Fox News: All Hunter Biden All the Time, Cocaine Sharks and RFK Jr. is Our Democrat!
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News media for the week ending 7/30/23
While inflation continues to fall, the economy grows more than expected, and unemployment remains low Fox News has decided to put most of its energy into every aspect of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings and drug addled past.
Fox News has become the Hunter Biden show. Segments about the president’s son took up 39% of the airtime on the shows I covered last week. Hunter Biden has dominated Fox News coverage for two weeks running.
Although Hunter Biden’s plea deal on tax and gun charges was rejected in court last week, no one has connected him or his father to any of the nefarious plots involving money laundering, bribery, influence peddling, or financial crimes that House Republicans, federal prosecutors and the Department of Justice have been investigating for years.
The Hunter Biden scandal remains very much an innuendo mixed with clues from emails, text messages, documents, photographs, and bank records that aren’t related but are supposed to add up to the crime of the century.
In the brief instances when Fox News anchors weren’t talking about Hunter Biden, they were giving tepid praise to Robert Kennedy Jr., denying the existence of climate change or saying horrible things about slavery and the Holocaust.
As usual the network ignored several international conflicts, neglected to report on major climate disasters and advancements for green energy technology.
Shows I covered last week
Fox & Friends
The Five
Hannity
Summer is Hot! Look There’s a Cocaine Shark!
On Monday while sitting in for Judge Jeanine Pirro on the “The Five,” Katie Pavlich summed up the network’s attitude towards climate change in one short statement.
“I think that the it's too hot outside. Everyone to be terrified is like the slow news cycle summer shark story. Yeah, like it's summer, It's hot,” said Pavlich.
And she was correct as the word ‘shark’ appeared 20 times in the transcripts of the shows I analyzed.
On Wednesday Steve Doocy remarked about the extreme heat in Phoenix, Arizona right before he introduced the morning weather segment.
“The city of Phoenix is still baking in an oppressive heat wave, seeing temperatures above 110 degrees for 25 straight days. Meanwhile, the waters off of South Florida are feeling just actually like a hot tub. Ocean temperatures over 100 degrees on back-to-back days in Manatee Bay in Everglades National Park. Senior meteorologist Janice Dean is here with her Fox weather forecast. And Janice, they've never seen wet weather that hot causing the water to be that warm ever,” said Doocy.
Of course, there was no acknowledgement that climate change might play a role in the intense heat, but Janice Dean did give a hint about how it might affect the intensity of hurricanes.
“You can't even get into the water to escape the heat. The thing that I'm concerned with is because we've got that warm water along the coast when it comes to hurricane season. That is like fuel for these storms. We could see some rapid intensification,” said Dean.
Dean’s comment was subtle but when hurricane season does hit Fox News will likely trot out a cavalcade of bogus experts who will insist that the warming planet plays no role in the intensity of storms.
On Friday on “The Ingraham Angle” Laura Ingraham and her guest Ned Ryun, CEO of American Majority just parroted classic climate change denialism rhetoric.
After playing a clip of U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres
“Climate change is serious. It is terrifying and it is just the beginning. The idea of global warming has ended. The era of global boiling has arrived,” said Guterres.
Laura Ingraham shrugged.
“That was boiling, by the way. Global boiling. That's. That's where we are,” said Ingraham.
Ryun then responded with a tired myth about climate change that has been pushed for decades.
“This is it is a hoax. It is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate people into a state of fear, to have them give more control over to a ruling elite who would take this hoax and enforce it through a whole host of means. But it's a hoax. And yet they continue to push it in hopes that we'll surrender to them, and we will not,” said Ryun.
Ryun didn’t offer any specifics or proof any any hoax. What would surrender mean? Who would benefit from this hoax? Who is the ruling elite?
Jesse Watters’ Wild Claims About Hunter Biden
On Thursday on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Jesse Watters began his show with a bold declaration.
“Primetime has just discovered that the Biden family, possibly Joe Biden himself, has offshore bank accounts. Here's James Comer,” said Watters.
He cut to a clip of Rep. James Comer (R-KY) on “The Verdict Podcast.” The producers of “Jesse Watters Primetime,” did not indicate the date of podcast broadcast.
“With Joe. I suspect there are offshore accounts. The IRS whistleblowers confirm when I asked if they had documents pertaining to foreign accounts and they said they did what they could and turn them over to us, they have to go through that process and turn it over to the Ways and Means Committee. And I requested they do that. And they said they would,” said Comer.
Watters cut in with a look of excitement across his face.
“Let that sink in. IRS whistleblowers have indicated that they have documents suggesting that the Biden family, possibly Joe Biden himself, are hiding money offshore. These IRS whistleblowers have been asked to produce the documents relating to Biden's offshore bank accounts relating to the House and Means Committee. Now, these documents can't go to Comer. They have to go to House Ways and Means because they're the only committee permitted to see it. Sources tell Primetime they have not seen the documents yet, but when they do, it goes through a vote and then the documents will be released, said Watters.
Watters has no proof of anything but that was a strange way of admitting it to his audience.
Jessica Tarlov Explains the Hunter Biden Failed Plea Deal
On Wednesday Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected Biden’s plea deal on tax charges. During the hearing it was revealed that Biden’s legal team and the prosecutors were not in agreement on all terms in the deal. The judge was also concerned how the gun charge was linked to the tax charges.
Fox News took this as a major blow for Hunter and his legal team.
On Thursday on “The Five,” Jessica Tarlov, the liberal for the show that day, weighed in on the ruling.
“I was watching Stephanie Ruhle last night. She had on Joyce Vance, who was a U.S. attorney, and she said that the judge asked all the right questions, that this was a completely appropriate response to it and that there were things in the deal that hadn't been made public yet. So I'm not seeing the outrage about it.
It'll be interesting when so David Weiss, the U.S. attorney that handled this case, wants to set the record straight because there are a lot of people, it seems like, lying about what happened there. So he'll be testifying before the Oversight committee. Get your popcorn ready. I assume that he's going to defend the deal and how all of this was handled.
But I'm I'm not concerned. And I think, you know, it's great that the White House has said absolutely no pardon,” said Tarlov.
RFK Jr. is Fox’s Favorite Democrat
Robert Kennedy Jr. is so prominent on Fox News this is the second week in a row he was included in the top five topics for the network.
On Tuesday Sean Hannity dedicated a full hour to a town hall for the presidential candidate. Although Hannity did push back on a few points it was an extended softball interview.
On Wednesday on “The Five,” Dana Perino had a series of backhanded compliments for the candidate.
“Chaos loves a vacuum, right? And so RFK Jr. is filling that spot. I've always maintained that if RFK really wants to be president, he should run as a third party because in the Democratic primary he's not going to win. It's just not like the Democrats don't like him. A lot of Republicans might like are conservatives or people who are unaffiliated to 40% of the country says they're independent.
They're not Republicans or Democrats. And he could speak to them. And I just don't understand. I understand why he doesn't. There is family tradition. And that is a big deal to leave your party. But there's some people today saying, wow, even The Boston Globe went against him. The Boston Globe's been going against RFK for quite a long time.
Even members of his own family have been going against him. But I think this shows the fact that RFK is a little bit he has shades of Bernie Sanders where you can give Joe Biden a really hard time. But when it comes down to it, the Democratic machine, the party is going to stick with their frontrunner,” said Perino.
Florida Teaching Standards About Slavery - Jesse Watters Weighed In
Vice President Kamala Harris recently shared her opinion about Florida’s middle school teaching standards regarding Slavery. Her statements included,
"They push forward revisionist history," and “They want to replace history with lies.”
The new standards were approved by the state education board led by two African American scholars. The controversy about the new standards involved a line in a 216 page document that included the following phrase.
“Instruction includes how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit."
On Monday on “The Five,” Jesse Watters took a strong stance on Harris’ comments about the proposed curriculum.
“Ask the African-Americans watching right now, what's it like to be lied to by Kamala Harris? What's it like to be lied to by these buffoons on MSNBC who didn't read the curriculum or The View? Have no idea what the story is, have no idea what's going on down in Florida. And they act upset. They act enraged on your behalf based on a lie.
I have the African-American Ph.D. who we just heard from. Dr. Allen is going to be on the show tonight. I mean, he says this right here. This is well documented among historians. This is historical fact that slaves did develop skills while they were enslaved and then use those skills as blacksmiths, as in agriculture, tailoring in the shipping business to then use to benefit themselves and their families once they were freed.”
Of course Watters seems to miss that most slaves were never freed. Several generations of human beings live their entire lives in the bondage of slavery. Any skills they learned would only benefit the people who owned them like chattel.
Greg Gutfeld Made a Horrific Comment about the Holocaust
During the same discussion about the new Florida education standards things veered off into an incredibly dark path. Jessica Tarlov argued that the idea that slavery being beneficial was like saying the Holocaust was somehow beneficial to Jews.
“I'm just fundamentally uncomfortable with this sentence that blacks benefited at all from this. And, you know, it made me think of someone obviously, I'm not black, but I'm Jewish. What someone say about the Holocaust, for instance, that there were some benefits for Jews, right, while they were hanging out in concentration camps. You learned a strong work ethic, right? Maybe you learned a new skill,” said Tarlov.
Greg Gutfeld interrupted her abruptly.
“Did you ever read “Man’s Search for Meaning?” Vic Frankel talks about how you had to survive in a concentration camp by having skills. You had to be useful. Utility. Utility kept you alive,” said Gutfeld.
I posted a clip of this exchange on Twitter and it ended up going viral and getting 6.7 million views according to the metric on the social media platform.
A couple hours after I posted the video the Auschwitz Memorial posted a statement about Gutfeld’s comment.
Auschwitz Memorial Statement
“While it is true that some Jews may have used their skills or usefulness to increase their chances of survival during the Holocaust, it is essential to contextualize this statement properly and understand that it does not represent the complex history of the genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. Viktor Frankl's observation about the specific situation in Auschwitz, which at some point became a camp that connected the functions of a concentration camp and extermination center and where deported Jews went through the selection process, highlights how some Jews became registered prisoners and might have used their skills to gain favor or prolong their lives in that particular setting.
Yet, it never gave them complete protection. However, we must not overlook the larger picture of the Holocaust. Nazi Germany's ultimate goal was to exterminate all the people it considered Jews (Nazis created their racial definition of a Jewish person). Millions of Jews were brutally murdered in execution sites, mainly across the east of occupied Europe, with entire communities wiped out regardless of their usefulness or contributions to society. While some of the ghettos seemed to have the goal of being productive and Jews were used as slave labor there, being "useful" did not guarantee safety, as the Nazis eventually decided to liquidate them, leading to the murder of those considered valuable as well. There were no selections in extermination camps, such as Treblinka or Sobibor, and almost all deported Jews were murdered upon arrival, irrespective of any perceived usefulness.
Being skilled or useful did not spare them from the horrors of the gas chambers. Furthermore, during the final stages of the Holocaust, as the Nazi system was collapsing, concentration camp prisoners were evacuated to shrinking camp systems, resulting in the death of many. In these circumstances, being useful did not offer protection either. Therefore, while it is accurate to acknowledge that some Jews may have survived temporarily due to their perceived usefulness, it is crucial to remember that the Holocaust was a systematic genocide with the ultimate aim of exterminating the entire Jewish population. It would be more appropriate to say that some Jews survived the Holocaust because they were considered temporarily useful, and the circumstances of the Nazi regime's collapse prevented their murder. We should avoid such oversimplifications in talking about this complex tragic story.”
After the Auschwitz Memorial posted its remarks on Twitter the White House issued a statement.
White House Statement
“What Fox News allowed to be said on their air yesterday—and has so far failed to condemn—is an obscenity,” said deputy White House press secretary Andrew Bates.
“In defending a horrid, dangerous, extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of Americans who suffered from the evil of enslavement, a Fox News host told another horrid, dangerous, and extreme lie that insults the memory of the millions of people who suffered from the evils of the Holocaust,” he added.
“Let’s get something straight that the American people understand full well and that is not complicated: there was nothing good about slavery; there was nothing good about the Holocaust. Full stop,” Bates concluded. “Americans deserve to be brought together, not torn apart with poison. And they deserve the truth and the freedom to learn, not book bans and lies,” said Bates according to reporting by CNN.
The ADL Statement
“It is not clear from Gutfeld’s comments if he is arguing that Jews learned skills in the Holocaust, or that Jews who had skills had a better chance of staying alive. The latter is something that is well-documented, while the former is nonsense. That said, many millions of Jews, who, in Gutfeld’s words, had “utility,” were still murdered,” according to reporting by The Daily Beast.
Accusation of Defamation
Six days after I posted the tweet that contained this clip Gutfeld took to Twitter to accuse me of defamation. In a series of rambling tweets, he said that I was “accusing him of a horrible thing.”
Defamation would have to include false information and there was nothing false about the clip that I posted on Twitter. The comment was not taken out of context. It was not altered in any way or edited to change the meaning of Gutfeld’s statement.
The context of his remark is not changed even in the full context of the 13-minute clip in which it appeared on “The Five,” as it was the only time the Holocaust was mentioned.
New Charges for Trump
Fox News spent 3% of its coverage for the new charges in the Trump classified documents case. On Friday Laura Ingraham summed up the network’s attitude about the new charges against the former president.
“And while there is no indictment yet, they did get their distraction. The media did. It was reported just moments ago that the DOJ added new charges related to Trump's retention of classified documents,” said Ingraham.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I watched on Fox News with five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following is a list of stories the PBS covered that Fox News did not.
The Israel Knesset, (the equivalent of Parliament) passed the first of a series of laws that would limit the power of the Supreme Court. Immediately following the bill’s passage massive protests broke out all over the country with critics saying limiting the court will weaken Israel’s democracy.
Three Hamas gunmen were killed by Israeli forces after the men opened fire on the soldiers from a car in the occupied West Bank.
Extreme heat and windy weather have both contributed to a series of wildfires spreading across Greece. In recent weeks over 667 fires have erupted or roughly more than 60 a day in nearly every part of the country.
Wildfires also broke out in Sicily, Algeria, Croatia, Spain, Portugal and other parts in the Mediterranean area. In Algeria the fires have caused the death of 34 people.
Ukrainian grain silos were destroyed by Russian missile strikes. The areas hit played no military role in the conflict. Russia claimed two drones hit commercial buildings in Moscow. There were no injuries. Ukraine did not claim responsibility for the attacks.
Russia promised free shipments of grain to six African countries at a two-day Russia-Africa summit. The Wagner rebellion leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, was also present at the African summit in St. Petersberg. It was the first confirmed sighting of Mr Prigozhin in Russia since his failed mutiny.
Spain faces political uncertainty as no party won enough votes to form a government in its last round of national elections. The far right Vox party largely failed winning only 33 seats out of 350 Deputies.
A new survey by Everytown for Gun Safety, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and American University's Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab found that Americans between the ages of 14-30 support stricter gun laws. In those surveyed about 40% knew at least one person who had been injured by a gun.
The Chinese government named veteran diplomat Wang Yi its new Foreign Minister after replacing Qin Gang after a mysterious one month absence.
Russia has refused to reinstate a deal with Ukraine that would allow the country to export grain through Black Sea ports.
President Biden announced news steps to help increase access to mental health care that would require insurers to offer the same level of mental health benefits as physical health benefits.
This week President Biden signed a proclamation establishing the Emmett Till and Mamie Till-Mobley National Monument in Mississippi and Illinois. Emmett Till was killed in a brutal lynching at the age of 14 for allegedly whistling at a white woman.
Seven automakers - BMW, GM, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Mercedes, and Stellantis, plan to open 30,000 EV fast-charging stations around the country starting in 2024.
The ocean off the coast of Florida has reached temperatures over 100 degrees which has set off a massive bleaching event in some coral reefs.
The UN has accused Russia of an “act of utter cruelty” after it used its veto power on the security council to block a nine-month renewal of cross-border aid to help feed and shelter 4 million people in rebel-held northwest Syria.
Sinead O’Connor, an Irish singer who achieved global fame for her cover of Prince’s hit "Nothing Compares 2 U,” died at the age of 56. O’Connor was also known for an appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” where she tore up a photo of the Pope to protest the widespread sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church.
PBS produced a segment about the conflict between lobster fisherman and conservationists who are concerned with the North Atlantic right whale.
A military junta seized power in Niger by overthrowing President Mohamed Bazoum. The African Union, the U.N., the European Union all condemned the coup.
The GDP grew 2.4% in the last quarter, consumer spending increased at a 1.6% pace exceeding most analyst’s predictions.
PBS produced a segment about the urban heat island - a metropolitan area that is a lot hotter than the rural area that surrounds it. Heat created by cars, buses, trains and people combined with the density of housing creates warmer temperatures than areas with more green space.
Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, said he stands with countries fighting China’s bullying behavior as he spoke at bilateral talks in Australia.
Japan released a defense analysis that warned of the most serious security threat since World War 2. The country cited North Korea, China and Russia as possible threats.
The House and Senate will face negotiations over the annual National Defense Authorization Act. House Republicans want to add provisions that would undo the Pentagon’s abortion travel policy, block gender affirming care for trans soldiers and limit diversity training.
PBS included a segment about how small pharmacies are going bankrupt due to pharmacy benefit managers, a middle man between pharmaceutical companies, wholesalers and health insurance companies.
China has issued a policy to pursue and prosecute pro-democracy advocates from Hong Kong who have fled the country.
PBS produced a segment about how self defense laws do not protect women who are victims of domestic violence.
By the Numbers
One More Thing is the name of the human interest segment at the end of every episode of “The Five.” This week the news stories were so thin that “One More Thing” made the list of the top five categories. This has only happened once before since I started this project in mid-February 2022.