Fox News: The Israel Hostage Deal, a Terrorist Attack that Wasn't and Biden's Towering Inferno of a Birthday Cake
A condensed overview of 22 hours of Fox News for the week ending 11/26/23
Last week would have been a sleepy lineup of segments dedicated to the Fox News Christmas tree lighting if had not been for the cease-fire and hostage release agreement between Israel and Hamas along with a dramatic car accident that Fox News incorrectly called a terrorist attack.
For over three and a half hours Fox News hosts and expert guests assumed that a fiery explosion at a border checkpoint with Canada was a terrorist attack carried out by jihadist Muslim extremist. Although the exact nature of the car crash is still under investigation, the fatal accident involved a wealthy local businessman and his wife in a luxury Bentley.
Fox News hosts were also outraged and alarmed that President Biden would photograph himself with a birthday cake topped with 81 lit candles. They seemed downright indignant that the Biden campaign would send out talking points for dealing with “Crazy MAGA relatives.”
Fox neglected to tell its viewers about employee walkouts at Amazon, U.S. military drills with the Philippians, a court ruling that could weaken the Voting Rights Act along with a slew of other stories.
Shows I covered last week:
Fox & Friends
The Five
Jesse Watters Primetime
Outnumbered, America Reports, The Story with Martha MacCallum, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Special Report with Bret Baier - Wednesday only
Flaming Cakes and Dark Brandon
On Tuesday, on “The Five,” Jessica Tarlov, the liberal on the panel, gave her views about the image of Biden blowing out what appeared to be 81 lit candles on a small cake.
“The cake picture. And I say this a lot. That picture is not really for you guys. It's for people that like Joe Biden. It's for Democrats, people who are thinking about wishing over a happy birthday, not preparing to come out here and say this man is unfit for office, etc., And the GOP routinely fails at winning the online game. It's something that we talk about all the time.
So, the GOP thinks they're really smart and funny with Let's go Brandon. Right. Which is f off Joe Biden and Dark MAGA when he came out with the MAGA extremism. So, what is Joe Biden and his team do? They create dark Brandon, who's been one of the most successful meme campaigns that has ever been. It has sold millions of dollars of merchandise,” said Tarlov.
He cohosts interrupted her with remarks about Trump’s mugshot merchandise.
“I'm saying Joe Biden, who wiped the floor with Donald Trump with younger voters. Not now. Yes. Well, and here we go. Here's another point. If you look at there's a new FT (Financial Times) article out that I would recommend, everyone looks at it and it's an analysis of the different methodologies of the polls of online of younger voters, online polls.
Younger voters are not leaving Joe Biden at all. Phone polls. How likely is it that a 25-year-old wants to sit on the phone and have a long 9 minutes on the phone with a pollster versus someone who wants to do on their computer? Other polls from the same poll in the past? I never said that the trend in a general election is not going against Joe Biden.
It was, I think the NBC poll, they've done it 16 times. This is the first time that Trump has been up, but it was by two points and within the margin of error. It matters to look at how these polls are taken. That's all that I'm saying,” said Tarlov.
The Biden’s Campaign MAGA Crazies Guide for Thanksgiving
On Friday in a “clutch your pearls” on “Fox & Friends,” Carley Shimkus discussed a MAGA Thanksgiving guide that appeared to be a bit tongue in cheek.
“He says that, you know, they do say actions speak louder than words. He's talking about unity there. But then why did the Biden campaign then post on Twitter - ‘Your handy guide to responding to crazy MAGA nonsense this Thanksgiving.’
And here are some of the highlights. I just want to read one of them. He says Trump secured the border. That's what like a MAGA person would say. And the response is, no, he didn't all he did was separate families, put children in cages and leave behind a broken immigration system for Joe Biden to clean up. Now if he (Trump) is reelected he’s promising to make it worse,” said Shimkus.
Her co-host Joey Johnny Jones responded.
“Listen, this is perfect, though, because this is exactly what a 20-year-old home from college would say. They would probably pull it out of their pocket and read it verbatim. Right. We watch all of the shows on this channel that go out on the streets and talk to college kids campus reforms. Do a great job at it. You get past the first question, which is, you know, is Trump terrible? The next question is why? And they really don't want to talk about it because I really don't know,” said Jones.
Donald J. Trump has said he would deport millions, ban Muslims from entering the country, criminally prosecute his political rivals, destroy Obamacare, pardon the January 6th rioters, and even hinted that some of his enemies should be executed for treason.
Brian Kilmeade Thinks Democrats Have to Convince People Trump is Evil
On Tuesday on “Fox & Friends,” Ainsley Earhardt discussed how Democrats are attempting to make President Biden more likable to voters.
“People close to Biden are reportedly saying they're pushing for him to replace his formal shoes for more comfortable ones so that he can walk better. He's walking shorter distances, they're suggesting, at least while he's on camera. And apparently Democratic strategist and some of his big donors are frustrated because they don't think his staff has done enough to calm the public's concerns about his age. They're pushing for more humor to start calling him again, Grandpa Joe, said Earhardt.
Her cohost Brian Kilmeade interrupted.
“Right. But the problem is, it's some of the stuff isn't humorous. Some of the stuff is just concerning. I was reading the story in The New York Times, this guy, John Judis. He's a political analyst, author of the book ‘Where Have All the Democrats Gone?’ He published this story. He says the problem with Biden, he's not a commanding or charming presence on a presidential election stage. He says, I think a lot of voters, young people in particular, who are not at all put off by his positions and accomplishments are put off by his utter failure as a regal persona. And I don't know how you can get that fixed.”
He continued.
“You cannot by bicycling. His best hope in that regard is the voter’s perception of Trump as bad or even evil, which, by the way, who will wreck your family. Which is what Democrats are trying to say ‘Too evil to elect,’ said Kilmeade.
Fox News Got a Story About a Car Accident Completely Wrong.
On Wednesday, a man drove his 2022 Bentley Flying Spur into a concrete partition at a border checkpoint in Niagara Falls, NY near the Rainbow Bridge. According to eyewitnesses at the scene the car went airborne about 40 feet before slamming into a row of security booths at the bridge and burst into a fireball.
At around 1:30 p.m. EST a Fox News correspondent, Alexis McAdams, reporting from the scene, claimed a ‘high ranking police official.’ confirmed that the explosion was an attempted terrorist attack.
She went on to say that the car was loaded with explosives and that a second car might have been involved. McAdams got several other details wrong.
As soon as McAdams reported that the crash was a terrorist attack Fox News dedicated nonstop, commercial free coverage to the incident.
John Roberts, the co-host of “America Reports,” brought on a slew of experts to discuss the incident. Almost immediately Roberts and his various guests concluded that the attack was most likely carried out by radical Islamic terrorists, possibly even members of Hamas, as a reaction to the Israel-Hamas War.
No one on Fox had a shred of evidence that linked the car explosion to any specific group. The story completely dominated “The Story with Martha MacCallum,” and “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”
It wasn’t until the latter half of “You World with Neil Cavuto,” that David Spunt, reporting for Fox News from Washington D.C., corrected the story.
Later Alexis McAdams walked back her claim that the crash was part of a terrorist attack.
At some point after the start of “The Five,” at 5:00 p.m., New York Governor Kathy Hochul issued an official statement that the accident was not the result of terrorism. Dana Perino confirmed the news, and the crash became a minor story approx. three and a half hours after it dominated everything on the network.
When the story first broke on “America Reports,” John Roberts and his guest Paul Mauro, a retired NYPD inspector, seemed a bit conflicted.
“When you take a look at all of the people who have designs against America as the remnants of ISIS, you know, al Qaeda is still out there,” said Roberts. There's Palestinian Islamic Jihad, There is maybe some Hamas operatives or Hamas sympathizers. We have seen the FBI director give congressional testimony that we are at a higher level of threat since the heyday of ISIS. Is there any one specific group that immediately comes to mind if this were to be either a person who represents a terror group or sympathetic to a terror group?”
Mauro responded.
“I would hesitate to pin this to any particular group. I mean, the obvious conclusion that it is that it goes to what's going on in Gaza, that this feels to me and I look at, you know, full disclosure, I did this work for about 15 years. My gut tells me, here lone wolf. It sounds like there were two perps in the car. And the other thing is this. You know, as of now, it looks like everybody's carrying it as a terrorist attack. And that does seem to be where it's developing. But we haven't even gotten that confirmed.”
Later, in the same segment, Roberts finally mentioned the possibility of a domestic terrorist. Roberts was the only host or guest on Fox News who mentioned domestic terrorism during the three and a half hours the story dominated the network.
“So, you know, there's good indications here, Paul, that this vehicle did come across the border from Canada. But when you look at the major cases of terrorism in this country that have happened. 911, Boston Marathon bombing, the anthrax attacks, the Beltway snipers, the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Unabomber, the World Trade Center bombing, West Side highway attack. Only three of those were foreign influence. The rest were all domestic,” said Roberts.
Just in Time for Thanksgiving - A New Conspiracy Theory about George Floyd.
On Monday, Jesse Watters thought he would start the holiday week off by promoting a film that offered an alternate explanation about the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by a white police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 2020.
“America was consumed with anger and violence on well over two dozen people died. Fires were set, squad cars destroyed, businesses looted. Rioters caused nearly $2 billion in damage. Police departments across the country were defunded. The police, the people demoralized. This triggered a national crime wave, a pressure campaign to force critical race theory into schools and a corporate shakedown that resulted in a massive transfer of wealth ,” said Watters.
I’m not sure what Watters meant by a ‘massive transfer of wealth,’ as he never clarified that part of his statement.
The film he was promoting was ‘The Fall of Minneapolis,’ a crowd funded documentary produced by Liz Collin, a veteran journalist at Alpha News. She has since left her position after she published a book about George Floyd’s murder.
Watters didn’t reveal to his audience that Collin is married to Bob Kroll, a former Minneapolis police union chief. Kroll has been banned from policing in three counties for ten years following a lawsuit by the ACLU over his role in the treatment of demonstrators at protests after the murder of George Floyd.
As part of the lawsuit Kroll is not allowed to serve on the Minnesota POST (Peace Officer Standards and Training) Board or hold any leadership positions in the three counties for 10 years.
Jesse Watters Doesn’t Think Muslims Faced Violence After 9/11
On Tuesday, on “The Five,” Jesse Watters offered his opinion about the plight of American Muslims after the September 11th attacks.
“And I guess there's a line now everybody knows where it is, but I don't see the comparison because after 911, you know, perhaps Muslim-Americans were singled out at the airport. But other than that, I don't remember a lot of people chanting in the streets, gasp that Muslims remember Muslims being murdered like the guy in a protest in Los Angeles. None of that actually happened. They wanted to put a mosque down by Ground Zero. That was the worst of it, from what I recall,” said Watters.
According to Human Rights Watch, the FBI reported that the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States rose from twenty-eight in 2000 to 481 in 2001, a seventeen-fold increase. The violence included murder, physical assaults, arson, vandalism of places of worship and other property damage, death threats, and public harassment.
Members of the Sikh religion, who were mistaken as Muslims, were also subject to violent attacks. According to one Yale law professor’s estimate as many as 17 Sikhs, Muslims, Arabs and South Asians were murdered in hate crimes inspired by the September 11th attacks.
BOGUS Expert - Michael Shellenberger Trashes Media Matters
On Monday while a guest on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Michael Shellenberger defended Elon Musk’s decision to file a lawsuit against the nonprofit media watch dog Media Matters for America.
“So how fraudulent was this boycott attempt by media matters?” asked Watters.
“Hey, just good to be with you. I mean, it sounds shocking, said Shellenberger. It sounds like if you're on X, formerly known as Twitter, that you are being served up neo-Nazi content and that it's all been tied together with these big brands. Well, as you pointed out, this is they created fake accounts to follow neo-Nazis.
And then they say that they got those ads served. Well, we did the same thing as any journalist should have done. As soon as they heard about this, we created fake accounts. We followed the exact same pro-Nazi accounts that Media Matters names, and we couldn't get any ads. We refreshed constantly. We went into the actual content itself. We then, when they followed through three times more pro-Nazi accounts.
Same thing. We couldn't get any ads served up to us. So, first of all, we were not able to replicate media matters. We asked Media matters to respond, to explain how they came to the system, to be shown the ads after having already followed pro-Nazi content. We didn't hear back from them. I think that tells you that what's going on here? There's more to the more than meets the eye. I would say.”
Neither Watters nor Shellenberger informed Fox viewers that Shellenberger worked closely with Elon Musk on The Twitter Files.
Shellenberger is a repeat offender for the Decoding Fox News category of “Bogus Expert.” He has a master’s degree in anthropology and claims to be an expert on climate change despite having no formal training in climate science.
He will also randomly show up on Fox News to discuss any number of topics he has no expertise in. I’ve caught Shellenberger make several glaring mistakes in the time I’ve worked on this project.
He once claimed Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was one of the elected officials calling for the shutdown of the Indian Point nuclear power plant. The decision to shut the power plant down was made in 2017 two years before Ocasio-Cortez was sworn in as a congresswoman.
Shellenberger also produced a segment from the the wrong address for David DePape, the man convicted of assault and attempted kidnapping in connection with his break in at Nancy Pelosi’s home and the attack on her husband.
Shellenberger went to DePape’s ex-girlfriend’s home and claimed that DePape lived in a bus. He tried to portray DePape as a leftwing radical based on interviews with random people and stickers applied to the vehicle at the address. DePape’s former partner was incarcerated at time.
The New York Times later reported that DePape lived in a different city in a converted garage. The New York Times reporter spoke to DePape’s landlord and employer who confirmed that he was obsessed with rightwing conspiracy theories.
A partial address for DePape was listed in the charging documents at the time of his arrest. Shellenberger chose to visit the address of DePape’s former partner instead.
Judge Jeanine on the Genocide of Native Americans - Get Over It!
On Wednesday on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine Pirro really showed the holiday spirit when discussing the plight of Native Americans.
“If people want to come to my house and they don't like America, I'm not cooking for you. You can leave. That’s the end of it. I work too hard. Now, you know what they say that we shouldn't be thankful for Thanksgiving because we're all colonizers and we should tell the truth about what we've done. Does anyone in this country not think that the Native Americans and the Native Indian Americans were born here first?
We all know that. We all admit to it. They were here first. You can watch any cowboy movie. They were here first. Okay. And you know what the unfair part of it is that a lot of them live on tribal lands, which are not as nice as they should be. I mean, no one has lied about that. So, get over it.”
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I watch on Fox News with five hours of the PBS NewsHour. This past week I watched 22 hours of Fox News programming. The following list are stories that PBS covered that Fox News did not.
Updates in the War in Ukraine
The German defense minister, Boris Pistorius, vowed continued support for Ukraine in its war against Russia pledging 1.3 million Euros worth of military aid. He met with Zelenskyy at an uprising memorial in Kyiv that marked the 10-year anniversary of the so-called Maidan revolution that toppled a pro-Russian leader.
Russian forces claimed they shot down dozens of Ukrainian drones while Ukraine’s military said it stopped new assaults north of Donetsk.
A federal appeals court ruled that private entities cannot bring lawsuits under a provision of the Voting Rights Act. The St. Louis panel upheld a lower court finding that only the U.S. Justice Department may sue under the landmark law. The case is expected to wind up before the Supreme Court.
The Commission on Presidential Debates announced that Texas State University, Virginia State University and the University of Utah will host three presidential debates for next fall’s general election campaign.
A mile-long stretch of Interstate 10 in Los Angeles reopened last week ahead of schedule. It had been damaged by an arson fire fueled by material stored beneath the elevated freeway.
PBS produced a segment about the many challenges patients face who do not speak English proficiently. The segment focused on solutions some providers are implementing to help provide the best care for people who have trouble communicating in the healthcare system.
The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, pleaded guilty in a sweeping U.S. securities investigation and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in fines. The charges were similar to those against FTX, the crypto company that collapsed last year. The founder of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, pleaded guilty to failing to prevent money laundering.
North Korea claimed it launched a spy satellite into orbit in violation of a U.N. ban. There was no independent confirmation.
The U.S. and the Philippines began joint naval and air patrols in waters near Taiwan to counter China. Beijing has claimed much of the South China Sea inside the so-called nine-dash line. The Philippines and other countries in the area dispute China’s boundaries.
The White House warned there are signs that Iran may have provided ballistic missiles to Russia.
According to the U.N. Human Rights Office more than 10,000 civilians have died and more than 18,500 have been injured in Ukraine after nearly two years of war.
Sales of existing homes in October were the slowest in 13 years due to high interest rates and home prices.
PBS produced a segment about a program in Thailand that offers alternative sources of income to help reunite families. Parents of small children often seek work in urban areas while their children are raised by grandparents or other relatives in the countryside.
North Korea fired a ballistic missile into the sea, but South Korea said the test was a failure. It was hours after Seoul said it would resume front-line aerial surveillance in response to the North’s spy satellite launch.
PBS produced a segment about the growing debate surrounding graphic images of the victims of mass shootings. Proponents of publishing the images argue the public would demand more gun control if they saw the type of violence the high-powered firearms caused.
Columbia University has apologized to thousands of women for not doing enough to stop the abuses of an OB/GYN who sexually abused women for over two decades. Patients repeatedly warned the university medical center about his behavior but their complaints were not taken seriously. He has since been convicted and has been sentenced to 20 years in prison. The segment on PBS featured a podcast “Exposed,” about the scandal.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams denied an accusation that he sexually assaulted a woman in 1993 when he worked for the police department. The woman filed a civil summons in state court and is seeking $5 million in damages.
Police raids in Germany targeted members and supporters of Hamas in Berlin and other parts of the country. Germany bans public statements supporting Hamas.
Protesters in Nepal marched in support of a restoration of the monarchy and nation’s former status as a Hindu state. The monarchy was abolished in 2008 after citizens forced an end to the king’s authoritarian rule.
PBS produced a segment about plastic recycling in Thailand. Southeast Asia has been inundated with plastic scrap after China blocked all but the cleanest plastic waste imports in 2018.
PBS produced a segment about Erin Matson, 23, the youngest coach in the NCAA. Matson is the rookie head coach of the North Carolina Tar Heels field hockey team.
One thousand Amazon workers in the UK walked off the job on Black Friday one of the busiest shopping days of the year. Workers across Europe joined the movement in an attempt to unionize.
PBS produced a segment about how a volunteer group uses drones to help find missing dogs.
In Washington state, more than 400 Macy's employees walked off the job at selected stores over safety concerns and pay demands. They're expected to return to work before Monday.
Research at Boston University showed CTE, a type of brain damage caused by blows to the head, was more prevalent in children athletes than previous thought.
PBS produced a segment about the aftermath of the mass shooting in Lewiston, Maine.
Charles Peters, the founding editor of The Washington Monthly, died at his home in Washington at the age of 96. He was best known for his book “Titling at Windmills,” and was often called the godfather of neoliberalism.
Carley Shimkus? Joey Johnny Jones? Did these people choose the weirdest stage names ever in case they want to have a real career someday?
Fox claims that JB can't with its constant refrain of "clean up on aisle 5." So, who do they think is running the gov't and making decisions and encouraging the truce in the mid-east and return of hostages and supporting large infra-structure programs, and promoting civility and democratic values? Cause FOX doesn't criticize those programs. Maybe that "invisible hand" of gov't should declare itself, and we can get a leader that even Foxes can love. FWIW