrating to be a Fox News producer or editor these days knowing that your professional mission is to advance the campaign of Mitt Romney for president, while Romney himself seems to be working as hard as he can to sabotage any possibility of victory.

Last week was widely considered to be disastrous for the Romney campaign, but what is most notable about the Romney Ticket’s Series of Unfortunate Events is that they were all the fault of Romney’s own missteps. Which makes it all the more curious that he appears to be so completely clueless as to his shortcomings. He told an interviewer that there is not a thing wrong with his excellent campaign and that it doesn’t require any turnaround:

Mitt Romney Campaign Turnaround

Someone must not have conveyed that positive message to the rest of Romney’s staff. As Rachel Maddow noted last night, Romney’s campaign has undergone a steady stream of makeovers, resets, retoolings, reboots, and recasting of messages:

Rachel Maddow Resets

So what does poor Fox News do when faced with such a rolling calamity (as conservative columnist Peggy Noonan described Romney’s campaign)? Well, they litter their reporting with nothing but anti-Obama stories in a desperate attempt to unlevel the playing field and boost Romney’s fading prospects. Yesterday on the Fox News web site the following stories appeared:

  • ’60 Minutes’ interview causes headache for White House
  • Libya latest example of Obama administration downplaying initial reports of terror?
  • Obama heads for taping of ‘The View,’ as UN summit begins
  • Romney accuses Obama of trying to ‘fool’ voters
  • Ryan: President Obama will let Medicare go belly up.
  • Ryan: If Obama ‘can’t change Washington’ we need to change presidents
  • Obama admits some ads go ‘overboard,’ Romney defends campaign in dueling interviews
  • Obama Shifts Further on Libya Strike, Says Attack Not ‘Just a Mob Action’
  • White House: Obama Too Busy for Side Meetings at UN
  • White House pressed on why Obama UN itinerary doesn’t include meetings with world leaders

That’s ten stories with obviously anti-Obama spin. And to make this unfair and unbalanced presentation of the “news” all the more apparent, there was not even one story that similarly treated Romney. Not one. Zero. Zilch. In fact there wasn’t even a single story wherein Romney was the lede. That must be because even Fox couldn’t find anything positive to say about his campaign. Therefore, they stuck to burying Obama in an avalanche of mud.

Meanwhile, on the air at Fox News, they approached their political reporting with a peculiar slant. Just about every story was framed along the lines of “What Can Romney Do To Turn Things Around?” Or “How Will Romney Respond To All The Negative Media?” Or this bit of breaking news: “Gov. Romney Revs Up 2012 Campaign.”

Bret Baier Fox News

These are characteristic representations of Fox News’ partisan perspective. They would, of course, never lead off with a headline like “What Can Obama Do To Maintain His Lead?” The Pro-Romney editorializing at Fox News could not be more transparent. They have gone into overdrive as they recognize the near futility of pulling Romney’s ass out of the fire of his own making. It is almost painful to watch them squirming like worms on a hot sidewalk who know that it’s just a matter of time before they become so desiccated they can no longer wriggle in the sun.

The desperation of Fox News is manifest in their manic hyperactivity to pile on Obama, while virtually ignoring the hapless misadventures of Mitt & Co. And this is the sort of misbehavior that we can expect to increase in the few weeks left before the election. At this point does anyone expect to see any future headlines from Fox praising Obama’s speech at the United Nations or declaring him the winner of a debate? Don’t bet on it.

As the days grow short, so will Fox’s fuse on their rhetorical bombs. The good news is that no one but Fox’s glassy-eyed disciples will ever know there was an explosion because, more and more, Fox’s influence is confined to an insular group of fanatics who can still tolerate their brand of dishonest and disreputable pseudo-journalism.

The Takeaway: Mitt Romney And Barack Obama On 60 Minutes

Alright, so Mitt Romney and Barack Obama appeared on 60 Minutes last night and were interviewed by Scott Pelley. Both interviews were pre-taped and edited to fit into a limited period of time. The questions were nearly identical for both candidates and covered the economy and foreign policy.

So what did the Romney camp choose to focus on the next day? “Bumps in the Road” as the headline on Fox News put it. The headline refers to a comment Obama made regarding the unrest in the Middle East. Here is what the President said:

“I think it was absolutely the right thing for us to do to align ourselves with democracy, universal rights, a notion that people have to be able to participate in their own governance. But I was pretty certain and continue to be pretty certain that there are going to be bumps in the road.”

Obama was plainly describing the difficulties of transitioning to democracy for countries that have been under dictatorships for decades. Romney, however, extracted a few words and then asserted that they were directed specifically at the deaths of the diplomats in Libya. This is a recurring pattern in the Romney strategy which consists almost entirely of taking fragments of Obama’s comments out of context (see Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context). It sheds no light on any issue of substance and is nothing more than a purposeful distraction and smear.

On the other hand, Romney spoke with Pelley about health care and defended his opposition to individual mandates. He asserted that Health care is available to everyone in America and explained just how the uninsured should go about receiving it:

“We do provide care for people who don’t have insurance. If someone has a heart attack, they don’t sit in their apartment and die. We pick them up in an ambulance, and take them to the hospital, and give them care.”

And then we charge them hundreds of thousands of dollars which results in them losing their homes, going bankrupt, being unable to send their kids to school, and not having the funds to pay for other medical needs or, for that matter, food. Where Romney gets the impression that free medical care is available as necessary at hospital emergency rooms is something he never reveals. What’s more, it directly contradicts his position on this issue from only five years ago when he assailed the use of emergency rooms as a health plan of last resort:

“When they show up at the hospital they get care. They get free care paid for by you and me. If that’s not a form of socialism I don’t know what is.”

Mitt Romney Flip Flop

I’m quite sure that he doesn’t know what socialism is, but that’s beside the point. He must know that he is contradicting himself and advocating a practice that he previously rejected in the strongest terms. It also happens that the practice of relying on ERs is substantially more expensive and has far worse outcomes for the patient than access to regular care from a doctor.

If the media comes out of this taking seriously Romney’s whining about Obama using a figure of speech to describe the “bumps” that will jostle the emerging democracies in the Middle East, while ignoring the far more consequential comments and contradictions by Romney that fail to grasp the the health care challenges our nation faces, then they will have demonstrated once again why the public holds the media in such low esteem.

As for the esteem with which the public holds Romney, it just keeps getting lower by the day.

Mitt Romney: The Master Of Mangling Context

The GOP’s candidate of the of the one-percent, Mitt Romney, has built his campaign around a unique strategy: Take everything President Obama says out of context and then try to use it against him. This is a tactic that he has been employing repeatedly in lieu of actually telling voters what he would do were he elected.

The latest example is his feverishly grasping a snippet of something Obama said at the Univision forum yesterday. Here is what the President said:

“I think that I’ve learned some lessons over the last four years, and the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside. That’s how I got elected, and that’s how the big accomplishments like health care got done, was because we mobilized the American people to speak out. That’s how we were able to cut taxes for middle-class families.

So something that I’d really like to concentrate on in my second term is being in a much more constant conversation with the American people so that they can put pressure on Congress to help move some of these issues forward.”

That’s a pretty uncontroversial expression of respect for the American people and including them in the process of reforming government. And it’s something that Obama said since the beginning of his work in national politics. It is, in fact, what “Hope and Change” was all about when he told supporters that “you are the change.”

Mitt Romney latched onto just seven words from the hour-long event and is attempting to attach a meaning to them that bears no resemblance to their actual intent. Those words are “You can’t change Washington from the inside.” Romney has added that phrase to his stump speech along with his promise to affect change ONLY from the inside. That’s not surprising since he has already written off half of the American people as those who “it’s not my job to worry about.” It’s also not surprising that Romney is again exposing his raving hypocrisy, because he has previously said the very same thing about how to change Washington:

Mitt Romney Inside Outside

Let’s recap some of the other out-of-context moments that have become integral parts of the Romney campaign:

“You didn’t build that.” This is a deliberate misquoting of Obama who was actually referring to roads and bridges, not the private businesses that Romney has tried to imply were the subject of the remarks.

“The private sector is doing fine.” This is another misrepresentation where Obama was correctly making a relative comparison of the private sector, which has grown over the past three years, to the public sector, which has been shrinking.

“We tried our plan and it worked.” Here Romney deliberately asserted that Obama was referencing his own record and implying that it had achieved complete success. In fact, Obama has consistently said that more needs to be done and this comment was plainly referencing the success of the Clinton era policies as opposed to the failure of the GOP’s years under Bush’s policies.

“[Obama] removed the requirement of work from welfare.” Romney made this accusation that is directly refuted by the facts. What Obama did was to permit waivers for states that could affirm their progress in moving people from welfare to work, and allowing them flexibility to enhance their programs. It’s a modification that Romney himself had requested when he was governor of Massachusetts.

“I actually believe in redistribution.”This was purposefully clipped from a much longer statement wherein Obama was praising entrepreneurs and the free market, while also seeking to improve the parts of government that provide services like schools, roads, etc.

Those examples illustrate the only consistent component of Romney’s campaign strategy: Rip soundbites from Obama’s speeches and build dishonest explanations around them. He uses this tactic because he has concluded that it is better than trying to explain his unpopular and/or unworkable positions on the economy, jobs, Social Security, foreign affairs, etc. And he still refuses to release more than two years of his tax returns.

Look for more of the same in the next few weeks as Romney gets even more desperate for something to talk about that doesn’t result in his foot winding up in his mouth – again.

The War On Women: Hammering Pelosi In The Head – Literally!

The cretins at Fox News have once again revealed their innate hostility, in general, and toward women specifically. The joint appearance of John Boehner and Nancy Pelosi at a groundbreaking ceremony for next year’s inaugural stage produced a photograph that inspired an offensive attempt at humor by Boehner and a despicable reaction from the denizens at Fox Nation.

Fox Nation - Boehner Hammers Pelosi

The title, “Boehner Cocks Hammer At Pelosi,” sets the scene for the bloodlust that will follow. Directly below the photo, Fox News writes…

“Very funny on-cam moments at the ceremony on the West front of the Capitol this morning. […] As he walked up, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) immediately grabbed his hammer, made a funny face and acted like he was going to hit House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.”

Oh, such funny on-cam moments. I can hardly catch my breath. The GOP Speaker of the House of Representatives pretends to murder the Minority Leader by bashing her skull in with a hammer. Boehner certainly has a sharp wit. And it’s not the least bit disrespectful, nor a veiled sanction of violence against women. What will those scamps do next?

Well, actually, for a sense of how this news was received by the miscreants at Fox Nation, take a look at a sampling of the comments:

Fox Nation - Boehner Hammers Pelosi

This is the character of the Fox Nationalists. They encourage this behavior. As of this writing, they have not removed any of these comments that openly advocate the assassination of an elected American representative, who also happens to be the first woman Speaker of the House in our nation’s history.

It’s one thing for a bunch of ignorant weasels to spew their violent wet dreams on the Internet, but it’s another thing entirely when their platform is the web site of a national, mainstream “news” network. This is not an isolated incident. Violent, racist, and other hateful rhetoric is a regular feature at Fox Nation. And President Obama is frequently the target. Ironically, the Fox Nationalists are also the first to castigate even mild expressions of dislike by liberals.

It goes without saying that these sort of boorish ravings are not the equivalent of the violence we are presently seeing in Libya, Egypt, and elsewhere. However, while the practical manifestation of these ideas is not the same, the mindset is identical. They both view their ideological enemies as subhuman and worthy of death. And they are both directing their anger at American representatives and policymakers. The right-wing in America behaves as if they hate this country as much as Al Qaeda does.

To make matters worse, they have Fox News to help them promulgate those views. It’s disgusting, divisive, and unpatriotic. And, unfortunately, it’s probably going to continue, and may even get worse, after Obama is reelected.

More GOP BS: Video Of Obama Praising Redistribution In 1998 Was Deceptively Edited

It was inevitable. When Mitt Romney started hyping a fourteen year old audio clip that he thought made President Obama look bad, we should have known there would be more to the story. Now, NBC has found the actual video, and it proves that Obama was taken out of context – again. As I reported yesterday


In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.


The new expanded video shows that there was a deliberate attempt to mislead people with the truncated clip pushed by Romney and his pals in the right-wing press. In the video Obama is seen clearly advancing the principles of free markets that conservatives pretend to support. Here is the full statement with the part previously edited out in bold:

“I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot. How do we pool resources at the same time as we decentralize delivery systems in ways that both foster competition, can work in the marketplace, and can foster innovation at the local level and can be tailored to particular communities.

This more evidence that the right simply doesn’t care about being truthful. As Romney’s communications directer said, they will not let their campaign be run by fact-checkers. The GOP has already released an anti-Obama ad that includes the deceptive version of this video. And their official response to the discovery of the expanded version simply ingnores the new information:

“Barack Obama said he believes in redistributing wealth among Americans and his policies over the past three and a half years bear that out. Under Obama we have increased our dependency on government with 47 million Americans on food stamps, record levels added to our debt and gutting work requirements for welfare. Instead of pro-growth policies, the Obama administration says they are relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.”

This is their actual response to the long version of the 1998 video, but they merely repeat the short version and never even mention the corrected context. However, they do lie outright about Obama saying that they are “relying on increased food stamps and unemployment to stimulate the economy.” I defy them to document that charge, but I won’t hold my breath. I do, however, expect them to continue hammering Obama about this video as if the longer version never existed. It’s how they operate. Just lie, and keep lying, and when your lie has been discovered – lie harder.

EMULATING FAILURE: Mitt Romney Adopts The Campaign Strategy Of John McCain

Poor Mitt Romney. The wealthy vulture capitalist who, along with his Super PAC pals has raised and spent more money than any candidate in history, finds his campaign in shambles after a series of embarrassing missteps: The atrocious Republican convention, jumping the gun on statements about Libya, getting caught telling the awful truth to a luncheon for fatcat donors, etc. Romney and his campaign advisers have taken a beating at the hands of the public and their own supporters.

Consequently, Romney has turned to the GOP’s tactical playbook desperately looking for a way to dig himself out of the sinkhole that threatens to engulf him. And he thinks he’s found the answer in a chapter titled, “What Would John McCain Do?”

Mitt Romney Recycles John McCain

That’s right. When you’re in political trouble the best thing to do is always to emulate the tactics of the just prior candidate who lost miserably to an inexperienced African-American senator whose middle name is Hussein. And that’s precisely what Romney is doing.

In response to the devastating video (from way back in May) of Romney telling a roomful of wealthy donors that his job is not to worry about half the country who may be receiving some sort of federal assistance, Romney has begun hyping a fourteen year old clip (video below) of then-state senator Obama expressing his view that public institutions have room for improvement. He speculated about the need for “resuscitating the notion that government action can be effective.”

Obama: “I think the trick is figuring out how do we structure government systems that pool resources and hence facilitate some redistribution, because I actually believe in redistribution, at least at a certain level to make sure that everybody’s got a shot.”

That’s not a particularly controversial comment. He’s talking about the pooled resources of agencies that administer services like housing and schools, which he specifically used as examples. And, technically, all services provided by the government – schools, roads, libraries, public safety, military, etc. – are examples of redistribution of funds obtained from taxpayers to programs that benefit society at large.

However, the take that Romney has put on this has far more sinister implications of socialism and what Romney calls “a foreign concept.” The most obvious corollary would be the circus that surrounded the national joke known as Joe the Plumber. In that citizen encounter Obama uttered the phrase “spread the wealth around,” and created a tornado of right-wing outrage. Never mind that it wasn’t different in principle from Ronald Reagan saying that “a rising tide lifts all boats.” It was an opportunity to miscast the President’s words and throw the mangled result back in his face. Which, by the way, Romney’s crew is also doing with nonsense like “you didn’t build that.”

In addition to this new focus on an old and abridged snippet of audio, Romney has also been recycling Sarah Palin’s classic “palling around with terrorists.” After the tragic and deadly clash in Libya, Romney stepped out in front of the news (and the facts) to accuse Obama of siding with terrorists by saying that he “sympathize[d] with those who waged the attacks.” That repugnant remark borders on charging the President with treason. So much for claims of running a civil campaign.

More than anything else, these recent moves by Romney are an admission that he has already lost the election. Resorting to this type of insane blathering demonstrates the depths of his desperation. He is now firmly committed to losing his race for the White House, while stirring up the mouth-foaming radicals of the Tea-publican Party so that they might prevent massive losses in the House and Senate as well. He’s aiming at pretty long odds with this approach. Ms. Palin and Mr. Plumber didn’t do much for McCain four years ago, and reaching back to salvage tactics that have been proven to fail is not likely to advance Romney’s campaign either.

Fox Nation’s Shameless Politicization Of The American Diplomats Who Were Murdered In Libya

It’s not bad enough that Fox News lies incessantly and engages in ongoing campaigns to insult President Obama, and the millions of Americans who support him, but today they posted an entirely unnecessary triviality that served only to tarnish a day of remembrance solely for the purpose of landing a political low blow against the President.

The breaking news story that Fox Nation was compelled to report was “Obama’s Twitter Feed Hawks Campaign Sweatshirts During Ambassador’s Casket Transfer Ceremony.” What they thought was important about this information is a mystery. After all, Obama’s Twitter account is run by campaign staff, so it’s not as if the President was Tweeting from the Oval Office. But Fox found it necessary to diminish the President’s tribute by juxtaposing two completely unrelated occurrences.

And what makes this all the more repulsive is that Fox’s intent was so pointedly partisan. They obviously never even looked at Mitt Romney’s Twitter feed (or they did but didn’t care) or they would have seen that, at the same time, he was doing the very same thing. He was hawking “a chance to join [him] on board the campaign plane” for a donation to his campaign.

Fox Nation

That sort of unfair, unbalanced, and hypocritical coverage is why Fox has so little credibility outside of the mental deficients who make up their audience. It is just unfortunate that they have to demonstrate their disgraceful lack of decency on a day like this, and that a ceremony to honor murdered Americans was turned into a circus on the Fox News web site.

Fox News Banishes Their Own Polls From Fox Nation

There is a conspicuous trend developing at Fox News that indicates the depth of their desperation in light of the momentum President Obama is enjoying coming out of the party conventions. They are so afraid of an Obama victory in November that they are burying their own polls when the results show Obama leading.

Most recently, the Fox News poll published yesterday gave Obama a pronounced lead of 48% to 43% for Romney. It included a 12 point swing in Obama’s favor by Independents, and the GOP advantage in enthusiasm has evaporated. In virtually every category of voter attitude Obama held a lead: On foreign policy (+15), education (+14), Medicare (+11), health care (+9), terrorism (+8), immigration (+4), taxes (+3), making the country a better place to live (+2), honesty (+11), steady leader (+10 ), the right experience (+7), keeping promises (+4), and strong moral values (+2). Romney led only in helping small businesses (+2) and understanding capitalism (+25).

There has been no mention of this poll on the Fox News community web site, Fox Nation. And this is not the first time that’s occurred. Last month the Fox Nationalists posted the results of a Rassmussen poll that put Romney in the lead. The article neglected to say that three other polls released the same day had Obama ahead, and one of those was a Fox News poll that put Obama up by nine points.

Fox Nation August Poll

The same thing occurred last May when Fox News published a poll featuring an Obama lead of seven points. The Fox Nationalists missed that one as well. But it’s not as if they don’t like to post poll results. Take a look at the frequency with which they publish polls that have Romney out in front:

Fox Nation May Polls

Fox News is acting like a PR agency that is dutifully serving their client. Always hype good news and squelch bad news. It doesn’t change the reality of the electoral contest, but it keeps their audience hypnotized with the sort of disinformation that will eventually bite them in the ass. When Obama wins in November, Fox’s viewers will be stunned, having no idea that Obama was ever competitive. They currently are convinced that he has no chance of winning and that misconception is affirmed by Fox News pundits who assure their glassy-eyed disciples that Obama is toast. Bill O’Reilly even hosted Dick Morris (the world’s worst pundit) to predict that Romney would win big, and to mercilessly rip apart the poll conducted by the people who are paying his salary.

When the folks at Fox are running so scared that they choose to hide the polls they spend so much money on, you know they are trembling severely. More importantly, they are exposing themselves as frauds who are more interested in deception than journalism. But then, that isn’t exactly news.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: Another Imaginary Apology – UPDATE: Romney vs. Reality

UPDATE: Mitt Romney has weighed in on this matter by demonstrating his complete unreadiness for leadership, and a lack of character and diplomacy, with a statement that advances the same lies as Fox News did. He said that it was…

“…disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks. […] It’s a terrible course for America to stand in apology for our values.”

As described below, there was never an apology, and the remarks Romney is referencing were not the Obama administration’s first response – or a response at all – since they occurred before the violence took place. The administration’s actual response was an unequivocal condemnation.

So Romney jumped the gun with a clumsy, political attack on the President without having first gotten all the facts. That’s not a demonstration of the sort of leadership skills required by a prospective president.

The original article (published 9/11/2012 at 6:45pm) begins below.

Let’s start out this edition of Fox Nation vs. Reality with a message from PolitiFact:

PolitiFact - Romney Hotpants

Mitt Romney has been rated as untruthful 68 times by PolitiFact, and 15 of those were “Pants-on-Fire” lies. Three of his fiery pants lies involved the right-wing myth that President Obama has a habit of apologizing for America. It has been proven repeatedly that it isn’t true, but that hasn’t stopped Romney from saying it.

Now Fox News, whose pants are similarly ablaze on this matter, has posted a brazenly false article on their site for delusional wingnuts, Fox Nation.

Fox Nation

The headline said, ” Muslims Attack US Embassy, Burn American Flag on 9/11, While Team Obama Apologizes?” It is true that protesters in Egypt breached the perimeter of the U.S. embassy in Cairo and took the flag down from the pole and subjected it to abuse it. However, there is no truth whatsoever to the assertion that Obama, or anyone on his team, apologized while that occurred.

The protesters were reportedly angered by vague news of either a film being produced in the United States that insulted the Prophet Mohammed, or the antics of deranged pastor Terry Jones, who has promised to burn copies of the Koran. In response to growing anger about the alleged insults, the embassy Tweeted:

“We condemn the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims, as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.”

That Tweet was posted well before there were any protesters at the embassy. So the assertion by the Fox Nationalists that an apology was offered “while” the protest was in progress is an outright lie. And in any case, the Tweet wasn’t an apology by any objective standard. It was, in very literal terms, a condemnation. It begins “We condemn…” That is not a typical way to commence an apology. And who could argue with the message in the Tweet? Is there anyone who favors misguided individuals offending religious believers?

Nevertheless, the Fox Nationalists chose to lie about an imaginary apology; to lie about when it occurred; and to lie by associating it with the President. Clearly they are going for some sort of record for most lies in a single headline.

A Disgusting New Low: Fox News Calls Obama A ‘Pimp’

This is an actual story from the Fox News web site, Fox Nation. The headline, “Obama “Pimp With The Limp” on 9/11,” marks a new low for an alleged “news” organization that has already sunk far lower than any other news organization.

Fox Nation

The “article” is nothing more than the posting of a non-controversial interview (video below) of President Obama by a Miami radio DJ. The DJ is Lazaro Mendez (aka DJ Laz) who uses a sort of nickname, Pimp With a Limp, that was derived from his work as a rapper.

However, the headline used by Fox does not say that Obama was interviewed by the Pimp With a Limp. It simply uses the name as a slur to describe the President. And to top it off it invokes the 9/11 tragedy that had nothing to do with any of this. This is so utterly repulsive and disrespectful it requires no further commentary. But it is unbelievable that Fox continues to be treated as a mainstream news source when they engage in unethical antics like this.