Hunter Biden The Dream that Won't Die, Fox Loves RFK Jr. and SCOTUS the Destroyer of Liberals
A condensed overview of 20 hours of Fox News for the week ending 7/2/23
Fox News is still determined to make Hunter Biden the scandal of the century even though nearly everyone outside of the right-wing bubble largely yawns when anything involving the president’s wayward son is mentioned in the media.
If the laptop attributed to Hunter Biden really held a wealth of damning evidence, it should be easy to showcase rather than creating elaborate webs of singular WhatsApp text messages taken out of context.
Last week stories about Hunter Biden dominated the network with the various Supreme Court rulings playing a supportive role. Fox News hosts took glee in rulings that will mire young people in crippling debt, weaken LGBTQ rights, and threaten diversity in higher education.
The network also wants Robert Kennedy Jr. to be either a real rival for President Biden or a spoiler in the 2024 presidential election.
Meanwhile the network didn’t mention that it paid out another workplace harassment settlement, or that a revision showed that the GDP grew 2% in the first quarter and new claims for unemployment decreased.
Shows I covered last week
Fox & Friends - 1st hour
The Five
Fox News Tonight
The Ingraham Angle
Who is the Other Biden?
On Wednesday Lawerence Jones, the host of “Fox News Tonight,” repeated a refrain I heard all week on Fox News.
“Who is the other Biden?”
The reference was to another leaked text message in which Hunter used the plural term “The Bidens.” Multiple Fox News hosts implied he must have been referring to his father Joe Biden.
“According to the WhatsApp messages, in 2017, Hunter Biden demanded that Chinese energy company CFC pay to bind more than double what the CCP billing company was already offering,” said Jones.
Jones then read directly from the text message.
“I can make five million in salary from any law firm in America. If you think it's about the money, it's not. The Bidens are the best at doing exactly what chairman wants from this partnership,” said Jones reading the text allegedly written by Hunter Biden.
Jones seemed to think this was some sort of smoking gun.
“Now you've got to know the plural Bidens, who are the other Bidens involved in this?” asked Jones.
Jones could have just typed “Which Biden did Hunter Biden work with?” into a Google search.
He would have been inundated with several articles about Joe Biden’s brother James Biden. James and Hunter worked on a number of deals over the course of several years. It was never a secret that they were partnered, and Hunter refers to his uncle throughout the correspondence on the hard drive that is attributed to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Steve Doocy Continues to Go Rogue about Hunter Biden
On Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” Steve Doocy had another moment when he seemed to go against the Fox News narrative. Speaking about the same text message Doocy made some valid points.
“It is unclear what the joint venture is or was. And if it was just for Biden corruption, then why did they have other entities like they they mentioned Hudson and some other partners as well? If it was just to influence a former vice president, which I don't know if that's illegal, why exactly were there so many other moving parts? And what the Republicans don't do here yet is they don't say if any laws were broken and if anything was illegal,” said Doocy.
Judge Jeanine on Affirmative Action.
Judge Jeanine Pirro made several assumptions about affirmative action.
“And finally, my final point is, I don't want someone who got into law school or medical school because of the color of their skin.
I don't want someone who's flying a plane because of the color of their skin. I want the best person to operate on me, the best person to represent me and the best person to fly me wherever the hell I'm going. I'm done with affirmative action,” said Pirro.
The recent SCOTUS decision involved universities not flight schools. Commercial pilots don’t need a college education but they do need a number of certifications involved with flying a plane.
Interestingly enough there was no real discussion about these same schools using legacy admissions that give the children of former students and advantage when they apply.
“The Five” LOVES RFK Jr.
On Monday the cast of “The Five,” could hardly contain themselves over a video that showed RFK Jr. lifting weights outdoors with his trainer.
Jesse Watters started it off.
“Dana Perino, as a female and an undecided voter. When you see RFK. Jr. like that, does that make you reconsider voting for him?” asked Watters.
“Oh, gosh, Jesse, you've really put me on the spot there. I'm impressed. Right? At 69 years old, I think it is interesting he's trying to show the contrast. . . I think that RFK. Jr. should probably run as an independent because there are more independents in this country, registered independents and there are Republicans and Democrats. He's not going to get the debate with Biden is just not going to get it. And if he wants to actually make a dent and this could be the year where a third party,” said Perino.
Of course as someone who has working in the media and politics for her entire career Perino would know that a third party candidate would have next to no chance of winning a national election.
On Thursday the topic of RFK. Jr. came up again.
Dana Perino remained enthusiastic about him.
“One of the things interesting, Harold is watching RFK Jr. run to Biden's right instead of his left. So does that mean that there's like a middle lane for somebody like him,” asked Perino.
Jesse Watters also appeared to be a fan.
“RFK is out there with 20%. He's got juice. You don't think Biden knows he has juice on the left, so he has to come to RFK Jr. and says, ‘What do you need?,’ ‘What do you want? Let's do business.’ and RFK Jr.. He he can do business in that. But and he actually said at another interview that he may consider being HHS secretary in a Republican administration,” said Watters.
Fox News puts weight in polls when the polling promotes its agenda.
Judge Pirro weighed in.
“I think that RFK is really the only candidate who is kind of defying modern day politics. . . I'm going to go over here and I'm going to talk about these issues. And I really think the guy, you know, is at some point going to break through . . .because I'm one like him. RFK Whether or not he'll be the big guy who benefits from that. You know, he's got to he's going to come through and I think he's going to be stronger than where he is. He is down 17% from 20%,” said Pirro.
Greg Gutfeld echoed Perino’s statement from Monday.
“He's pushing both parties forward in topics that both parties want to avoid. And that's what Trump This is what RFK, in my opinion, is the closest to the Trump phenomenon. A 2015. Remember, I wasn't a fan . . . but he's extremely persuasive even when they try to corner him. He'll talk to anybody. He'll go on any podcast, obviously, because he's the outside dude, the elephant in the room for him is vaccines, but you can be pro vax and a vaccine skeptic at the same time.
We do that with everything where he's very strong at this stuff. People need to start listening to him. And I think that if he runs independent, he has I think his strongest chance is running as an independent because he gets he gets Republicans and Democrats and independents. He's in,” said Gutfeld.
Jessica Tarlov - Response to RFK Jr.
On Monday Jessica Tarlove gave her perspective on RFK Jr.’s chances.
“I hate to be Debbie Downer, but I'm paid to do so. So I'm going to tell you again to be Debbie Downer. No Democrat, real live Democrats that believe in the Democratic Party and what it stands for like RFK, they also do not think that that is natural to Greg's point. Don't know what he's on. Don't want to surmise. It's not normal for a 70- year-old, also there weren't that many weights on that bar.
My mom is 70 and she looks amazing. But that man's body does not look like anyone in their seventies. Did not look like what my dad looked like even before he had a workout constantly. This guy's working out, so I don't think that I mind. I don't want a guy who could be an assistant trainer at Planet Fitness to be the president,” said Tarlov.
Michael Shellenberger - DOUBLE BOGUS EXPERT!
This is a first in Decoding Fox News history. Never before has a fake expert appeared on the network to discuss two different topics that they were unqualified to discuss.
Michael Shellenberger made that happen.
He’s known for touting himself as an expert on any number of subjects from Twitter’s corporate practices, the origin of COVID-19, UFO sitings and climate change.
Shellenberger has a master’s degree in anthropology. A few years ago he decided he was an expert in climate science and started writing books that went against the scientific consensus on climate change.
An excerpt of a review of his book ‘Apocalypse Never.’ from YaleClimateConnections.org
“The book suffers from logical fallacies, arguments based on emotion and ideology, the setting up and knocking down of strawman arguments, and the selective cherry-picking and misuse of facts, all interspersed with simple mistakes and misrepresentations of science.”
That review is one of many scathing takedowns of his nonsense.
On Wednesday Shellenberger was invited on “Fox News Tonight,” to discuss the wildfires in Canada.
He got so much wrong in this one segment I’m going to break it down line by line.
“To ban pizza ovens or, you know, engage in, you know, counterproductive efforts like shutting down nuclear power plants,” said Shellenberger.
Pizza ovens have not been banned in New York City. A new regulation by The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has been proposed that would require the owners of coal and wood burning pizza ovens to add emission control devices to their chimneys. Shellenberger continued.
“They did that in New York City. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who says that climate change is the end of the world, helped to shut down a nuclear power plant that was replaced entirely by fossil fuels,” said Shellenberger.
The decision to shut down the Indian Point nuclear power plant was made in 2017. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) was elected in 2018. She was sworn in as U.S. Representative in January 2019.
AOC had absolutely nothing to do with the plan to shut down Indian Point.
Debate about the plant went back as far as 1974 when the first reactor was shutdown. Indian Point was plagued with safety problems including an incident where radioactive material leaked into groundwater near New York City.
The plant was also mistakenly built on a fault line. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to deemed Indian Point one of the top ten facilities most in need of reevaluation for earthquake vulnerability.
One of the 9/11 terrorists cited the plant as a potential target and its close proximity to the most densely populated metropolitan area was another cause for concern.
The only thing Shellenberger got right is that Indian Point was replaced by a natural gas fueled power plant. According to the Energy Information Administration:
“Burning natural gas for energy results in fewer emissions of nearly all types of air pollutants and carbon dioxide (CO2) than burning coal or petroleum products to produce an equal amount of energy.”
On Friday Shellenberger was asked to come on as an expert on transgenderism.
“Yeah, it's really disturbing. I mean, I see parallels as well between the radical left affirmation of gender dysphoria and the medical mistreatment of adolescents, very similar to the affirmation of addiction and mental illness,” said Shellenberger.
Shellenberger is not a therapist and has absolutely no training in psychology.
“The deprivation and medical mistreatment of people that we call homeless. And so what we're seeing is a kind of psychopathology on the left that's affirmed in a kind of illness and in medical mistreatment. And I think it's just kind of what you said, which is that there's sort of a cult of victimization and of victimhood where victimhood is actually celebrated as a moral virtue rather than as something that people would overcome to lead a better life,”
This is all a bunch of nonsense. The term psychopathology is usually used to describe the scientific study of mental illness or disorders.
“And so I think it's a very dark period for a movement of liberals who, you know, once stood for very grand ideals of overcoming oppression, of achieving human liberation . . .Because Wokeism is a religion and it's also psychopathological . And so where you see is a demand that we obey a new external authority, namely on climate change, you see the demand for a new moral authority on race where we have some idea that we would have a moral order based on who is most victimized historically by race. It's a very racist system,” said Shellenberger.
To call wokeism a religion is another trend commonly promoted on Fox News even though very few conservatives can even define what the concept woke means.
“And then on the trans issue, this idea that we are Gods who can remake our bodies and change our sex in order to align with a kind of gendered soul, I think what you see with those three issues is a sort of complete psychopathological woke religion that has really taken hold of people, in part because they they have abandoned traditional religions and also abandoned some Enlightenment views.
A traditional Enlightenment liberalism. So I think it's a very dangerous time. These are the same people that are demanding that we be censored, that are waging disinformation campaigns to make us try to try to make the American people hate each other when in fact, our support for religious, racial and sexual differences is higher than ever,” said Shellenberger
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the shows I watch on Fox News with five hours of the PBS News Hour. The following are a list of stories that PBS included that Fox did not.
Anderson Lee Aldrich, the person who killed five and injured 17 at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.
Fox News agreed to pay a settlement of $12 million to Abby Grossberg, a former producer on Tucker Carlson’s show. Grossberg claimed she experienced harassment and antisemitism at work and was coerced into providing false testimony in a deposition in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit against the network.
According to a final revision GDP grew 2% in an annualized pace in the first quarter beating most estimates. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits decreased 26,000.
Sheriff’s deputy Scot Peterson was found not guilty of child endangerment and other charges for his inactivity during the mass shooting at the Parkland school.
Israel's far-right government approved plans to build over 5,000 new homes in Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank. The decision will likely strain relations with the international community since most countries say the settlements violate international law.
The annual Hajj pilgrimage returned to full capacity the first time since the pandemic. Some two million Muslims left Mecca after circling Islam’s holiest site, the Kaaba, and converged on a vast tent camp in the nearby desert for a day and night of prayer.
The SCOTUS returned a case involving the congressional map in Louisiana back to a lower court. The court’s decision raised the chances that the state will be forced to redraw a district that empowers Black voters.
President Biden is kicking off his plan to expand high-speed internet to over 8.5 million homes and businesses as part of his 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill. Biden has pledged $42 billion for the project.
PBS produced a follow up segment about the AP African American studies classes after the course was a target of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
PBS also included a segment about how corporations are facing backlash for including Pride campaigns in support of the LGTBQ community.
A Senate report showed both the FBI and DHS had multiple shortcomings in how the agencies handled the lead up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. Both repeatedly ignored, downplayed, or failed to share warnings of violence before the riot.
Bishop Richard Stika, of Knoxville Tennessee, resigned after criticism about how he handled the sexual abuse of children in a diocese in the Eastern part of the state.
Cardinal Rainer Maria Woelki, of the archdiocese of Cologne, Germany has been accused of lying about his knowledge of the sexual abuse of children. Authorities conducted a search of properties owned by the church.
The Czech police broke up an international human smuggling ring that involved migrants from Turkey to Western Europe.
The latest report by the U.S. Census showed that the U.S. population is getting older with a median age of 38.
The US Supreme Court ruled against the “independent state legislature” (ISL) theory that only the state legislatures—not courts—could determine the manner of both state and Federal elections under the Elections Clause of the Constitution.
Sales of e-cigarettes have climbed nearly 50% over the past three years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
An ancient 2000 year old fresco was discovered in Pompeii that depicted what looks like an early form of pizza.
A police officer shot and killed an unarmed teenager of North African descent during a traffic stop in a Paris suburb. The police officer was immediately taken into custody and charged with voluntary homicide a few days later. Protests and riots in response to the killing have spread throughout the country resulting in over 400 arrests.
A U.N. investigation into the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo bay found that the 30 men held there are subject to “ongoing cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.”
Yusef Salaam, one of exonerated men that were part of the Central Park Five who were falsely accused of rape and served seven years in prison, declared victory in the Democratic primary for a New York City council seat in Harlem.
Zeneta Everhart, the mother of a victim of the racially motivated mass shooting in Buffalo, New York won a Democratic primary to represent a neighborhood in the Buffalo Common Council near where the massacre happened.
The population of snow crab has crashed in Alaska due to warming ocean waters.
PBS produced an extended segment about the high maternal death rate among Black women in the United States. Black mothers are nearly three times more likely to die during pregnancy or delivery than any other race. Systemic racism may play a role as Black patients have better outcomes with Black healthcare workers.
The U.S. flew nuclear capable bomber planes to South Korea in a show of force to North Korea.
Lowell Weicker, a former U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator and the 85th Governor of Connecticut died at the age of 92. Part of his legacy includes co-authoring the Americans with Disabilities Act.
At least 51 people died and 32 were injured in a truck accident in Kenya. The truck veered off the highway before hitting several vehicles and pedestrians. The cause of the accident is unknown.
The State Department issued a report about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The report found faults with both the Trump and Biden administrations. It also included detailed damning shortcomings by the current administration.
The New York Yankees pitcher, Domingo Germán, pitched a perfect game meaning absolutely no batter managed to make it to a base during the entire game. Perfect games in Major League Baseball are so rare there have only been 24 in the 154 year history of the sport.
Former Vice President Mike Pence met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a surprise visit. Pence is the first 2024 Republican candidate to meet with Zelenskyy during the campaign.
Ukrainian prosecutors charged a Russian politician and two suspected Ukrainian collaborators with war crimes over the alleged deportation of dozens of orphans. Ukrainians say more than 19,000 children have been illegally transferred to Russia or Russian-held territory since the war began.
Scientists discovered gravity waves in the universe. Albert Einstein theorized early in the 20th century that heavy objects create ripple effects in the fabric of the universe as they travel through space and time. This new evidence supports his theory.
A British court ruled that the U.K. government plan to send asylum-seekers on a one-way trip to Rwanda was unlawful.
The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the U.S. before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean did not collect any intelligence during its flight. The Pentagon said parts of it were made with American off-the-shelf parts.
Christine King Farris, the oldest sister of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., died at the age of 95. She was a founding board member and longtime volunteer of the King Center, which was founded By MLK Jr.’s wife in 1968. She was also one of the longest-serving tenured professors at Spelman College.
John Goodenough, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who was known for his contribution in the development of Lithium batteries died at age 100. He was also a winner of the Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Acclaimed actor Alan Arkin died at the age of 89. His stage and screen career spanned seven decades. He won a Tony Award for starring in Joseph Stein’s comedy “Enter Laughing.” Arkin went on to appear in over 100 movies. He won an Oscar for his role in “Little Miss Sunshine,” in 2007.
By the Numbers
Coming up…
This week I’ll be covering “Fox & Friends,” “The Five,” “Jesse Watters Primetime,” and “The Ingraham Angle.” For paid subscribers the first installment of “Who is Hunter Biden Part 3” should drop tomorrow or early this week. I have to break it up because there was so much nonsense in it I couldn’t fit it in one newsletter.
Minor point. I think you meant "weights," not "waits." Re Kennedy comments. Meanwhile, sad that a truth-teller (a good thing) has to be described as "Debbie-downer"). vs a ray of sunshine.
One of your best. I look at video clips of fox occasionally but they mostly turn my stomach. What you do reaffirms my belief in the real world. What’s happened to their viewers’ brains? I’m making a video, “Make America What Again.” It is sobering. I’ll send you a link this week. -Dr. Joe