On Tuesday, Donald Trump was booked and processed before pleading not guilty to 37 counts of mishandling classified documents. He then jetted from a Miami courthouse to his golf club in New Jersey to give a speech invalidating our country’s justice system, accusing government officials of conspiring against him, and basically arguing he can show Top Secret documents to anyone he wants because he used to be commander-in-chief.
And yet, when covering Trump’s rambling, incoherent monologue defending his criminal actions to a crowd of MAGA faithful, Fox News labeled current President Joe Biden the real dictator.
Just before 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday, the network showed a split-screen image that came with a chaos-causing chyron. On one side, Trump, vomiting his paranoid delusions to a crowd of JFK, Jr. resurrectionist believers who ate it up like pigs at the slop trough. On the other, Biden, delivering a speech at the White House marking the national holiday of Juneteenth. Underneath both the words, “Wannabe dictator speaks at the White House after having his political rival arrested,” floated on the screen. It was a truly dumb choice — to publicly malign a sitting president after recently losing a defamation case that cost the network $787 million. But then again, it’s Fox News!
Today, the “news” channel’s official response to the controversy was this deflated balloon of an apology from a Fox spokesperson who said, “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.”
I wrote Fox News last night asking for comment on it airing an alert last night calling president Biden a “wannabe dictator.” The company just responded with the following statement and zero additional explanation:
“The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.” pic.twitter.com/ihWX8TzN2a
— Ken Bensinger (@kenbensinger) June 14, 2023
The latest gaffe comes after Fox News was the only major network to air Trump’s speech in full with rivals like CNN wisely choosing to de-platform the accused since he has a tendency to spew lies every time he opens his mouth. No one at Fox News has explained exactly what happened with the chyron debacle, but surely something will leak in the near future (it almost always does).
(Via Deadline)