Fox News host Jesse Watters tag-teamed with Trump attorney Alina Habba to bash Judge Juan Merchan for overruling “every” objection that came from the Trump defense team.
Tuesday night on Jesse Watters Primetime, Watters and Habba presented to the Fox News audience a scenario of a politically-motivated judge who refused to allow Trump’s defense team to object to testimony. Watters pointed out that Habba, as one of Trump’s attorneys, was in the courtroom and could confirm that the judge overruled every objection from Trump’s attorneys and Habba agreed. So she established credibility by agreeing that she was in the courtroom every day for the Trump Trial and she agreed that the judge never allowed an objection from the Trump Team.
Here’s the problem with the story that Watters and Habba are telling the Fox audience: it’s NOT TRUE. A draft trial transcript obtained by the news site Mediaite shows that the judge sustained 12 objections from the prosecution and 7 from Trump’s defense team. The judge sustained 7 defense objections and 12 prosecution objections. The facts of the actual trial transcript prove that Jesse Watters and Trump attorney Alina Habba were presenting misinformation to the Fox News audience. Did they do it on purpose or were they misinformed? We don’t know, but what happened is congruent with the tendency of Fox News to present false news that it believes will capture the audience. It’s a form of entertaining the audience through false facts.
Unfortunately, when many Fox News viewers hear Jesse Watters and Trump’s attorney state what they present as a fact, they are quick to believe it and hit social media with false information. What I love about our show is that we will present things that specific audience members don’t want to hear. But any admission that audience members don’t want to hear certain things about Donald Trump is proof that they are more interested in stories they want to be true rather than the actual truth.
But there was another exchange on Fox News that must have pissed off a lot of Trump supporters and it happened Sunday when Fox News host Shannon Bream corrected Trump’s attorney Alina Habba when Bream told Habba that President Biden is not behind the trial of Donald Trump. A shocked Habba said, “How can you say the Biden Administration is not responsible?” Bream stated that the trial is a state trial and is not connected to the DOJ. Habba tried to further her point by saying that state officials in New York and Georgia visited the White House and that was proof of political influence. Again, Fox News host Shannon Bream shut down Habba’s contention by reminding her that “The feds passed on these cases.”
Trump condemned Shannon Bream and Fox News for disagreeing with his attorney, even though his attorney did not have the facts on her side. The former president took to Truth Social to call Bream “naive” and said her belief that Biden is not behind the trial is “stupid.”
Fox News deception:
The most notorious case of fraud and lying to the audience by Fox News came last Spring when the network settled with the Dominion Voting Systems for $787.5 million. Fox News agreed to pay the extreme amount rather than go through a trial that would have exposed the fact that the cable news network did know the 2020 election was not stolen and falsely blamed Dominion for conspiring to rig the election. The settlement was the only way Fox News could keep the overt deception covered up.
CNN and MSNBC are left-leaning cable news networks, but neither network has gone so far in purposely misleading their audiences. Mistakes are made, but mistakes are corrected. Fox News has given some hosts the freedom to create fantasy stories to appeal to their audience.
As consumers of the news media, especially the cable news channels, we should all be aware that the goal of the networks is to attract the largest possible audience for the purpose of generating revenue. Yes, it’s about the money! We must be aware that much of the news media today is strongly biased and new outlets are part of our free enterprise system and when the ultimate goal is audience size and money, unbiased content is no longer a priority.
