Fox News: Pay No Attention to All of the Sexual Predators Trump Picked for His Cabinet Kamala Spent Money

A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 12/1/24

Dec 04, 2024

Last week the folks at Fox demonized Vice President Kamala Harris for raising and spending money, trashed Joe Biden for celebrating Thanksgiving with members of the U.S. Coast Guard and tried to cover up that Trump really was connected to Project 2025.

As Trump continued to pick unqualified, radical people with sex scandals for various high-ranking positions in his administration the right-wing propaganda machine tried desperately to distract with segments about Kamala Harris wasting donor money by spending it.

No one was forced to give Harris a dime and it would have been malfeasance if her campaign ended up with hundreds of millions in the bank after the election especially since they had such a short time to promote her candidacy.

The network also included stories about undocumented immigrants and the fentanyl crisis even though border crossings have decreased and overdose deaths have dramatically declined in the last year of the Biden administration.

Anyone watching Fox News exclusively last week might have missed out on stories about devastating floods in Southeast Asia, record breaking snowfalls in South Korea along with escalating political unrest in Pakistan, Syria and Venezuela.

Shows I covered on Fox last week:

Fox & Friends
The Five
The Ingraham Angle

Project 2025 - Trump Really Was Connected

On Monday Laura Barrón-López, the White House correspondent for the PBS News Hour, revealed that Donald J. Trump has picked six men associated with Project 2025 for various cabinet picks including Russell Vought one of the masterminds behind the conservative blueprint to overhaul the U.S. government.

That morning Brian Kilmeade also begrudgingly admitted that Vought, Trump’s pick to head the Office of Management and Budget, was connected to “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise Project 2025.”

The other five Trump administration cabinet picks associated with Project 2025 are Stephen Miller, Tom Homan, Brenden Carr, John Ratcliff, and Pete Hoekstra.

When I searched my media archives, I found 39 examples of various Fox News personalities along with Trump himself falsely claiming that the President-elect had no affiliation or even understanding of Project 2025.

On July 31 while co-hosting “The Five,” Dana Perino said that Democrats were trying to super glue Trump to Project 2025.

On August 22 as part of Fox News’ coverage of the DNC Kellyanne Conway called Democrats ‘liars” for saying Trump was associated with the conservative playbook.

The next day Sean Hannity said, “Nonstop nightmares about the left's very scary boogeyman Project 2025.”

On October 21 on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine Pirro even claimed a new Trump administration would blacklist people associated with it.

“Not only did Donald Trump say he wasn't part of it. He said he wanted nothing to do with it. And now he's saying we're basically going to blacklist anyone who has worked with Project 2025,” said Pirro.

Later during the same segment Dana Perino claimed Republicans didn’t even want to be associated with the Heritage Foundations proposal for the next conservative president.

“If you are a Republican and you are connected in some way to project 2025, you might as well like send your resume somewhere else,” said Perino.

In my research I found that over 75% of the authors and over 50% of the contributors of ‘Project 2025’ had worked with Donald J. Trump either in his campaign or first administration. The word ‘Trump’ also appeared 312 times in the nearly 900 page document.

Kamala Harris Spent Money - Oh the Horrors

Last week due to the holiday Fox News had substitute hosts on every single program. Emily Compagno, normally a co-host of “Outnumbered,” sat in for Ainsley Earhardt on “Fox & Friends.”

On Wednesday Compagno had some choice words to say about Vice President Kamala Harris.

“And now we have these mega-donors coming in and saying, you squandered my money. You don't belong in politics anymore. We knew she didn't belong in politics a lot before that, because she had no experience to speak of other than manufacturing and pathologically lying. But apparently it's the dollars that drive the Democrat Party ideals, ideology, and decisions only versus the GOP that fights for you,” said Compagno.

No candidate for president is without flaws. Compagno is free to criticize Harris but calling her unqualified doesn’t make much sense.

Kamala Harris began her political career in California, the largest state in the nation in terms of population. The state has open primaries so the top two vote-getters in the primary election – regardless of party preference - move on to the general election.

The open primary model often results in two Democratic politicians running for the same seat.

In 2003 when Harris won her first election to become the District Attorney for San Francisco she ran against two Democrats and then ultimately defeated another Democrat, Terence Hallinan, the incumbent, in a run-off election with 56.49% of the vote.

In 2007 Harris ran for the same seat un-opposed losing only 1.5% of the vote to write-in candidates.

In 2010 after Harris served as the DA in San Francisco she narrowly defeated, Steve Cooley, a Republican when she was elected as the Attorney General for California.

In 2014 she easily won her re-election campaign defeating Republican Ronald Gold by 15 percentage points.

When Harris ran for a U.S. Senate seat she trounced another Democrat, Loretta Sanchez, beating her by 23.2%. In order to win that Senate seat Harris got 7.5 million votes.

By comparison Sen. John Thune, the newly elected Senate Majority Leader, won his his first election for the U.S. Senate with only 197,848 votes in 2004. He also ran un-opposed for re-election in 2010.

In his last election in 2022 Thune only needed 241,316 votes to secure his re-election to the U.S. Senate.

Harris has also served as the Vice President since Jan. 20, 2021.

Jesse Watters Just Made Up Fairy Tales About Kamala Harris

On Tuesday on “The Five,” Jesse Watters completely invented a scenario about Kamala Harris based on figments of his imagination.

“Yeah, she listened to 23-year-olds. That's the lesson. You never listen to a 23-year-old. Now, I respect authority. I respect people that have had success, financial success. I respect my elders, and I respect people in a corporate setting that are the boss. Now, liberalism teaches you there is no hierarchy. We have to tear down the hierarchy. They think that any 23-year-old's opinion is just as justified as some 50-year-old, or the candidate themself. So if you're some snot nosed brat and you're pointing at a 50-year-old with $1 million in the bank and a history of winning campaigns, and you're saying you're going to do this and you're going to do that? That's not really the fold. The 23-year-old that doesn't know where the hell they are. But that's the fault of the 50-year-old for listening to the snot-nosed 23-year-old brat. So there's a lot of blame to go around.”

Jesse Watters had absolutely no evidence to back up his strange claims about the Harris/Walz campaign. Who was this snotty-nosed 23-year-old? What were the specific decision made based on a young interns not so sage advice?

As usual Watters just created a reality based on his own assumptions and presented it as fact.

Joe Biden Was Criticized for a Friendsgiving with U.S. Coast Guard Members and Their Families.

On Friday Fox News producers filled the cast of “The Five,” with random Fox News personalities. Guest host Kellyanne Conway had some strong opinions about how President Biden spent his Thanksgiving holiday.

“Even Joe Biden, if he wants to be presidential, can be down in North Carolina helping victims of the hurricane for Thanksgiving, not in Nantucket at a billionaire's big spread again,” said Conway.

The Monday before Thanksgiving Biden held a "Friendsgiving" event with service members and their families at the U.S. Coast Guard Sector New York in Staten Island. Biden served food to USCG members and their families while expressing gratitude for their service.

Biden has requested $100 billion in additional funding from Congress for disaster relief for victims of Hurricanes Helene and Milton which would include devastated families in North Carolina.

Later on “The Ingraham Angle,” guest host Lisa Boothe also criticized Biden for snacking on a piece of bread at the Friendsgiving event for the USCG.

“But right, Joe, because Americans couldn't possibly feel that way because of you. Well, Biden spent as Thanksgiving week wining and eating food he was supposed to be handing out to service members. Trump was having the time of his life.”

The producers then cut to a media clip of Donald J. Trump in his luxurious private club, Mar-a-Lago, dancing to “Y.M.C.A” while sitting next to Elon Musk, the richest man in the world. Trump did not hold any holiday themed event for a charity or division of the U.S. armed services. There was also no mention of Trump advocating for increased support for hurricane victims in North Carolina.

In stark contrast to Trump’s lavish affair Vice President Kamala Harris and her immediate family donated their time at the D.C. Central Kitchen on Thanksgiving Day to help the nonprofit prepare a record breaking 69,000 meals for the needy.

No One on Fox Seems to Know How Tariffs Work

On Monday Eric Trump appeared on “The Ingraham Angle,” to give his uninformed opinion about his father’s plan to slap tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China.

“My Father sent out that tweet. You won't allow drugs to come through our southern border. We are going to tariff you. You want to allow them to come through Canada? We are going to tariff you, China. If you're going to allow this stuff to get sold in our country, largely produced in China. We are going to add another 10% to your tariff. We are going to cost your countries your economies. We're going to cost your businesses billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. If you think you're going to you know you're going to poison Americans. It's not going to happen. You're not going to destroy us,” said Trump.

The second oldest Trump son seemed confused on how tariffs work. Tariffs are a tax paid by a U.S. importer or company that has usually already purchased imports from another country.

The increased costs of tariffs are passed on to U.S. consumers. Foreign governments do not pay the tariffs.

The next day on “The Ingraham Angle,” Gordon Chang, a self-professed expert on China, also made inaccurate statements about tariffs when he discussed possible cyber attacks by the Chinese government.

“What we got to do is impose severe costs on China, and it may not be hacking them back. It could very well be increasing the tariffs to the point where Chinese goods can't get into the U.S.. We don't want to hack them because we don't want to show them our capabilities in a peacetime situation.”

Chang never specified what type of tariff would completely prevent imports from China.

Neither Trump nor Chang also seemed to realize that China could easily retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. exports.

Dana Perino Does Not Understand Abortion Laws in Europe.

On Tuesday, Dana Perino made a misleading statement about abortion rights in Europe while discussing a comment actress Sharon Stone made about fascism at the Torino Film Festival in Italy.

“I mean, did she know that the abortion laws are stricter in many European countries than they are here in the United States? And some places, I mean, she sounds like an idiot.”

For starters only a handful of European countries have restrictions on abortions - Andorra, Liechtenstein, Malta, Monaco, Poland, Vatican City and San Marino. With the exception of Poland, they are all have incredibly small populations.

Andorra - 80,000
Liechtenstein - 39,584
Malta - 553,214
Monaco - 36,297
San Marino - 33,642
Vatican City - 764
Poland - 36.6 million

The total remaining population of the European Union, which does not include Russia along with some of the former Eastern Bloc countries, is approx. 412 million.

In the rest of Europe abortion restrictions vary from 12 weeks of pregnancy to 24 weeks with exceptions for fetal abnormalities and the life of the mother. Abortion is also subsidized or fully funded by the government in most parts of Europe.

According to a recent survey by Pew Research Center, a majority of citizens in most European countries including Poland (56%) think abortion should be legal.

In contrast in the United States since 1977 the Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion. Currently approx. one in three women of child bearing age in the United States do not have access to abortion in most cases.

Thirteen U.S. states have extremely restrictive bans on abortion making it illegal in nearly all cases.

Last year one in five women seeking abortions traveled to another state to get care.

Abortion access might improve after some states passed new referendums enshrining abortion protections in the last election. If the referendums can withstand legal and legislative challenges more women in the United States will have access to abortion care.

When in Doubt Call Democrats Communist

On Friday Monica Crowley, a former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Trump admin.) and a contributor to Project 2025, appeared on “The Ingraham Angle” on Friday where she called Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) a communist.

“Well, you know, she has tremendous grassroots support. Lisa and Doug. And it is to the point that you're making, Lisa, which is the accessibility. But also she was an early adopter of social media Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, etc.. So she's connecting directly to voters. There's another really important point about her and the Democrat Party overall. The lesson of this last 2024 election and Donald Trump's landslide mandate victory is that the country has had enough of the radical left. It's had enough of socialism. It's had enough of, cancel culture and wokeness, and it rejected roundly all of those things. So I don't think in four short years the country is going to say we need more communism. I don't think that that is going to be the choice that they're going to make,” said Crowley.

On PBS - Jason Stanley Describes Fox News While Describing Fascism

On Wednesday on the PBS News Hour, Jason Stanley, a professor of philosophy at Yale, and an author on books about fascism, gave his expert opinion about what a second Trump term could look like.

White House correspondent, Laura Barrón-López, started the discussion.

“What could a second Trump term mean in terms of emboldening extremists, or those who hold far right views about the future of the country?” asked Barrón-López.

“Well, I mean, those are the people he's taken into power. He's proposing to take into power. These are people who believe that, this is, a Christian nation, that it's being ruined by, by secularists, everyone who's not, a Christian nationalist or, a virulent Trump supporter is a Marxist. This is fascism. When you call everyone who is not a supporter of the leader a Marxist, you call your normal political opponents Marxists. You target the schools and universities and the press. You say they're controlled by Marxists. This is the dominant vocabulary of the Trumpist movement. And what it augurs is, is very, problematic and worrisome.

But I don't think what will result is lost popularity for the strongman leader. Democracy is something you have to fight for. You have to fight for its values. You have to teach its values, that every citizen is important. Every citizen's perspective is important. And those aren't values were born with. And as they attack the institutions that defend those values, the press, the universities and the schools. We will see, a Democratic culture, what we have of a democratic culture, disappearing,” said Stanley.

Stanley is the author of “How Fascism Works.” I highly recommend his book. It’s a relatively easy read considering the subject.

A Preview of Trump’s Possible Department of Justice

On Wednesday Brian Kilmeade was the guest host for “The Ingraham Angle.” During a segment he spoke to Richard Staropoli, the former chief information officer for DHS during Trump’s first term.

Staropoli trashed the FBI and the Secret Service while defending the alleged criminal activities of Donald J. Trump.

“But when you think about it, look at what the FBI has done and how politically compromised the Bureau has been and has shown themselves to be, the last big thing they did was show up with multiple Swat teams at Mar-A-Lago working for the Biden crime family. Right. Executing a warrant in an empty house, acting on intelligence that they got from the Secret Service, another politically compromised agency, to do what? To retrieve documents. Which leads me to ask, is the FBI going to investigate this? I don't think the FBI is going to do a damn thing about this. They're perfectly happy, as is the entire Biden crime family and the white House and this administration, to do anything they can do to embarrass President Trump and to influence not just the nominees, but anyone who potentially may become a nominee,” said Staropoli.

Stories Fox News Ignored

Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS News Hour. The following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.

Climate disasters
- The capital of South Korea had its biggest snowstorm in 100 years. The storm grounded over 200 flights while 90 ferries remained in port.
- Over 90,000 people have been displaced in Malaysia and southern Thailand as heavy rains caused massive flooding. At least 30 people were killed as more heavy monsoon rains are expected.
According to a new UN report on femicide women are most at risk of physical violence at home. Globally approx. 51,100 women and girls were killed by their intimate parter or other family members in 2023.
At least 16 people are missing after a ship carrying tourists sank in the Red Sea off the coast of Egypt. Rescuers managed to save 28 others. The accident was likely caused by high winds and turbulence on the water.
PBS produced more than one segment last week on the influence of what the network called the manosphere - a growing online media ecosystem that attracts primarily a young male audience.
Venezuela remains in turmoil after the highly contested presidential election. PBS interviewed Maria Corina Machado the leader of the opposition. Other opposition figures have fled to the Argentine embassy in the capital as Venezuelan police have surrounded it, which is a violation of international law.
The U.S. State Department issued new sanctions on 21 Maduro-aligned individuals in Venezuela, including members of the security forces and cabinet-level officials due to their false claims of victory in the last election and violation of democratic principals.
In Pakistan supporters of jailed former leader Imran Khan marched in the capital to demand his release. One protester was killed and dozens injured as police and the Pakistani army tried to suppress the protest. About 1000 were arrested while protesters claimed without evidence that hundreds suffered gunshot wounds at the hands of the police and army. This came days after a series of deadly clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslim factions in the country.
President Biden proposed adding Medicaid and Medicare coverage for popular weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Zepbound.
PBS produced a segment about how Democrats are making a push to confirm a number of President Joe Biden's judicial nominees in the final weeks of this Congress.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a bill that will ban transgender students from kindergarten through college at Ohio public and private schools from using multi-person bathrooms that fit their gender identities.
Judy Woodruff produced another segment in her “America at a Crossroads’ series that explored the growing political divide in the United States. Her latest installment broke down how psychology can help families bridge political divides during the holiday season.
PBS produced a segment about a spike in incidents involving neo-Nazi marches and racist and hateful messages sent online, stoking fear for residents in several states across the country. Black, Latino and LGBTQ+ Americans in at least 25 states have been subjected to racist text messages telling them to report to a plantation to pick cotton.
PBS returned to areas of western North Carolina that were devastated by Hurricane Helene. Although Fox News regularly criticizes the Biden administration’s handling of Hurricane Helene the network has yet to produce a similar segment, at least on the shows I’ve covered.
The Syrian Civil War has re-started as opposition fighters swept into Aleppo. The Syrian army said that dozens of its fighters have been killed. The Russian Air Force also carried out strikes against the opposition.
Five years after a devastating fire gutted a world icon, Paris's Notre Dame Cathedral is just days away from reopening. French president Emmanuel Macron toured the monument and his visit provided some first glimpses of this extraordinary restoration.
Barbara Taylor Bradford, a prolific British American novelist known for creating strong women characters, died at the age of 91. In her lifetime her novels sold 90 million copies, 10 of which were made into TV miniseries and films. She was so successful her fortune was said to rival that of Queen Elizabeth II.
Rev. Robert Dixon Sr., one of the last survivors of the U.S. Army’s all Black regiments died at the age of 103. The all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans who encountered them during the nation’s western expansion.