While you may have thought the bizarre happening known as Tropical Storm Hilary was due to climate change, the clowns at Fox “News” say the actual reason is that President Joe Biden allowed it to enter the country and result in flooding across portions of California.
At the opening of a Fox show, co-host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery remarked:
“The wrath of Tropical Storm Hilary. Forty-two million desperate souls in the path of the storm, which made landfall in Mexico several hours ago. But they let it right into the country because it’s Biden’s America.”
Fox News literally blamed tropical storm Hilary on Joe Biden.
How’s that for blatant xenophobia? The storm made landfall in Mexico, but Biden just let it come right on in.
Yeah, because now Joe Biden can apparently control the weather but finds it more amusing to let people suffer. Sounds a hell of a lot more like Biden’s predecessor, who tossed paper towels to hurricane victims in Puerto Rico rather than actually do anything for them.
That was all it took to set off righteous anger and mockery on Twitter.
Since they can't dig up dirt on Pres. Biden, they just blame him for natural disasters. 🤦🏼♀️ https://t.co/yGPC6aiaVJ
FFS this is real. When I first saw it I chuckled thinking someone had to have done a voiceover. But noooo Fox I’d actually saying Pres Biden “let the storm in.” I just can’t with these yahoos anymore. https://t.co/ko9evcCTEI
For years now, Fox “News” has suggested that there’s a war on Christians, Christianity, and the Christmas holiday, though the “proof” they usually supply to support such claims is tissue thin and downright laughable.
Such is the case with something Fox host Harris Faulkner said while hosting “Fox News Tonight” on Monday.
Faulkner told viewers, “For those of us who believe, we must be bold in our faith right now. When you gather in public spaces, pray thankfully over your food — even when the server gives you the stink eye or tells the manager that your peaceful grace is triggering them.”
She added, “I had it happen to me. I’ve been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing my head in prayer hands — in America. It’s all good. They don’t deserve my money anyway.”
Faulkner: I've been asked to leave a restaurant for openly bowing my head in prayer hands.. in America pic.twitter.com/oRi9lP0MN6
Did that really happen? Hard to tell, especially since Fox is known to traffic in lies and conspiracy theories. That’s why they recently had to pay $787.5 million to Dominion Voting Systems for repeatedly lying about the 2020 election, which some of its hosts insisted was “stolen” from failed former president Donald Trump, despite there being no evidence to support such a claim.
Twitter users weren’t buying what Faulkner was selling.
Apparently, it's difficult to market a Christian Persecution Complex without bearing false witness–a lot.
— Jack Cocchiarella (@JDCocchiarella) June 6, 2023
Oh yeah, well as long as we’re all making up stuff that totally happened, I was once shot out of a cannon for not wearing a Trump hat at a performance by the London Philharmonic!
We saw something today that millions of us never thought possible: A high-ranking Republican member of Congress went on Fox and actually told the host that she was lying about what she said.
Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) was a guest on “Sunday Morning Futures” when the host, Maria Bartiromo, began criticizing him for the debt ceiling bill President Joe Biden signed on Saturday.
“I want to go through some of the criticism of this bill because some people say it really was different,” she whined, complaining that the bill failed to eliminate funding for 87,000 new IRS agents. She also noted that she was upset the GOP didn’t get work requirements for Medicaid recipients.
But McCarthy was having none of it, telling Bartiromo, “Well, that’s not true, Maria. Maria, Maria, you’re saying things that are not true.”
“We repealed the 1.4 billion they would spend on hiring new [IRS] agents this year, so no new agents are being hired,” he added. “This is scored as the largest cut.”
McCarthy also bragged that he was proud of the fact that both Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) voted against the final debt ceiling package.
“Did we get it in everything?” he added. “No, but we got [work requirements] in welfare that puts people back to work, the core of what we looked for.”
A clearly annoyed Bartiromo retorted, “To be clear, the bulk of that money is still in the bill that the president signed.”
“OK, Maria, Maria, pause for one moment,” McCarthy explained. “Maria, pause for one moment. That was already in law. We do not have the Senate. We do not have the presidency. But we just stopped them from hiring any IRS agents.”
How does a Fox host know she’s a lying liar? When then top House Republican tells her to her face.
Sensing that they were about to lose the $1.6 billion defamation cause brought by Dominion Voting Systems and have the trial be spread across the daily news for weeks, Fox News settled the case Tuesday and agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million fine for damages it caused the company.
NBC News reports:
“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.
“Money is accountability,” said Stephen Shackelford Jr., the attorney scheduled to give opening statements for Dominion on Tuesday.
But while Fox may be able to put the Dominon lawsuit behind them, they still face one hell of a legal and financial gauntlet.
For one thing, the network is still not completely in the clear with the Dominion case, as Former FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann explained on MSNBC shortly after the settlement was announced.
Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis announced Tuesday that he was appointing Delaware litigator John Elzufon to determine if Fox lied during the discovery phase of the Dominion lawsuit.
That led Weissmann to note, “We do have — the judge appointed today, a special master, by the way, that could continue.”
Host Nicolle Wallace then asked Weissmann if that might be one of the things that led Fox to settle so quickly. He replied, “Well, absolutely. Worst case scenario, we don’t know if this is the case, the worst case scenario, the special master has free rein to take depositions anew. And on Fox’s dime. And that means the worst case is that was not inadvertent that somebody said, ‘we’re not producing this,’ or ‘we’re going to produce this late in the day.'”
Weissmann added:
“I think there are ethical lawyers involved and I think when they would hear about that I’m pretty sure they would say, I’m not losing my Bar ticket over this. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t people at Fox who are deliberately keeping stuff away from Dominion. If that’s the case, just to be clear, that’s a crime. To obstruct the case.”
There’s also the matter of another defamation lawsuit. This one has been filed by Smartmatic which is seeking $2.7 billion in damages. That case was given the approval to proceed last month in a New York court, The Guardian reports.
Smartmatic claims that more than 100 false statements were broadcast by Fox News hosts and guests. Smartmatic was falsely said to have been involved in 2020 election counts in six battleground states – in fact, it was present only at the count in Los Angeles county.
Fox broadcast that Smartmatic shared its technology with Dominion, when in fact the two companies had no communication and regarded each other as rivals. Smartmatic was in cahoots with foreign governments in a conspiracy to rig the vote for Biden, Giuliani said on Bartiromo’s show – a claim that the company disputes as false and defamatory.
Fox is far from being in the clear. Their problems are only beginning.
Now that a judge has decided a jury will be empaneled to hear the case of Dominion Voting Systems v. Fox News, the conservative network is about to face a monumental task of defending itself from a $1.6 billion lawsuit without several crucial defense arguments.
That was the topic of discussion Sunday on MSNBC when host Katie Phang spoke with Jeremy Peters of The New York Times.
“Judge Eric Davis on Friday decimated much of Fox’s potential trial defenses, ruling that Fox cannot invoke the neutral report privilege because the evidence does not support that Fox conducted good faith reporting, Phang noted. “The judge is also blocking Fox from using the fair reporting privilege because the statements made by Fox and its guests were not related to official proceedings.”
Peters concurred with Phang, adding, “When the jury gets the case several of Fox’s key arguments will not be available for its lawyers to make.”
The Times reporter then elaborated:
“Several of these will have already been decided in Dominion’s favor because of the judge’s decision on Friday. So what this does is it significantly limits Fox’s ability to mount a defense and leaves for the jury the key question of whether or not there is enough evidence to show that Fox hosts, producers and executives knew what they were putting on the air was false or at least recklessly disregarded information showing that it was false.”
“That is how you get to potentially significant and sizeable judgment against Fox News,” Peters added. “Dominion is asking for $1.6 billion and appears that, unless this settles, which I think it’s highly unlikely at this point, and has already been highly unlikely because Fox appears to be preserving its options for appeal here, this is going to head to the jury and it will be one of the most significant and far-reaching defamation suits against a major media company that we have seen in decades.”
Fox is also facing a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit filed by Smartmatic, an election and software technology company.
The first line of that lawsuit lays out exactly how both Smartmatic and Dominion plan to win their cases against Fox:
“The Earth is round. Two plus two equals four. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris won the 2020 election for President and Vice President of the United States. The election was not stolen, rigged, or fixed. These are facts. They are demonstrable and irrefutable.”
None of those facts are up for debate. And they could wind up bankrupting Fox.
