Fox News dropped the “fair and balanced” slogan about five years ago, and when it comes to some hosts, it’s been balls to the wall in terms of far-right propaganda. The notoriety of those talking heads is so great that SNL‘s most recent “Weekend Update” segment largely went to town on Tucker Carlson, who has even been called out by Newsmax for all of his pro-Putin, Russian propaganda.
The conservative news network’s sure on shaking footing when it comes to Russia-vs-Ukraine (given the whole Trump-favoring thing, obviously), and on Sunday Night In America With Troy Gowdy, a former Trump advisor didn’t hide his bias. Retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas Macgregor stood up for Putin while arguing that economic sanctions aren’t worth it, that all of this is NATO’s fault, and that Ukraine should roll over while every other country should stand by and let Putin do as he pleases.
Former Trump Advisor Douglas MacGregor says we need to stop demonizing Putin, lift all sanctions, stop providing weapons and aid, that it’s “hopeless,” and just let Putin take whatever part of Ukraine that he wants. pic.twitter.com/HBnLWVdVgD
— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) February 28, 2022
Well, Jennifer Griffin (the Fox News national security correspondent at the Pentagon) was up next with Gowdy, and she wasn’t having this propaganda party:
“I just heard your last guest, and I feel like I need to correct some of things that Colonel Doug Macgregor just said. And I’m not sure 10 minutes is enough time to do so, because there were so many distortions in what he just said, and talking about the west and NATO vilifying Putin and sounding like an apologist for Putin.”
wow — Jennifer Griffin continues her live fact-check of Fox colleagues and guests:
“I feel like I need to correct some of the things that Col. Douglas MacGregor said, and I’m not sure that 10 minutes is enough time to do so, because there were so many distortions.” pic.twitter.com/nsdvoGwwXi
— j.d. durkin
(@jd_durkin) February 28, 2022
Griffin wasn’t done yet, and the Daily Beast notes that she’s had to take this on-air route more than once since Putin’s troops invaded Ukraine. Griffin noted that Putin wants to take Russia back to 19th-century imperialism, and she’s followed Putin closely for decades, given that she’s worked at Fox News’ Moscow bureau. Then Griffin came for Macgregor’s own actions, which she says helped make Putin’s current situation possible and even emboldened him to do so:
“The kind of appeasement talk that Col. MacGregor, who should know better, when he was in government, he was the one who was advising Trump to pull all troops out of Germany. That projection of weakness is what made Putin think he could move into a sovereign country like Ukraine.”
As MSNBC is noting, Trump had actually planned to place MacGregor as U.S. ambassador to Germany, but all of that fell apart when Macgregor started popping onto Fox News with an arsenal of conspiracy theories. That didn’t totally fly with Gowdy on Sunday night, but Griffin’s pushback was a lot louder.