Trump's Chick-fil-A Fake Out with A Bunch of Racist Garbage and the Death of O.J. Simpson
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 4/14/24
Last week Fox News tried to make a lot of a completely staged Trump campaign event in Atlanta, while dredging up memories of one of the most sensational criminal trials in U.S. history involving O.J. Simpson and his well-paid legal dream team.
Fox also pushed hatred and xenophobia towards migrants while Jesse Watters made a terrible argument against slavery reparations. The network also aggressively promoted Donald J. Trump’s candidacy for president while trashing President Biden.
Anyone watching Fox News exclusively last week might have missed out on developments in the war in Ukraine, a program to increase domestic production of semiconductor chips and alarming data about climate change.
Shows I covered last week:
Fox & Friends
The Five
Jesse Watters Primetime
The Chick-fil-A Fakeout
When Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015 he hired actors to cheer him on as he glided down a golden escalator in Trump Tower.
Last week Fox News and other conservative outlets featured a story about Donald J. Trump appearing at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta, Georgia to a crowd of adoring Black Americans.
Jesse Watters discussed the story on “The Five” on Wednesday.
“The Chick-Fil-A event. This was an event to behold. Now, everything you've heard about Donald Trump in the press is he's like this dangerous, racist. He waltzes in there, orders food, and about a dozen African-American women flock to him and take a selfie.”
I immediately thought the event looked staged as the Secret Service would have had to have done a sweep of the store before the former President could walk in unannounced.
One woman in the media clip stood out as she walked right up to Trump and embraced him. This was another red flag as the Secret Service would not allow a random stranger to get the close to a former President unless they had already been checked for weapons and cleared ahead of time.
A couple accounts I follow on Threads, Craig Harrison of Media Matters and Oliver Willis of American Independent both posted evidence that the woman in the clip was a political consultant and former Republican staffer named Michaelah Montgomery.
According to reporting by the Associated Press, Montgomery notified a private group chat of students that Trump would be appearing in Atlanta. She received immediate interest in appearing alongside him from around a dozen students.
Later that week she also met with Lawrence Jones to talk about Trump’s appearance.
“And she said this young woman herself, Michaelah Montgomery, she's also the founder of a grassroot political group. The concern of the culture is very welcome,” said Jones.
“People were excited to see him. People showed up in support of him. And people, of course, were from all four institutions within the ABC, the local HBCU community in Atlanta. And they all showed up in support of them,” said Montgomery.
Mark Fuhrman Was So Racist Fox News Hired Him.
O.J. Simpson, former NFL player and actor, died last Wednesday from colon cancer. Simpson is best known for a controversial murder trial where he was acquitted of murdering his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend Ron Goldman.
The trial captivated the country as most Americans thought Simpson got away with murder. Others thought he was railroaded by a corrupt and racist police force. Simpson was later found liable in civil lawsuits for the death of his ex-wife and Goldman. A jury awarded the Goldman family $8.5 million in compensatory damages.
On Wednesday while discussing his death on “The Five,” both Judge Jeanine Pirro and Richard Fowler brought up a key witness in the trial.
“Then there was the undercurrent of racism in this trial that because of Mark Fuhrman, was brought to a head and there were so many people who were very critical of the of the decision by the jury here in this trial that ran for nine months,” said Pirro.
Later in the same segment Fowler also mentioned Fuhrman.
“Despite the evidence, just because of where we were as a country and just how right the racial tension was around the LAPD that was made worse by the Mark Fuhrman tapes that came out in the trial,” said Fowler
Although there were many reasons why legal analysts think Simpson was found not guilty many have said that one key witness that helped tank the case for the prosecution was Mark Fuhrman, then a detective for the LAPD.
Fuhrman found a bloody glove at Simpson’s home along with other evidence presented during the trial. He did not have a search warrant when he entered Simpson’s home which weakened his credibility.
When questioned in court Fuhrman said he had not used racist language in over a decade then audio recordings surfaced of Fuhrman making disparaging comments about Black people including using the n-word.
After the trial, Mr. Fuhrman pleaded no contest to a perjury charge for lying about his racist statements. He was sentenced to probation for three years and fined $200.
Fuhrman retired from the LAPD in 1995 and soon after was hired by Fox News where he still works today appearing as a forensics expert. According to his bio on Fox News he has also appeared on ABC News, CBS and Court TV.
Greg Gutfled Brought up Derek Chauvin when Talking about O.J. Simpson
Later during the same segment Greg Gutfeld managed to find a way to work the police officer who was convicted of murdering George Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed Black man.
“Justice. My lesson here is justice is wholly fallible. If it can be throttled from outside forces, you can't get a fair trial. And that wasn't a fair trial to the victims. So you need to apply that lesson to now. We are in a political and a social and emotional climate where getting a fair trial is hard to get.
And as much as you hate Derek Chauvin, right, you still know that trial wasn't fair. Thanks to the documentary ‘The Fall of Minneapolis.’ And Michael Avenatti agrees that there's no chance for a fair trial for Trump in New York. Or else the proponents wouldn't mind if you moved it outside of New York. So what I learned, it's not about the evidence in the trial.
It's where you present it. It's not about what's inside the courtroom. It's about what's outside the courtroom and how it applies pressure to the judge and the jury, whether it's the threat of public chaos or media outrage. The O.J. trial showed us what would in what could come when the court of public opinion trumps the actual court of law. That jury made a political decision.”
“The Fall of Minneapolis’ is a largely debunked documentary made by Liz Collin, a journalist who is married to the disgraced former Minneapolis Police Federation President Bob Kroll.
Kroll has been banned from serving as a police officer or working with law enforcement for 10 years after the ACLU of Minnesota reached a settlement with Kroll over his role in the "police violence against demonstrators" during the 2020 protests.
Judge Jeanine stirs up Xenophobia
One Wednesday on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine spewed a bunch of hatred and fear about immigrants.
“Joe Biden has made us a third world country. Never in the history of this country have I seen people, especially in New York City, living the way they're living now, where the illegals are coming here. We're greeting them on busses, we're flying them in. They give us this false you know, I have to ‘I'm being persecuted. Give me asylum.’ We shake their hand, we give them a goody bag. They come in, they take a goody bag, and they steal everything they can from CVS. They beat up the employees at Target and at Macy's. Then they assault the police, resist arrest. There's a trail of destruction, economic devastation.
And by the way, I don't think this issue got enough attention. Do you know that murders are down in Venezuela? The hot that more the lowest they've been in 20 years. So maybe Donald Trump isn't so wrong about people emptying out prisons because our crimes are going up and theirs are going down. And everything about what Joe Biden has done is defying the American law, whether it is entry to this country, staying here. And obviously, we've got to not only make sure that they are bailed whenever they're arrested, but we've got to deport them.”
Clutch Your Pearls - Biden Said Something About the Federal Reserve
On Thursday on “Fox & Friends,” Jackie DeAngelis, of Fox Business, expressed her outrage that President Biden might be trying to influence the Federal Reserve.
“So he's standing there and he's promising the American people that we're going to get a rate cut, although he says we don't know what the Fed would do. But Joe, are you pressuring the Fed by putting that out there?” said DeAngelis.
This was especially amusing to me since Donald J. Trump has a long history of disparaging and brazenly trying to get the Federal Reserve to do his bidding. The Fed is supposed to act like a completely independent governing body especially in terms of monetary policy - adjusting interest rates.
“I believe the Fed is very political. It's become very political,” said Trump on September 16, 2016
“I don't necessarily agree with it because he's raising interest rates. I'm not thrilled because, you know, we go up and every time you go up, they want to raise rates again,” said Trump on July 19, 2018
“The Fed is making a mistake. They're so tight. I think the Fed has gone crazy, but I think the Fed has gone crazy. Okay. Well, I'll see you in a little while. I really disagree with what the Fed is doing,” said Trump on October 11, 2018
“I did this despite a near record number of rate increases and quantitative tightening by the Federal Reserve since I won the election. Eight increases in total, which were, in my opinion, far too fast an increase and far too slow,” said Trump on November 19, 2019
Jesse Watters - Black People should Get Over Slavery - We Had a Civil War!
Last week Rep. Jazmine Crockett (D-TX) made a comment about reparations on “The Black Lawyers Podcast.” Crockett said she heard a celebrity say that in place of reparations, Black Americans might receive a temporary break from paying taxes.
“One of the things they propose is black folk not have to pay taxes for a certain amount of time,” said Crockett, adding, “I don’t know that that’s... necessarily a bad idea.”
She also said that many lower-income Americans already don’t pay taxes then inferring that a tax break wouldn’t help them.
About 40% of U.S. lower income households don’t pay individual income tax but that doesn’t mean they don’t pay taxes. Lower income Americans avoid paying individual income tax receiving more tax credits such as the child and earned-income credits.
If the value of refundable tax credits exceeds total taxes owed, the excess can be paid out to the taxpayer in the form of a tax refund.
Lower income Americans also pay taxes in the form of payroll taxes if they are employed, state, sales and local taxes. If they own property they also pay real estate taxes. According to the Tax Policy Center about 60% of the lowest income Americans pay payroll taxes.
According to the Pew Research Center the most recent tax cuts by George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump have benefitted the highest earners not lower income Americans.
Crockett’s remark didn’t include any specifics about who might be included in a tax break plan and it didn’t seem like she was proposing any legislation. It was an off the cuff comment. Fox News took her statement as if she was proposing a bill on the floor of the House.
On Wednesday on “The Five,” Jesse Watters made an incredibly strange argument about slavery reparations.
“I always thought that if there were 750,000 Americans who died in the Civil War to give freedom to African Americans. And that's a lot of death. Now they want 170 years later, they want a check. That's an amazing ask. An amazing ask after all that death. That's the deadliest war in American history. And so if it takes an apology, that's something that I'm sure the United States would do.
I don't see why they haven't done it already. Offer an apology. But I would ask, do you want a check for a few thousand dollars, or do you want a father who's in your life and married to your mother? Because if you have a father in your life that checks gone after you, cash it, you will. If you have a father. That is the single most determinative factor in financial success in this country. And that's what it should be about,” said Watters.
Although there is some debate over the total number of troop casualties most historians have settled on about 620,000 deaths with 360,222 Union and 258,000 Confederate deaths. Of those Union deaths about 40,000 soldiers were Black Americans. Watters conveniently lumps all of these casualties together.
The total number of deaths in the Civil War was about 2.5% of the population. In contrast enslaved people made up about 13% of the population.
The slave trade in the United States started in 1619 when 20 Africans were brought over by a Dutch ship to the British colonies. Over the course of the next 200 years roughly 600,000 African slaves were imported into the what would become the United States.
Although Congress banned the slave trade in 1808 it did not ban the practice of slavery and by the time the Civil War started the U.S. was home to 4 million enslaved people.
Following the Civil War Black Americans were deprived of voting rights in many states due to Jim Crow laws. They also faced harassment, discrimination, and racially motivated violence.
Red-lining destroyed urban areas while banks denied Black Americans housing loans and other means to gain wealth and stability. Black Americans make up a disproportionate amount of incarcerated people in the United States.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Updates to the Israel-Hamas War
The IDF said that 468 aid trucks entered Gaza, the largest single-day aid delivery since conflict started six months ago.
PBS produced a segment on how Palestinians are celebrating the Muslim holidays of Ramadan and Eid al-Fitr during the Israel-Hamas conflict. The segment focused on Palestinians inside and outside of war torn Gaza.
Updates in the War in Ukraine
Russia and Ukraine blamed each other for drone attacks on a nuclear power plant. Although the plant was built by Ukrainians it is currently in Russian occupied territory.
The Ukrainian Defense Ministry Main Intelligence Directorate has confirmed that Ukraine hit an aviation training center just across the Russian border.
David Cameron, the British Foreign Secretary, met with President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He also met with Congress on Tuesday where both Blinken and Cameron urged lawmakers to approve new military aid for Ukraine.
PBS produced a segment about how the Russian military has targeted both the Ukrainian Orthodox Church and Protestant churches throughout Ukraine. The Russian government views any faith other than the Russian Orthodox Church as a threat to its sovereignty.
Ukraine’s parliament passed a new controversial law that is meant to boost conscription and prevent draft dodging as the war drags on.
Russian airstrikes destroyed a major power plant outside of Kyiv.
Climate disasters
Flooding in Central Asia and Southern Russia has killed dozens of people and caused hundreds of thousands to evacuate to higher ground. The flooding has been caused by excessive rain which most experts have linked to man-made climate change.
An EU Human Rights court found that the Swiss government has not done enough to protect its citizens from the negative effects of climate change. More than 2000 senior-aged women filed the lawsuit.
The EU Copernicus Climate Change Service found that this past March was the hottest March on record and last 10 months ranked as the world’s hottest on record.
The Vatican issued a 20-page doctrine condemning surrogacy and transgender ideology. It put them both on par abortion and euthanasia.
Over 100 people died in a ferry accident off the northern coast Mozambique. The boat was overloaded with people fleeing an alleged cholera outbreak. The panic was caused by misinformation.
The Biden administration announced $6.6 billion to ensure that state of the art semiconductor chips are manufactured in the U.S. During the pandemic shortages of foreign made semiconductor chips caused problems across the supply chain especially in the auto industry.
Uber and Lyft have said they will both leave the Minneapolis area after a minimum pay ordinance for ride-share drivers that the city council voted to approve last week.
The EPA will require 200 chemical plants to reduce pollution that is likely to cause cancer. An appeals court upheld a decision that would allow the state of California to have its own emissions standards.
The train company Norfolk Southern reached a $600 million settlement with the residents of East Palestine, Ohio. The company is responsible for a train derailment that resulted in a controlled burn of toxic substances in 2023.
Last week marked the 30th anniversary of the genocide in Rwanda. An estimated 800,000 people were killed by government-backed extremists. PBS produced a segment that went into the history of the racially motivated killings and how the country has moved forward.
The European Parliament voted in favor of a a major overhaul of laws regarding migration after years of deadlock. The package aims to spread to burden of immigration across all of the EU states and provide better pathways for asylum seekers while providing an easier method to deport unsuccessful claimants.
Six former police officers in Mississippi were given prison sentences from 15 to 45 years for torturing Black men as part of what they called “the Goon Squad.”
Track and Field becomes the first Olympic sport to offer winners prize money. Gold medalists will receive $50,000 in the Paris Olympics.
The EPA issued new standards for the removal of forever chemicals from U.S. drinking water.
PBS produced a segment as part of its America at a Crossroads series that explored the political divide between rural and urban America.
The Biden administration tries to close the gun show loophole that allows some buyers to purchase firearms without a federal background check.
Shohei Ohtani's former interpreter has been criminally charged for stealing $16 million from the MLB player.
The U.S. Navy engaged with joint drills with Japan and the Philippians. The Prime Minister of Japan also met with the Biden admin. last week. The diplomatic and military partnerships were meant as a sign of strength against China’s increasing aggression towards its neighbors.
The Russian government has employed a political influence campaign to attempt to meddle in European elections. The scandal revolves around a website called Voice of Europe that critics say is covert propaganda and a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.
Akebono, an Hawaiian born Sumo wrestler has died at the age of 54. He was the first foreigner to attain the highest ranking in Japan's national sport. He died of heart failure in a Tokyo hospital.
Robert MacNeil, co-founder of the “MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” died at the age of 93. The show MacNeil founded went on to become the PBS NewsHour. Robert MacNeil, known by many as Robin, rose to fame during the Watergate scandal. He was the co-anchor of the “MacNeil/Lehrer Report,” for 20 years.
The entire week cut down to size. Really like it. I probably could stop reading my daily stuff and make Tuesday my catch-up day. Save me a lot of time.
Interesting about Mark Fuhrman. I was wondering what happened to him. While I don’t think he rigged the investigation, didn’t help that he lied and was recorded doing it. I think Juice was getting off unless they had a witness or video of the crime.
Now detox from all the Fox BS. It’s got to take a toll. Just look at all the MAGA nuts.