USA Today claims Obama attacked Fox News “viewers”
Written by Eric Boehlert
Published
Yet another column on the Fox News feud, and yet another (zzzz) Beltway pundit insisting it was a very, very bad thing for the White House to label the channel a propaganda arm of the GOP. (Doesn't the White House know Democrats are never allowed to push back on the press?)
USA Today's Chuck Raasch, offering up his tsk-tsk appraisal of the situation, deftly repeats what's already been said many, many times for the last week, which, of course, means Raasch never even hints that Fox News routinely traffics in blatant lies and misinformation. But Raasch actually breaks new ground when he claims the White House attacked Fox News' viewers, which is a shockingly dumb reading of the recent dust-up.
Here's Raasch [emphasis added]:
Attacking whole segments of the population belies Obama's promise of bringing people together.
And again:
There is still a thing called presidential decorum. Sending out a taxpayer-paid partisan to attack a network, and by extension, its viewers, is not presidential.
Set aside the idiocy of suggesting administrations aren't allowed to criticize unfair press, and that Democratic administrations are simply supposed to roll over and allow Fox News air as many lies has possible without ever hearing a peep of protest. More importantly though is this: Where, exactly, is Raasch's proof that Obama or anyone else at the White ever, ever, ever attacked Fox News viewers; that anyone attacked “whole segments of the population” when it recently criticized the purposeful misinformation produced by Fox News?
If the Obama White House wanted, for whatever foolish reason, to attack Fox News viewers, they would have. But the White House didn't, so why did Raasch concoct the claim that it did? Why is Raasch criticizing Obama for doing something he never did?