Friday Fox Follies – FBI Fumbles

X Facebook Email Flipboard Pinterest Print Reddit

With just 4 days before the election (THANK GOODNESS!!!) Fox “News” promotes poorly sourced anti-Hillary Clinton FBI leaks, elevates whiny man-boy Tucker Carlson, and becomes more fodder for Megyn Kelly as she prepares for election night and the release of her book the following week. Let’s get right to it.

This morning’s synchronicity is that while reading Meet Donald Trump’s Top FBI Fanboy, about how Rudy Guiliani may have received illegal FBI leaks, he popped up on my tee vee screen for some Fox & Friends Republican Rehab. Of course, he denied getting advance word of FBI Director Comey’s announcement even though As [a] Trump Ally, Rudy Giuliani Boasts of Ties to F.B.I.

However, it’s starting to become clear where this latest FBI story began. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow breaks down how all of this originated in a discredited anti-Clinton book, heavily promoted by Breitbart and the alt-right, and finally picked up by FBI agents, who appeared to have swallowed it whole. Then it’s repeated breathlessly by Fox “News” as if it’s real. Watch:

All of this has led to an avalanche of headlines condemning the FBI and, by extension Fox, for running stories that could be made of tissue paper:

Journalists Blast The FBI For Meddling In 2016 Election • The Daily Beast On How FBI Alumni Are Using Fox News To Attack Hillary Clinton • FBI Director’s Advisor Says Media “Failed, Utterly” In Their Reports On James Comey’s Letter To Congress • Bret Baier Is Serving As A Mouthpiece For Unknown Sources On FBI Stories • ABC News And NBC News Dispute Fox Anchor Baier’s “Inaccurate” Clinton Foundation Investigation Reporting • Fox’s Baier Continues To Push Unsubstantiated Clinton Foundation Investigation Claims As Other Networks Debunk • Fox’s Bret Baier Walks Back Flawed Reporting About “Likely” Clinton Indictment

But, even though there’s no proof whatsoever, Trump Runs With Unsubstantiated Fox News Report To Smear Clinton, while Trump Campaign Manager Admits Walked-Back Fox Report Was Wrong, Then Celebrates “The Damage Is Done” because truth is so over-rated. No fan of Hillary Clinton, Trumpster Jeanine Pirro Blasts Comey: He ‘Disgraces And Politicizes’ The FBI.

Which is why so many have called for James Comey to resign or be replaced.

CLINTON CONTEST CLOSING: With the election just around the corner, there’s been no winner in FFF‘s Clinton Contest for the first person to find a positive story on Clinton on Fox. Here are some of the negative ones:

Fox Showcases Columnist Who Wants Clinton To Withdraw

Fox News Has A Helluva Nerve Trotting Out
Pam Bondi To Attack Hillary Clinton’s Ethics

Fox’s Special Report Segment On “Race
Relations” Was Just An Attack On Hillary Clinton

Fox’s Ainsley Earhardt Hawks Ways For
(Clinton) Voters To Change Their Early Votes

Megyn Kelly Uses Her Kids To Suggest Hillary
Clinton Is Going To Jail And Unfit To Be President

A new Clinton Contest will start the day President Clinton is inaugurated.

SPEAKING OF MEGYN: Just days before she anchors the Fox “News” election night coverage, Megyn Kelly is making news in another forum as Radar Online claims to have a purloined copy of her memoir, supposedly under embargo until the 15th of this month. While this leak doesn’t tell us anything we didn’t learn when the station dumped Roger Ailes, it does provide salacious details.

Megyn Kelly Gone Rogue! Fox News Star
Claims Perv Boss Roger Ailes Harassed Her Too!

“I was approached several times, and several times I refused,” she claims in the book, obtained by Radar.

She insists, however, “There was no way I was going to lie to protect him.”

Ailes vehemently has denied any misconduct. But Kelly claims in the book that he started to harass her, too, in the summer of 2005, a few months after she was hired as a legal correspondent in Fox’s Washington bureau.

She writes that she was informed by her managing editor that she’d “captured the attention of Mr. Ailes” and she was summoned to the first of a series of meetings in his Manhattan office.

“Roger began pushing the limits,” she alleges. “There was a pattern to his behavior. I would be called into Roger’s office, he would shut the door, and over the next hour or two, he would engage in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with me — veering between obviously inappropriate sexually charged comments (e.g. about the ‘very sexy bras’ I must have and how he’d like to see me in them) and legitimate professional advice.”

Meanwhile Breitbart is trying tarnish Kelly where it counts, in the ratings, as Kelly’s contract is still being negotiated:

Megyn Kelly Emerges as Weak Link as CNN
Breaks Fox News in October for First Time Since 2001

Meanwhile, proving she’s right where she belongs, Megyn Kelly Cherry-Picks From Debunked Report To Criticize Guest For Cherry-Picking Reports.

TUCKER TUCKER BO BUCKER: Friday Fox Follies doesn’t write about the biased whiny man-boy Tucker Carlson every week, even though it might seem that way at times. Although he did appear in the very first FFF more than 2 years ago. Several of my previous columns were actually named for him:

Tucker With An “F”

Tucker? Don’t Even Know ‘Er!

The “F” Words

Rewarding his hard work at mendacity, Fox “News” is giving him a show of his own.

Tucker Carlson Gets Nightly Show on Fox News Channel

The hiring underscores recent comments made by members of the Murdoch family, who control 21st Century Fox, noting that Fox News is not backing away from opinion programs that back conservative philosophies in the post-Ailes era. Carlson is co-founder and editor in chief of The Daily Caller, a web outlet that is sort of a conservative alternative to The Huffington Post. Ailes left the network this summer, as part of an ouster related to sexual-harassment allegations levied at him by a range of women, some of whom have worked at Fox News. He has denied the charges.

However, in the article Fox News Lineup Begins to Take Shape, writer Michael M. Grynbaum proves that he’s not read any of my criticism of Tucker “With an F” when he says:

As Fox faces competition from scrappier rivals like Breitbart News, Mr. Carlson, 47, is in some ways a throwback to a more genteel era of conservatism. Preppy and jovial, Mr. Carlson founded The Daily Caller, a provocative, if relatively moderate, right-leaning website, and he has often evinced a mischievous streak; in 2006, he agreed to be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” although he was eliminated in the first round.

Let’s unpack that, shall we?

Carlson is not genteel;
But, he is a throwback;
The Daily Caller is not moderate,
unless compared to Stormfront.

NewsHounds has not forgotten, either. In Tucker Carlson To Become The Permanent Replacement For Greta Van Susteren , Ellen reminds readers:

In case you’re not familiar with Carlson’s work, here are some “highlights” of his work:

He recently referred to Colin Kaepernick as, ““that idiot football player whose name you didn’t mention and I won’t either;”

He mocked “American Indians” who feel that the name “Redskins” is a slur;

He claimed that there really is no such thing as an “assault weapon.”

There’s every reason to believe we’re in for more of the same.

Therefore, while Tucker Carlson Named Fox News Prime-Time Host. Here Are 15 Of His Worst Moments, according to Media Matters.

I can assure you there are far more than 15.

FOXY FRIENDS: Fox & Friends Weekend will have to find somebody new to lie when Tucker abandons that show for his new 7PM digs. Meanwhile, those Foxy Friends continue to go from bad to worse:

Martin O’Malley Back On Fox & Friends
For More Spunky Debate – This
Time About Those G****mn Emails

Right-Wing Media Revive Discriminatory
Effort To Discourage Early Voting

“Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade can’t
understand why Alicia Machado supports
Clinton if she “can barely speak English”

Meanwhile, FFF is promoting a new, surefire insomnia cure for $35:

An Evening With Brian Kilmeade

Are we doing all we can to keep our homeland safe and how can we reduce the deficit and reign-in goverment [sic] spending?

Join Brian Kilmeade as we discuss these important issues and questions resulting from the election.

ZZZZZzzzzzzz

PASSAGES:

Fox News Distribution Boss Tim
Carry to Depart After 20 Years

Fox News Personality Geraldo Rivera
Lists Upper East Side Abode for $7.2M

SEAN SCAMMITY: In his rush to use anything to attack Hillary Clinton:

Fake story about Obamas, Hillary
Clinton ensnares Sean Hannity

Sean Hannity Used Fake News
To Suggest Obama’s Going To Jail

I can’t wait to watch Hannity’s head explode on election night.

FOX BYTES: Fox Contributor Insists Donald Trump Will Be Very Thoughtful And Careful With Nukes • Fox Report On Low African-American Turnout In North Carolina Ignores GOP Voter Suppression • Fox’s Gutfeld: Trump Is A Tornado And Clinton The Trailer Park • Fox’s Maria Bartiromo Helps NC ‘Bathroom Bill’ Gov Pat McCrory’s Reelection Effort

Headly Westerfield also writes about the issue of gentrification in the historically Black Bahamian enclave in Coconut Grove, Florida, among other topics at the Not Now Silly Newsroom.