For those of you just joining us, Fox News morning show Fox & Friends is the lead paint of “news.” Donald Trump’s favorite key-rattling executive time program has for years been making viewers stupider, one segment at a time. Here they are expressing sincere concern over the very well-crafted questions Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has been peppering witnesses with during House committee hearings, questions considerably above the grade of the usual posturing, harrumphing congressional bluster:
HOST WHO ISN’T STEVE DOOCY: Somebody’s writing her questions. I saw the questions at Michael Cohen and saw the questions at Wilbur Ross. And there are some forces behind her, I think there’s a story there.
FAILED PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE TURNED ARTISANAL TWEET-CRAFTER MIKE HUCKABEE: Well there very well could be. There have been some allegations she was almost like the Manchurian Candidate. Recruited, prepared. You know, I don’t know.
This is an exquisite Fox News interaction, a perfect little eclair of conservative distrust for, ya know, the competent and the book learners of the nation. This congressperson whom we are absolutely obsessed over for unclear reasons is suspiciously smart, says one of the co-hosts of America’s dumbest news program. It may indeed be a conspiracy, says the day’s chosen buffoon of the moment. Somebody must be behind this suspicious ability to ask non-stupid questions.
We could mock the absolute obsession the Fox News right has with Ocasio-Cortez, who the network has decided will be a major focus of their latest attempts to send Fox News’s audience of shut-ins and tinfoil enthusiasts into spasms of pants-wetting terror. But it’s the particular accusation here that’s more instructive. By God, they get twitchy when someone in a position of power seems to take their job seriously. Trump’s bizarre, grievance-infused speeches get effervescent praise from Fox hosts, when he goes off on his usual inexplicable tangents and spouts demonstrably false nonsense. Asking serious questions of Michael Cohen or Wilbur Ross, though … what devilry is this?
And that is why Fox & Friends is the lead paint of news. Don’t watch it, kids. Don’t lick that particular windowsill.