Dick Morris Shills For GOPtrust On Fox News

The lines between Fox News and the Republican National Committee just keep getting blurrier. The latest evidence that this media giant is in bed with the political party came last night on Hannity and ???. Dick Morris was the guest and he made an overt solicitation for donations to the GOPtrust, a group that bills itself as a right-wing MoveOn.org.

This isn’t anything new, of course. Media Matters has documented multiple occasions where Morris did the same thing on Fox. Last night’s appeal was particularly urgent::

I’ve been pushing very, very hard for a group called GOPTrust.com that is running $1 million of ads in Georgia to elect Chambliss and defeat the Democrat […] It is crucially important that every American who cares about the free enterprise system go online as soon as this show is over, and Alan makes his announcement, and get online to GOPTrust.com and give Chambliss the money he needs to win. Your whole future depends on it.

But the story of this relationship doesn’t end there. As it turns out, Morris is not only fundraising for GOPtrust, he is getting paid by them. FEC reports reveal that the group paid Morris over $24,000 for “email communications.” Morris dismissed complaints of this by saying that what he did is no different from what the New York Times does when taking ads. However, it is completely different. The Times doesn’t run editorials soliciting donations on behalf of their advertisers. And they certainly don’t make television appearances to make pitches for donations for them either.

But this is precisely what Morris has done. And it is not an innocent expression of support for a political ally. Morris openly conspired with GOPtrust to take these actions. In a speech earlier this month at David Horowitz’s Restoration Weekend, Morris related this tale of how he helped fund GOPtrust’s anti-Obama ads. When the group’s director complained that he was broke, Morris said…

“I’ll take care of that, I’ll get on Fox News every five minutes, and I’ll push the GOPtrust.com, and I’ll get you money as long as you raise it against Reverend Wright.”

[Author’s note: David Horowitz is an ultra-rightist provocateur who is known for his racist diatribes against liberals and his targeting of universities and Hollywood as the cesspools of American culture and politics]

So Morris admits that he is raising money for a group that is putting some of that money back into his own wallet. And he is using appearances on Fox News to further his unscrupulous scheme. Furthermore, it is not plausible that Fox News is unaware of their complicity seeing as how candid Morris is about his intentions.

While the Republican Party is licking its wounds following the recent election, it must be feeling pretty good about having an international media empire in its pocket.