While substitute hosting The Big Story with John Gibson on September 6, FOX News Channel political contributor Heather Nauert claimed that Senator Zell Miller (D-GA) was “the only person who was actually negative during the Republican convention.” Nauert's assertion came in response to senior Kerry-Edwards '04 campaign adviser and DNC communications director Debra DeShong's comment that there is “negativity coming out of the Bush campaign.”
In making this claim, Nauert took up the GOP mantle herself, rather than seeking a rejoinder to DeShong's comment from her other guest, Bush-Cheney '04 campaign spokesman Terry Holt. And when DeShong responded to Nauert, "[Y]ou clearly weren't listening to Dick Cheney's speech," Nauert asserted that she had, in fact, “heard the whole darn thing.”
From the September 6 edition of FOX News Channel's The Big Story with John Gibson:
DESHONG: The negativity coming out of the Bush campaign is only because they can't talk about their own record --
NAUERT: Well, no, I think the only person who was actually negative during the Republican convention was somebody from your own party, Zell Miller. You didn't hear a lot of that from the president's point of view.
DESHONG: Then you didn't hear Dick Cheney's -- then you clearly weren't listening to Dick Cheney's speech.
NAUERT: No, I heard the whole darn thing.
Nauert's claim is false. In a September 1 article titled "Kerry bashers unleash barbs with no limits," The Washington Times pointed out numerous instances of negativity by a number of other Republican speakers, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN). The Times also noted that “no content guidelines were issued” for speakers at the convention. In response to the question of “whether the [Bush-Cheney '04] campaign had told him to keep Kerry bashing to a minimum,” the article noted: “Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele, who spoke last night, laughed, 'That would be no.'"
Nauert's background sheds some light on her apparent eagerness to defend the GOP. While her FOXNews.com biography claims that she joined the channel “in October 1998 as a political contributor,” it fails to mention that Nauert appeared regularly on FOX News Channel prior to 1998. According to The Washington Post's May 20, 2000, profile, Nauert was usually identified as a “GOP Strategist” or a “GOP Consultant.” In the early 1990s, Nauert was involved with the group Americans for Freedom of Choice in Healthcare, a coalition dedicated to “promot[ing] free enterprise healthcare” that was organized by her father, businessman Peter W. Nauert. In 1998, former Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appointed her to the White House Conference of Retirement Savings.
Additionally, Nauert has contributed more than $5,000 to Republican political candidates in the last eight years, including donations of $1,500 to Representative Mark W. Neumann (R-WI) and $1,000 each to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) and Representative Pete Sessions (R-TX).