By: Daniel John Sobieski
I watched the 2020 Republican National Convention on C-Span, largely because the screen is uncluttered with banners and preview windows and they hang around at the end of such events for a while, particularly when President Trump, Vice President Mike Pence or First Lady Melania was the last speaker. I would try to turn to Fox for analysis only to see first up the shining visage of a Marie Harf or a Juan Williams, the DNC mole from a parallel universe that has lately been obsessing about something called “Qanon violence” whatever that is.
Mornings at Fox have not been much better lately with the likes of former DNC Chair Donna Brazile who on Tuesday morning’s episode lost it entirely when questioned about the DNC’s failure to address and accept responsibility for the anarchy, the rioting, the looting, the burning and the deaths resulting from the Democratic Party’s push to empty the prisons, defund and otherwise neuter the police, and to not arrest or prosecute vigorously those perpetrating the violence. As Breitbart reported:
Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends,” host Brian Kilmeade cut away from former Democratic National Committee chair Donna Brazile, also a network contributor, after she derailed a segment with conservative commentator Tammy Bruce.
While commenting on the first night of the Republican National Convention, Bruce said, “No Democratic has spoken out against the nature of what’s happening in Kenosha, Portland, Seattle, Baltimore, New York, Chicago. Americans have a choice, and the fact is that the Republicans are showing an expanse of what the American sensibility and what the American future is.”
Brazile said, “This is why the choir sounds like aa note coming from a scratched record. It sounds like I will never be an American in your world, because, after 400 years, my family cannot walk out of this house without fearing violence.”
Kilmeade said, “That’s not what anyone said.”
After an extended back and forth, Brazile said, “She ignores the reality of what is happening. She is ignoring it because I see it. Tammy, I see it every day. I see the violence, Tammy.”
She continued, “Coming from someone who does not live my existence — you do not recognize my existence, Tammy. You do not recognize my existence!”
Bruce said, “It’s a shame.”
Brazile shot back, “You are the shameful one. You are the shameful one. You cannot erase my history.”
Whatever was she ranting about? No one is trying to erase her history or her version of history. But it is Donna Brazile, not Tammy Bruce or anyone else, who is ignoring the reality of Democratic governors and mayors letting their cities be burned and their businesses looted in anarchy that has nothing to do with George Floyd or any social injustice real or imagined. It has everything to do with seizing power from Donald Trump, canceling our middle class, our culture and our Judeo-Christian system of law enforcement and justice
As it turns out, George Floyd’s “murder” may not be what happened, with a video showing him sitting unmolested in a police car saying he couldn’t breathe and later struggling with police, his body full of fentanyl, three times the lethal dose, and other deadly drugs. So what are the protesters going to do with this news? Rise up en masse, pull some sort of ghoulish Emily Litella double-take and shout, “Never mind?” As the Washington Examiner reports:
The Hennepin County medical examiner said that a fentanyl overdose may have been the cause of George Floyd’s death, court documents suggest.
Chief Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker said there was “no physical evidence suggesting that Mr. Floyd died of asphyxiation,” according to documents obtained by the court as part of a lawsuit from one of the officers involved in Floyd’s arrest, Tou Thao.
As the Daily Mail suggests in its reporting, George Floyd’s death might even be listed as a suicide, based on his reported and documented actions:
An attorney for one of the Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd’s killing claims the black man contributed to his own death because he overdosed on fentanyl during his arrest. …
Lane’s attorney Earl Gray has been trying to get the charges against him dropped, claiming there is insufficient evidence to establish the officer committed a crime.
In a memorandum filed in court on Monday, the attorney claimed that Floyd swallowed a ‘lethal dose’ of fentanyl as he was resisting arrest.
The attorney pointed to bodycam footage of the arrest in which he claims Floyd had a ‘white spot on the left side’ of his tongue when Lane and another officer first approached him following reports he had used a fake $20 bill to buy cigarettes at a convenience store.
Gray has claimed in the memo that Floyd intentionally ingested ‘2 milligrams of fentanyl, a lethal dose’ after Lane ordered him to put his hands up to be taken into custody.
All he had to do is sit in the police car, like every other defendant who is initially arrested. While attempting to avoid his arrest, all by himself, Mr. Floyd overdosed on Fentanyl,’ the filing says.
‘Given his intoxication level, breathing would have been difficult at best. Mr. Floyd’s intentional failure to obey commands, coupled with his overdosing, contributed to his own death.’
Don’t expect to get such reality-based information from the likes of the Fox News lineup of swamp creatures such as Marie Harf, Jessica Tarlov, Richard Fowler, Leslie Marshall. Austin Goolsbee, Richard Hahn, and the poster child for fairness and objectivity, Donna Brazile, who has done this before.
Donna Brazile, the disgraced former DNC leader and newly minted Fox News contributor who leaked debate questions to Hillary Clinton, got away with swearing at RNC Chairwoman Ronna Mcdanion the morning after Super Thursday, as Joe Biden called it, instead of being pulled from the air immediately as Fox would have cheerfully done to any conservative analyst who similarly ranted before telling say, the DNC Chair, to similarly “go To hell.”
McDaniel had appeared earlier on “America’s Newsroom,” and opined that perhaps the withdrawal of Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg and the support of Beto O’Rourke was part of deal-making that included future cabinet positions and other future considerations in exchange for their endorsements and conveniently all showing up together at Joe Biden’s rally before the crucial Texas primary. McDaniel suggested, based on the 2016 nominating shenanigans that perhaps the DNC was once again conspiring to deny Bernie Sanders its nomination for president. This was the partisan analysis of a political operative in an election year, an opinion she was entitled to express, an opinion well-grounded in the historical record.
This struck a nerve with Brazile, who, asked to comment on McDaniel’s analysis, went off on a borderline incoherent rant that stunned Newsroom co-hosts Ed Henry And Sandra Smith who said nothing to correct the record or apologize to an equally stunned audience as Brazile went off the rails:
Ms. Brazile, a Fox News contributor and former interim Democratic National Committee chairwoman, became visibly irate during an appearance on “America’s Newsroom” after co-host Sandra Smith asked her to weigh in on comments made earlier on the program by Ms. McDaniel, who said a potential brokered Democratic convention would be “rigged” against the Vermont senator.
“Stay the hell out of our race,” Ms. Brazile responded. “I get sick and tired … of listening to Republicans tell me and the Democrats about our process. First of all, they don’t have a process. They are canceling primaries. They have winner-take-all. They don’t have the kind of democracy that we see on the Democratic side.
“And for people to use Russian talking points to sow division among Americans — that is stupid,” she continued. “So Ronna, go to hell! This is not about—”
“Whoa, whoa,” co-anchor Ed Henry interjected.
“No, go to hell,” Ms. Brazile repeated. “I’m tired of it, Ed.”
Again, it is hard to imagine a GOP or conservative getting away with this vitriol. Russian talking points? Really? Fox’s idea of analysis is to provide a forum for Brazile to cry, “Russia, Russia, Russia?” So impressed was Fox with Brazile’s eloquent and cogent analysis that she was back in the evening for post-election analysis and on “Fox and Friends” the following morning. This is typical for Fox News who has been veering to the left of late, a recent example being Neil Cavuto’s rewriting of history when he agreed with guest A.B. Stoddard that Trump lost all his 2016 debates with “cringeworthy” performances.
And then there’s Juan Williams, who recently reacted almost as irrationality when asked on an episode of The Five about Democratic responsibility and culpability for urban violence in Democratic-run cities. As the Daily Caller reported:
Juan Williams compared blaming Democrats for ongoing riots and “anarchist violence” to blaming President Donald Trump for “QAnon violence” during a Thursday discussion on Fox News’ “The Five.”
Guest-co-host Martha MacCallum played a clip of a former police officer being knocked down and assaulted on a New York City street.
“This was on 39th street,” MacCallum said. “This is basically midtown in the middle of the afternoon. They pulled 600 police officers off the streets, and now we are seeing this. So is this a mistake for Democrats to ignore this?”
“They haven’t mentioned it once, Juan,” MacCallum said, referring to the ongoing Democratic National Convention.
“There is not widespread violence in American cities,” Williams responded. “Let’s not buy into Donald Trump’s nonsense about American … violent crime in this country is down.”
“Stop it, Juan … You can’t be serious. I’m not Donald Trump. I’m telling you the facts. Every day I tell you the facts, Juan, and you keep shifting it to Donald Trump. It’s pathetic. You need to come up with a new talking point,” co-host Greg Gutfeld said.
Gutfeld continued and said, “the murders and shootings are up,” as Williams continued to speak at the same time.
“This is not anarchist violence by a small group in Portland, Oregon, that’s suddenly being blown into like, ‘oh that represents what is going on in American cities,’” Williams said. “That’s just wrong! That’s just a total distraction. The reality is that Democrats are not responsible for some violent anarchists no more than Donald Trump is responsible for QAnon violence or Proud Boy violence …”
“Qanon violence?” he said while laughing. “That’s funny. There is none. That’s funny. You are hilarious. You are hilarious.”
Again, Juan, what in the world is Qanon violence? Where is it happening? The answer is that it isn’t and doesn’t exist except in the fevered recesses of Juan Williams’ brain. Something on the Democratic talking points Donna Brazile and her cohort of Democratic moles inside Fox missed? Maybe Joe Biden knows. Oh, he forgot.
President Trump has commented on the decline of Fox News as an objective source of information, particularly its weekend lineup. As the Washington Examiner reported:
President Trump criticized Fox News’ weekend lineup, saying they were loading up with Democrats, making them worse than CNN.
“Watching @FoxNews weekend anchors is worse than watching low ratings Fake News @CNN, or Lyin’ Brian Williams,” Trump said Sunday on Twitter. “Like CNN, NBC is also way down in the ratings. But @FoxNews, who failed in getting the very BORING Dem debates, is now loading up with Democrats & even using Fake unsourced @nytimes as a ‘source’ of information.”
“@FoxNews is changing fast, but they forgot the people who got them there!” Trump added.
So it would seem that FOX continues to embrace its latest Democratic heartthrob, Donna Brazile. The continued listing to starboard of Fox News, which rose to prominence precisely because it cut through the politically correct swamp fog that passed as media news just as Donald Trump sliced through the swamp itself on his way to the White House, was on full display on Fox News. It’s time to drain the Fox News swamp as well.
* Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.