Fox News: Shilling For Trump with Fauci and Hunter Biden Hysteria

A condensed overview of 17 hours of Fox News for the Week Ending 6/9/24

*A jury found Hunter Biden guilty on all three charges in his federal gun case. The news was released while I was still working on this podcast/newsletter. The case will be covered in the next newsletter podcast as it applies to the week ending 6/19/24.

Last week Fox News seemed to want to completely forget about the fact that Donald J. Trump was found guilty of 34 counts in a criminal trial involving falsifying business records in New York State. .

The network shifted its focus back to any poll that showed Trump beating Biden and the former president’s fundraising machine.

The supporting players in last week’s propaganda pageant were two well-known villains Fox News has obsessed about for years - Hunter Biden, the wayward drug-addicted, homemade porn-producing son of the president and Dr. Anthony Fauci the mad scientist hellbent on controlling all of humanity through mask mandates, toxic vaccines and six feet distancing rules.

The network got lucky that Hunter Biden’s criminal trial involving a false statement he made on a gun application started last week and the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic scheduled, “A Hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci."

If Fox did not have these two distractions, they would have just come up with new ways to demonize Joe Biden while promoting Donald J. Trump’s campaign.

Anyone watching Fox News exclusively last week might have missed out on stories about former Trump administration officials facing criminal charges in fake elector schemes in Arizona and Wisconsin as well as various updates in the wars in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine.

Shows I covered last week:

• Fox & Friends

• The Five

• The Ingraham Angle

• Hannity - Wednesday & Thursday

Jesse Watters - Fox Would NEVER Raise Money for Trump

On “The Five,” on Friday Jesse Watters expressed his outrage that Jimmy Kimmel, a comedian and talk show host at ABC was hosting a fundraiser for Joe Biden’s 2024 campaign.

“If you were at Fox, and Greg tried to throw a fundraiser for Donald Trump. They'd have to call this show ‘The Four’. I mean, he would be out of here so fast they would never allow that,” said Watters.

Greg Gutfeld was equally outraged a few weeks ago when Stephen Colbert at CBS also hosted a fundraiser for Joe Biden.

Fox News might not host formal fundraisers for political candidates but hosts and guests alike openly endorse and shill for Republican candidates daily.

The evening Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsification of business records in the first-degree Fox News mentioned his campaign website multiple times throughout the evening.

A Timeline of a Crashed Website

The first example was on “The Five,” where Dana Perino announced the website had crashed seemingly from excessive traffic.

5:44 p.m. - “The Five” Dana Perino

“The Trump donation site crashed a few minutes ago and it's still down. Which means that I think to your point, that the base would be energized, Win Red apparently. Also, having similar problems,” said Perino.

5:47 p.m. - “The Five” Dana Perino

“Trump donation site is back up and now it's rebranded with I did nothing wrong,” said Perino.

6:00 p.m. - “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Bret Baier

“That's the Trump donor site for the campaign is currently down. it went down some ten minutes right after the verdict,” said Baier as he opened his show.

6:09 p.m. - “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Shannon Bream

“You mentioned their website is down right now. Has it been crashed because people showed up there and responded to their text calling for fundraising?’ asked Bream.

6:26 p.m. - “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Bret Baier

“The website is back up. We're being told by, the campaign folks,” said Baier.

7:12 p.m. “The Ingraham Angle,” Shannon Bream

“We see, the website that is supposed to be his fundraising arm is having trouble. Is that because it's overloaded by people who want to weigh in now?” said Bream.

7:24 p.m. “The Ingraham Angle,” Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL)

“I know that the president's website went down. Donald trade Donald J. trump.com people get out and support President Trump,” said Donalds.

7:36 p.m. “The Ingraham Angle,” Newt Gingrich

“The website for Donald Trump collapsed this afternoon because so many people went to it spontaneously,” said Gingrich.

7:50 p.m. “The Ingraham Angle,” Lee Zeldin

“President Trump's website people can go and donate right now,” said Zeldin.

9:35 p.m. “Hannity,” Sean Hannity

“It was Trump whose donations soared. In fact, so many outraged Americans flooded the GOP primary fundraising platform. The website crashed for an extended period of time shortly after the verdict was announced,” said Hannity.

9:45 p.m. “Hannity,” Lara Trump

“And people responded in such a way to our campaign and by donations, our entire fundraising site crashed. It's back up and running Donald J Trump.com. If anybody wants to go donate,” said Trump.

Perino - Trump’s Fundraising Will Help the GOP

On Monday, on “The Five,” Dana Perino talked about Trump’s alleged big fundraising night.

“When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, the Democrats raised $70 million on their small dollar donation thing, which was record breaking at the time. Donald Trump was able to beat that or came close to that. So that's pretty monumental. And I think it will help all Republicans, because Republicans for a long time have been behind Democrats in their efforts to raise small dollars . . .Not only do they get the small dollars, but they also get the information,” said Perino.

Perino seemed to imply that Trump’s fundraising haul would help Republicans in down ballot races.

I was reminded of an appearance Lara Trump made in mid-February on “Hannity,” before she was the co-chair of the RNC.

“And I'll tell you what, the RNC should have one goal and one focus, and that is ensuring that the leader of the Republican Party, Donald J. Trump, is elected as the 47th president of the United States. And we are able to save this country. Here's what I can assure you. Any person walking into the doors of the RNC with any other goal in mind will be shown the door. If I were elected to this position as co-chair of the RNC, we have no time to waste. We have nine and a half months. We have to ensure that every single penny raised goes to voter registration, as you just said, legal ballot harvesting, which we have been beaten by the Democrats at forever.”

Katie Pavlich Has Amnesia About Trump and “Lock Her Up.”

On Thursday on “The Five,” guest host Katie Pavlich claimed it was Trump’s supporters who chanted “lock her up,” at his rallies.

“It's possible, but he is trying to get the vote of the American people and saying, my success will be the revenge, which I think most people can say. Yeah, that sounds pretty good. They're not going to focus your energy on retribution. You're going to focus your energy on making the country better for everybody. And Donald Trump has a track record of letting things go. In 2016, when he won the election, Hillary Clinton, people are chanting, lock her up. And he said, no, we are moving on. And yet they still couldn't help themselves and went after him,” said Pavlich.

Pavlich implied that Trump didn’t encourage the chant of “lock her up,” at his rallies. She used the phrase, “people are changing, lock her up.”

Trump not only gleefully encouraged his supporters to chant, “lock her up,” at his rallies and events he famously said during his second presidential debate with Hillary Clinton that she would be “in jail.”

The moment came after Clinton said it is “awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.”

Trump snapped back, “Because you’d be in jail.”

According to a New York Times report in 2018, Trump told the White House counsel he wanted to prosecute his political enemies including Hillary Clinton and the former F.B.I. director James Comey.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, told Trump that he did not have the authority to order a prosecution and that doing so could lead to an impeachment. Trump backed off.

Trump Thinks He’s God

Sometime after his guilty verdict Trump agreed to sit down for an interview with the cast of “Fox & Friends Sunday,” at his golf club in Westminster, New Jersey.

The interview was broken up into small sections throughout the broadcast on Sunday June 2nd.

Rachel Campos-Duffy asked the former president a question that was sent in by a viewer of the morning show.

“What's your relationship with God like and how do you pray?” asked Campos-Duffy.

“Okay. So I think it's good. I do very well with the evangelicals. I love the evangelicals and I have more people saying they pray for me. I can't even believe it. And they are so, committed. And they're so they're so believing they say, sir, you're going to be okay. I pray for you every night. I mean, everybody almost. I can't say everybody, but almost everybody that sees me, they say it. It's such a beautiful thing.

You know what's a beautiful thing, too? When you look at all of this bad stuff going on, they have nothing to look up to. They have no God. They have no anything. They kill people. They beat people, they push people into subways. They. So there's just nothing there. Religion is such a great thing. It's it keeps you, you know, there's something to be good about. You want to be good, you want to. It's so important. And I don't know if it's explained. Right. I don't know if I'm explaining it right now, but when you have something like that, you want to be good.

You want to go to heaven, okay? You want to go to heaven. If you don't have heaven, you almost say, what's what's the reason? Why do I happen to be a good listen, to be good whatever,” said Trump.

I was struck by the fact that Trump immediately talked about how other people prayed for him and that he “did well with evangelicals.” He never mentioned that he prayed himself.

He also didn’t seem to even understand what Campos-Duffy meant when she asked him about his relationship with God.

It was more important to Trump it seemed that other people prayed for him and that he was such a huge part of their lives.

Then he shifted to how he viewed his faith. Trump seemed to view heaven as something that was a reward for him personally.

When I posted this quote on social media many Christians had strong opinions about Trump’s view of heaven. Many of them believed that “being good” was something a Christian was supposed to do as part of their faith not to win points to get into heaven.

Helping others and living a selfless humble life is supposed to be a tenet of the Christian faith. A belief in Christ as the one true God is also fundamental to Christianity which was also something that Trump didn’t mention.

Most religious people view God as something greater than themselves which is something that also seemed completely absent from Trump’s explanation.

Steve Doocy Pointed Out the Trump is a Convicted Felon

On Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” Steve Doocy casually called Donald J. Trump a convicted felon when he quoted President Joe Biden’s campaign.

“Our president is going to be flying to, Normandy later today for the commemoration of the 80th anniversary of D-Day. what's interesting is apparently on Monday, he behind closed doors at a fundraising event he led, former President Donald Trump have it, for the first time ever. He referred to him as a convicted felon who essentially snapped, after he lost in 2020. Some of the campaign remarks quoted include this, folks, the campaign entered uncharted territory last week for the first time in American history, a former president that is a convicted felon is now seeking the office of the presidency. This isn't the same Trump who got elected in 2016. He's worse. That's different than Friday when he kind of danced around it never alluded to that, but as we said on the couch and have been projecting for a while, if he were convicted, and he was, they’re going to hang convicted felon around him, every time they talk about him, it's going to be like a brand name.”

Judge Jeanine The Biden Family is Dysfunctional

On Thursday on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine Pirro tore into Hunter Biden and the Biden family.

“What you've got here is a dysfunctional family. You've got a dysfunctional family where the widow of the brother of the defendant was introduced to crack cocaine. They're uploading pornographic videos into some website, and she's throwing his gun away. And then he's having her lie, and she then reports the gun was stolen. In addition to that, you have Kathleen Buell, his wife, who has to check the car, his truck to make sure that there's no crack pipes and drugs in the car because her daughter drives the truck.

And then what you've got is this Zoe Kestan that you were referring to says every 20 minutes the guy's doing crack. Every 20 minutes she found him, and then she found him. This is this is more than letting the judicial system work. This was trying to pull the wool over the eyes of everybody,” said Pirro.

Hunter Biden and his ex-wife both wrote memoirs about their marriage and Hunter’s many struggles with addiction.

I’m not sure how Hunter or his ex-wife were trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes when they were both extremely candid about what happened in their marriage and subsequent divorce.

Everything is Jill Biden’s Fault

On Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” Ainsley Earhardt suggested that Jill Biden attending her stepson’s trial was a major scandal.

“What message is the White House sending having Joe Biden walk into the courtroom? This is the First Lady of the United States.”

The next day on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine Pirro blamed the First Lady for President Biden’s decision to run for re-election.

“And I had to say to myself, and, you know, is Jill Biden, like, so obsessed with being first lady that she's convinced herself that Joe Biden is the only person who can be commander in chief. Or is it really an obsession with power and luxury and all the things that she's not living to live with, willing to live without irrespective of the health and well-being of her husband?”

Pirro is making several assumptions about the First Lady that she cannot verify.

Laura Ingraham Promoted the Idea that Dr. Fauci Invented COVID-19

Last week the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic scheduled, “A Hearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci.” The endeavor was largely a complete waste of time as Republicans rehashed unproven theories and made baseless accusations about Dr. Anthony Fauci.

That wasn’t going to stop Laura Ingraham from dredging up old conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

Instead of going on the record as promoting conspiracy theories herself she read the words of a conservative actor from X (formerly known as Twitter). On Tuesday, Ingraham read his post during a segment about the hearing.

“Well, perhaps the best comment on the Fauci reemergence was from Clifton Duncan on X. He wrote:

Your business went under while Fauci went to baseball games. Your mother died alone in a nursing home while Fauci did photo shoots. Your child hanged themselves from despair while Fauci hobnobed with celebs. People got divorced. People severed lifelong friendships. People lost decades long careers. People were trapped with abusers. People overdosed and killed themselves. People lost out on proms and graduations. People lost loved ones that could have been saved. People are injured by a shot they didn't want. All because we decided to trust the science that, of course, being Anthony Fauci, according to Anthony Fauci.”

Duncan is not a doctor, scientist or public health expert. From what I could garner from his account on X he's promoted various conspiracy theories and has worked as a theater actor, podcaster and writer.

He was also trying to raise money to produce a play about Thomas Sowell, a Black conservative.

Duncan provided no evidence of nefarious behavior by Fauci on his account. He mostly posted negative slogans and blanket statements about the media and government.

The actor seemed to imply that Fauci created COVID-19 or somehow played a role in intentionally harming people.

During the House hearing several Republican lawmakers also echoed such sentiments but they didn’t have any proof to back up their claims.

In fact Democrats at the same hearing pointed out that they had interviewed the doctor for over 14 hours, sent more than 115 investigative letters, conducted 30 transcribed interviews and held 27 hearings or briefings, and reviewed more than one and half million pages of documents and still didn’t have any conclusive evidence of the origin of the virus or any sinister plot by Dr. Fauci or anyone.

Over 1 million Americans died during the COVID-19 pandemic even with social distancing and months-long shutdowns of entire industries. During the hearing Dr. Fauci testified that if most of the population had returned to life before the vaccines provided some protection, that over one million additional Americans might have perished from the disease.

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. PBS regularly includes far more segments about climate disasters and the wars in Israel-Palestine and Ukraine.

• Updates in the Israel-Hamas War

  • At the start of last week the IDF confirmed the death of four more hostages in Hamas custody including three men in their 80’s who were last seen in a video begging for their release. Around 80 hostages are still believed to alive along with the remains of 43 others. Fox News has been extremely inconsistent in reporting about the plight of the hostages despite the network’s obvious pro-Israel bias.

  • The IDF is preparing for an escalation with Hezbollah in Northern Israel. The Israeli military warned it was preparing to launch a large-scale attack to deter forces from Lebanon.

  • Tens of thousands of Ultra Nationalist Israelis marched through the streets of Jerusalem as part of Jerusalem Day, an Israeli national holiday. They marched from the Western part of the city into Palestinian areas chanting religious songs and anti-Muslim slurs.

  • Israeli missiles hit an U.N. school building the IDF claims Hamas was using. Palestinians in the building say the victims were mostly women and children at least 33 people died. Another airstrike on another UN school in Central Gaza killed at least 18 people including four children and 1 woman.

• Updates in the war in Ukraine

  • Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with the Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in a rare Asian trip to urge regional leaders to attend a Swiss-organized global peace summit on the war in Ukraine in June. Zelenskyy claimed Russia and China are trying to deter other Asians countries from attending the conference.

  • A Ukrainian drone hit an oil refinery and fuel depot inside the Russian border.

  • France said it will supply Ukraine with Mirage-2000 fighter jets along with providing pilot training.

  • While President Biden was in Europe commemorating the 80th anniversary of the D-Day invasion he apologized to President Zelenskyy for the delay in military aid caused by radical Republicans in Congress. He also pledged an additional $225 million in military aid.

• Toyota apologized for widespread cheating on vehicle certification tests and halted production on three models. Mazda had similar problems and has suspended production on two models.

• According to an AP survey last year the average CEO pay was $16.3 million or nearly 200 times the average pay of a typical worker. Typical compensation packages for chief executives who run companies in the S&P 500 rose nearly 13% last year.

• Ford Motor company unveiled its recent renovation to an old abandoned train station in Detroit. The newly revived building will serve as a new center for tech innovation.

• Three top allies to former president Donald J. Trump were criminally charged in Wisconsin as part of a fake elector scheme following his 2020 election loss. They are charged for their role in getting a slate of pro-Trump electors to sign paperwork attesting, falsely, that Trump had won Wisconsin in the 2020 election.

• Former Donald Trump presidential chief of staff Mark Meadows and Trump 2020 Election Day operations director Michael Roman pleaded not guilty to nine felony charges for their roles in an effort to overturn Trump’s Arizona election loss to Joe Biden.

• Tucupita Marcano, an infielder for the San Diego Padres, was banned from baseball for life for betting on the sport. Marcano placed 387 baseball bets totaling more than $150,000 in October 2022 and from last July through November with a legal sportsbook.

• Republicans in the Senate blocked a bill that would enshrine a federal right to access contraception. The vote on the Right to Contraception Act was 51-39, falling short of the 60 votes needed to defeat a filibuster and move the bill forward.

• OpenAI employees issued an open letter about concerns they had about the safety of AI technology .

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi was re-elected in India even though his party lost seats to a stronger than expected opposition. Since his party did not win a majority on its own Modi will need the support of other parties in his coalition in order to pass legislation.

• An independent advisory panel to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted overwhelmingly against the use of MDMA, also known as ecstasy, to treat post-traumatic stress disorder(PTSD).

• Far-right political parties gained seats and influence in the recent EU parliamentary elections.

• The EU Central Bank cut interest rates as inflation has cooled despite not hitting the target rate of 2%.

• Steve Bannon, a long-time supporter and advisor to former president Donald J. Trump, must report to prison by July 1st for his four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the House committee that investigated the U.S. Capitol insurrection.

• Justice Clarence Thomas in a financial disclosure, acknowledged luxury trips he took in 2019 with billionaire Harlan Crow. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson also reported receiving four concert tickets valued at about $3,700 from Beyoncé and $10,000 of artwork for her chambers from the Alabama artist and musician Lonnie Holley.

• After a decades-long decline that began in the early 2000s, Gen Z is reversing the trend in teen employment. The percentage of 16-to-19-year-olds who had a job or were looking for one hit a high of 38% in May.

• The Biden administration raised fuel standards for cars to 50.4 miles per gallon by 2031.

By the Numbers