Fox News Directly Lies to Its Viewers Regarding Republicans and Social Security - plus the BALLOON that won't die!
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 2/12/23
A typical Fox News viewer would falsely believe that President Joe Biden lied when he said some Republican lawmakers suggested cuts to Social Security and other entitlement programs. They might also think that crimes were not being prosecuted based on a person’s race or that slavery in the United States wasn’t that big of a deal.
Anyone who exclusively got their news from Fox might not realize that an earthquake in Turkey was a humanitarian disaster that took the lives over 20,000 people and cost billions of dollars in property damage. PBS NewsHour dedicated 16% of its airtime to the earthquake in Turkey and Syria while the shows I analyzed on Fox News only dedicated three minutes or 1% of its programming to the story.
Fox viewers would probably also have no idea illegal immigration crossings decreased dramatically in January due to new restrictions set by the Biden administration or that former Vice President Mike Pence received a subpoena by the special counsel assigned to investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s role in January 6th.
As in previous weeks, Fox News tells their viewers want they want them to know and very little else.
Shows I covered last week
Fox & Friends - 1st hour
The Five
Tucker Carlson Tonight
Fox Lies about Rick Scott’s plans on Social Security
“I wouldn't be surprised if during this unity speech he decides to say that if you look at the Republicans, they're the ones who want to take away your Social Security. They're the ones who want to take away your Medicare. They're the ones this, that and the other thing. And it's going to come off pretty badly for some people,” said Perino.
The next day a few hours before the State of the Union Speech Perino repeated themes she’d said the day before.
“Well, the president will be going to Wisconsin and Florida. And one of the things he's going to do is assure everybody that it's the Democrats who are going to protect Medicare and Social Security,” said Perino.
The next morning the cast of “Fox & Friends” focused on the same topic with Steve Doocy holding up a copy of the NY Post which is owned by the same parent company as Fox News. Ainsley Earhardt related the headline.
“So that cover of The New York Post says Joe Lie-den, the president tells so many fibs during the speech. We can't keep count when you do the fact checking. When he talks about Medicare and Social Security, when he disagreed with something he said if they thought that he wasn't telling the truth. One of the biggest moments was when he talked about Medicare and Social Security. We knew he was probably going to say this going up to it. If you watched any of our shows, we were all saying he's going to say that Republicans want to get rid of your essential Social Security. They want to get rid of your Medicare. Well, he did that and Republicans were prepared.,” said Earhardt.
Doocy was the first person to call out Senator Rick Scott.
“So what he's talking about, Rick Scott had a suggestion about sunsetting Social Security and Medicare. That was just one suggestion awhile back. But we knew that Joe Biden was going to do this because he does it every time he talks about how Republicans want to cut your Social Security and Medicare, which really angers people. It also it's not true,” said Doocy.
Doocy didn’t give an exact date when Scott came up with or promoted his plan. Scott announced his plan in February 2022 and has aggressively promoted it since.
To quote his 12-point plan directly,
“All federal legislation sunsets in 5 years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.”
Scott has openly admitted that his plan would include sunsetting both Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid every five years.
Brian Kilmeade also defended Scott.
“Number two, it was Rick Scott. Rick Scott did this crazy thing. It said Social Security's going to be bankrupt in ten years. So he said, we have to look at this and reform it. And they said, oh, we got a talking point for the midterms. But actually, Rick Scott was actually being responsible. But politically, it was detrimental,” said Kilmeade.
Later on “The Five” Judge Jeanine Pirro criticized Biden for slightly changing his wording during the speech.
‘When he criticized the Republicans and saying he started by saying many. And then he stopped himself and he said some Republicans want to stop social Security and Medicare and they booed him,” said Pirro.
Tucker Carlson weighed in.
“Probably thinking about how to cut Social Security. Right. You got to think some of them secretly do work for the Democratic Party,” said Carlson.
During the introductory segment on “Fox & Friends” a short clip of Biden speaking as a Senator in 1995 flashed on the screen for a few seconds enough to get to this line out.
“As a senator. Put forward a bill of his. Own, freeze federal spending. I meant Social Security as well,” said then Senator Biden.
The network did not include any context or even the year for this short clip. I thought it was suspicious since it wasn’t brought up later in the program and the clip itself was so short.
The clip and the claim that Joe Biden wanted to cut Medicare and Social Security originated from the Bernie Sanders campaign.
"Biden has advocated cutting Social Security for 40 years."
The exact short clip Fox used appeared on the screen. The statement is misleading as it implies that Biden has been consistent on this issue for four decades. He hasn’t been. Biden’s views on Social Security have changed over time.
I’m unable to fit the exhaustive and detailed timeline in this newsletter but Poltifact.org has a detailed breakdown of Biden’s various stances on Social Security since his time in the Senate until now.
Biden said "We should be increasing, not decreasing, Social Security," Biden said at an AARP Iowa forum in July 2019, and in 2020 Biden called for “urgently needed action to make the program solvent and prevent cuts to American retirees.”
I found an clip from a local NBC affiliate in Florida from May 5, 2022 where Matt Sczesny interviewed Sen. Scott about his then 11-point plan.
“You have to admit that making Social Security and Medicare up for renewal every five years will make a lot of seniors, including here in the state of Florida, a little nervous, don't you think,” asked Sczesny.
Senator Scott didn’t deny that he wanted to sunset any entitlement program.
“I want to make sure their program survives,” said Scott.
I also went to the source President Biden mentioned in his State of the Union address to see exactly which Republican lawmakers have expressed interest in cutting or dramatically altering entitlement programs.
Those Republicans would be:
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT)
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)
Sen. John Thune (R-SD)
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA)
There is debate on a number of other Republican lawmakers regarding this issue but those four were singled out by the President on WhiteHouse.gov.
The Five had some Bad Takes on the State of the Union Address
The cast of “The Five” had some extraordinarily bad takes about the State of the Union address.
Then Greg Gutfeld compared the President to a dog.
“They're like a pet owner whose dog, you know, finally is potty trained outside. And they said. Oh, look what he did. Oh, such a good little boy there did,” said Gutfeld.
Judge Jeanine Pirro compared Biden to Trump.
“Well, when when he started with the forgotten man, that's when I started thinking about President Trump.” said Pirro.
Her co-host, the moderate voice on the panel, Harold Ford Jr. corrected her.
“Remember, let's make America great again with President Reagan and let's make America great again. And the forgotten man is FDR,” said Ford.
Judge Pirro then brought up Senator Rick Scott without saying his name.
“One Republican senator apparently said it and now they're going to broad brush everyone and at that point, I don't blame them. They had to take the position. I don't like that. It wasn't, as you know, is proper as it might have been. But at that point, there are so many people watching this speech, they needed to hear that they are not in favor of this and stop gaslighting us, stop lying,” said Pirro.
Then Pirro made an odd pivot to defend price gouging and corporate greed.
“And the other thing that that when you started talking about big oil and he says, how dare big oil make these profits and use the record profits to buy back their own stock, rewarding the CEOs and shareholders. We are either a capitalist country or we are not. And for him to say that shouldn't be doing that is outrageous,” said Pirro.
Pirro of course complained bitterly about rising gas prices for months. She then twisted things around to blame Biden for destroying an industry that made record profits last year.
“And he forgets that he came into office saying, I'm going to shut down the fossil fuel industry, I'm canceling the pipeline. I'm not going to sign new drilling leases. And then he says, how dare you?
Fox News - More Balloons, Balloons, Balloons!
The following video is a montage of various statements made about a Chinese Spy balloon that was shot down last week. It’s a lot of the same hysterics but I’ll include one paragraph for the newsletter.
Tucker Carlson’s crazed rant.
“The Republicans again with their moonshine in their shotguns, with extra chromosomes, thinking it's okay to shoot down Chinese spy balloons when every sophisticated person knows Donald Trump himself knew the best way to handle Chinese spy balloons, let them pass again, just like Trump did. Trump, Trump. He's good all of a sudden. That's what they're saying. Of course, once again, they can't say more because it's classified, wish we could sorry,” said Carlson.
Tucker Carlson Mislead His Audience About a Crime Story
Tucker Carlson started his show on Thursday with a paranoid-filled diatribe about how Americans are unable to lawfully protect themselves from violent criminals.
This is a bit much considering the United States is home to more guns than people but Tucker Carlson went there anyway.
“A 23-year-old felon called Ja’Von Taylor with a long criminal record. Convictions for armed robbery, for example, began threatening a female clerk, apparently because the gas station didn't carry the kind of cigars that he wanted. That's when an off duty fireman called Anthony Santi, who was inside, decided to step in. He told Javon Taylor to leave the store,” said Carlson.
So far this is correct. Carlson hasn’t misrepresented any details.
“Well, in response to that, Taylor began threatening him and then ran toward his SUV outside. Sante followed him outside because he suspected that Ja’Von Taylor would retrieve a gun from the car. And that's exactly what he did. Ja’Von Taylor pulled an illegal handgun with an extended magazine from his SUV. Santi not wanting to get shot put Taylor in a headlock,” said Carlson.
At this point in the story from what I found in my research it’s unclear exactly what happened in regards to the gun.
“And that's when Ja’Von Taylor handed the gun to his girlfriend, and his girlfriend shot the unarmed fireman in the back, killing him. It was an execution. It's not a close call. The footage is online. We're not going to show it to you because it's awful. But if you have any doubt, you can watch it. So there's no debate about what happened here,” said Carlson.
Carlson now begins to spin the story by leaving out specifics in Missouri State law.
“And yet the local social justice D.A., Jean Peters Baker, refused to press charges against the person who killed the firefighter. Now, why? Well, there may have been a political component, and we know that because online BLM activists immediately celebrated the killing on racial grounds. Javon Taylor is black. Anthony Santee was white. That was enough for them. They're glad he's dead,” said Carlson.
The Fox News host calls out the D.A. by name which is something he often does. I can only speculate on Carlson’s motivations here but I would imagine he’s hoping his legion of followers might harass this person or contact various government agencies asking for their removal.
Another tactic Carlson uses here is he makes assumptions, “They’re glad he’s dead.” Why would any government official be glad a white fireman was dead? He wasn’t well known as some sort of racist bully and there’s no evidence that any racial slurs were used during the fight.
The real reason the girlfriend of Ja’Von Taylor wasn’t charged was due to a self-defense law pushed by gun advocates commonly known as ‘stand-your-ground.’
It was also used in defense of the controversial killing of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed 17-year-old high school student who was holding candy and an ice tea at the time of his death.
At that time Florida’s version of ‘stand-your-ground’ protected Martin’s killer, George Zimmerman, from a criminal sentence. Zimmerman was able to argue that he faced an imminent threat and was therefore able to use lethal force with death or serious injury – without first trying to escape.
The prosecutor in this case wrote,
“The facts specifically demonstrate that the shooting female fired a single shot in defense of a man who was being strangled. A witness supported the woman's account of the incident and described the 23-year-old man whose Santi was on top of as totally defenseless and added that he couldn't talk, couldn't breathe and was turning purple.”
Carlson also left out that Ja’Von Taylor, the person who brought the gun to the fight, had prior convictions and was not allowed to posses a weapon. He was criminally charged for having the gun and will most likely serve time in prison.
Stand-your-ground laws are controversial for a number of reasons as they seemingly make it too easy to shoot someone and not face criminal charges.
Jesse Watters Sounds Exactly Like a White Nationalist
Jesse Watters spun off during a discussion about slavery reparations. Before I covered Fox News I researched extremism and I’ve heard avowed white supremacists basically say exactly what Watters says in this clip.
I debated on including this because it’s extremely upsetting but I wanted to show how unapologetically racist Fox hosts can be on the network. If Watters worked at any other media company he’d be fired immediately after saying this.
“Yes, black labor in the South contributed to an enormous amount of wealth for these plantation owners. Black slavery built southern railroads, ports. But not a lot of white people own slaves in the South, and it was abolished in the North in 1804. It was never even in the West. So yes, they contributed to building parts of America, but so did the Irish, the English Scotch, the Welsh, the Germans, everybody built America.
And when you say, who build something? Well, who designed it? Who was the architect? Who financed it? Labor is just a part of it. So we're going to have a conversation about reparations, which I'm open to since I'm 1% black. Yeah, that's true. And I might get a chance to talk about it accurately,” said Watters.
Bogus Expert of the Week
Kevin Bass - Education - BA in medical anthropology and biology. MA in immunology, with two years of MD training. Currently finishing a PhD but he did not include a field of study on his website. Carlson described him as a ‘Medical Researcher.’
Bass was invited on Tucker Carlson Tonight to discuss an editorial he wrote for Newsweek that was meant as his apology as a member of the medical community for mistakes made during the COVID-19 pandemic. He used the term “ordinary people” several times during the segment to describe everyone outside the medical profession.
Bass also has some problematic views on eugenics. Tucker has a knack for finding people like this. I can’t include the screenshot due to space but on January 3, 2019 he wrote the following tweet.
“I don’t see how we can avoid eugenics in the 21st century. Jobs for the less intelligent are scarcer and scarer. Big social problems on the horizon. What’s a credible alternative response vs. eugenics? People need meaning and purpose.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare 15 hours of Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following is a list of stories PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Former Vice President Mike Pence received a subpoena to testify as part of the Special Counsel investigating Donald J. Trump and his role in the riots at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021.
Illegal border crossings dropped dramatically in January. Changes by the Biden administration that have placed limits on immigrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti have caused a drop of 95% of migrants seeking asylum from those countries.
The FBI charged the leader of a Neo Nazi group for plotting to attack the Baltimore power grid.
Israeli forces killed five Palestinian fighters in the West Bank last week. Hamas acknowledged that the men were part of their armed wing in the Gaza Strip.
A Palestinian man rammed his car into a group of people at a bus stop in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish settlement neighborhood in East Jerusalem killing two people - a six-year-old boy and a man in his twenties.
North Korea showed off its new intercontinental ballistic missiles ICBM’s in a late-night parade.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged sports officials from 36 countries at a summit last week to bar Russian athletes from competing in the Olympics. The Olympic committee said it would be discriminatory to exclude athletes from Russia and Belarus from the 2024 games.
An international team of investigators said it found "strong indications" that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the supply of heavy anti-aircraft weapons to Ukrainian separatists and Russians who shot down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 in 2014 with a Russian missile. The investigators said they had insufficient evidence to prosecute the crash that killed all 298 people on board.
Protests continued last week in Paris last week over the proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64.
Nursing and ambulance crews staged a 48-hour walkout in the UK last week due to the higher cost of living fueled by rising costs of food and energy.
Patrick Wood Crusius, 24, the A Texas man who carried out the mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on Aug. 3, 2019, killing 23 people and injuring 22 more, pleaded guilty today in U.S. District Court to a 90-count federal indictment.
One of the Memphis police officers charged in the killing of Tyre Nichols took photos of a bloodied and battered Nichols and sent them to other officers and a friend.
PBS produced an extended segment on the plight of women and girls in Afghanistan now that the Taliban has taken over rule of the country. Women are barred from working in nearly every sector of the economy and girls no longer receive an education. The PBS segment focused on how women in that country are protesting the oppressive regime.
The Nicaraguan government released over 200 political prisoners, including one American citizen, to the United States. The authoritarian government jailed opposition figures and activists in the lead up to the last election in 2021.
PBS produced an extended segment on the history of Fredrick Douglass, a reformer, abolitionist, orator, writer, and statesman. and his role in the civil rights and abolitionist movement. So far I’ve seen no segments dedicated to Black history month on Fox News.
The White House welcomed President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil last week. Tucker Carlson has produced several segments where he claimed falsely that the last election was rigged in Lula’s favor.
The Biden administration has managed to reunite over 600 children with their families who were separated during the Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy, about 1000 remain separated.
Last September Jeff German, a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, was murdered by a local elected official who German was investigating. Journalists from the Washington Post helped follow up and and finish the stories German was working on at the time of his death. When Fox initially reported on this story back in September they claimed falsely that no other media company would cover the story as the man accused of murdering German, Robert Telles, is a Democrat. Fox has done no follow up reporting on German’s death.
PBS produced a segment that addressed the increase in sex trafficking that correlates with the Super Bowl. The piece focused on steps advocacy groups and law enforcement were taking in Arizona to combat the problem.
A federal appeals court struck down a law that would have barred anyone with a restraining order for domestic violence from buying a gun. This is due to a recent ruling by the SCOTUS last summer that set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws
Pro-democracy advocates face trial in Hong Kong in the largest national security trial since the sweeping National Security Law was imposed by Beijing.
Senator John Fetterman was released from the hospital after a brief stay. Fetterman was admitted to the hospital after feeling light-headed. Doctors ruled out a new stroke. Fox reported on Fetterman’s hospitalization but did not mention to their audience that he was released.
PBS did an extended segment on anti-obesity medication - the medication has been extremely effective for some patients but some insurers don’t want to cover it. The medication was originally developed to treat diabetes.
Labor Secretary Marty Walsh will depart the Biden administration for a job with the National Hockey League Player’s Association.
PBS produced a segment on how some Americans in rural areas lack access to comprehensive health care, specifically to treat heart disease, the number one killer of Americans.
Last week marked the 30th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act. President Biden celebrated the occasion by pushing for an expansion of the program. It currently provides 12 weeks of unpaid leave.
By The Numbers
Coming up…
This week I’ll be covering “Fox & Friends,” “The Five,” and “Hannity”. I should finally have exclusive content for paid subscribers. I’ve been a bit overwhelmed with some of the media appearances I’ve had of late. Thank you so much for your support.
Brilliant work! Thanks!!
Thanks I’ll check it.. missed it first time