Fox News is apparently desperate for a scandal over President Obama's handling of news that the Internal Revenue Service applied extra scrutiny to conservative groups, especially now that the network's campaign to embroil the president in scandal over his response to the Benghazi attacks is falling apart. Fox has gone from ignoring Obama's swift responses to the IRS's actions to downplaying the significance of his firing the IRS's acting commissioner, each time distorting reality in order to call for a special prosecutor. 

The release of over 100 pages of inter-agency emails obtained by CNN have threatened to derail months of right-wing scandal-mongering over the administration's response to the 2012 attacks on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi. The emails appear to counter the conservative narrative that the State Department altered Benghazi-related talking points for political reasons. As Fox News' desperate attempts to resurrect the waning scandal fall flat, Fox pundits have resorted to criticizing the president's handling of the IRS controversy instead.

Fox kicked off its criticism by deciding Obama's initial condemnation of the IRS's actions as “outrageous” was too weak. When the president first addressed concerns over this story at a press conference on Monday, May 13, he asserted, “If, in fact, IRS personnel engaged in the kind of practices that had been reported,” then “that's outrageous and there's no place for it. And they have to be held fully accountable.” America Live host Megyn Kelly covered his remarks by wondering, “Does the president understate it when he calls this, 'outrageous'?”

After the Inspector General published its report on the IRS's actions, concluding the agency applied “inappropriate criteria” to conservative applicants, Obama released a statement on May 14 definitively calling the IRS's actions “intolerable and inexcusable” and directing action to be taken to hold those responsible accountable. This time, Fox simply pretended Obama made no such statement and continued to attack his remarks from two days prior, all while arguing that a special prosecutor was needed given Obama's supposed inaction.

By Thursday, Fox was fumbling over how to handle the fact that Obama had fired Steven Miller, the IRS acting commissioner, over the agency's actions. In the morning, America's Newsroom chose the route of merely ignoring that anyone had been fired so that host Martha MacCallum could declare, "[Obama] could be the big person. He could say, 'This stinks. You're all fired. This doesn't happen in America.' He has every ability in his position right now to take the high road. Why not? Why not do it?"

When the network finally acknowledged that Miller had been forced to resign, it did so by attempting to downplay the decision. Anchor Bret Baier questioned the action on Happening Now, claiming, “He was ready to leave, despite the fact -- I mean, before any of this already happened. He was acting commissioner and was set to leave the IRS. So that's a question for the White House; that's a question for the president. You know, was this guy fired when he was going to leave anyway?”

Fox contributor Karl Rove dismissed Obama's firing of Miller and promise to implement the IG's recommendations because “he had no choice but to do those two things.”

By this afternoon, the network had resorted to attacking timing of the story, asking, “President Obama is now very outraged about it, and so on and so forth. But there's a question about whether the outrage is a little -- is a day late and a dollar short.”

Fox's week-long distortion of Obama's response to the IRS has a likely goal -- the appointment of a special prosecutor. Accompanying Fox's spin this week has been a repeated call for such an independent investigation. Kelly summarized the network's desired outcome when she told America Live viewers this week, “The DOJ is now in charge of investigating this controversy at the IRS. But already we're hearing suggestions that this may need a special prosecutor. Because if there is a link to the White House, or elsewhere, can we trust the attorney general to fairly investigate that?”