Shepard Smith was a thing of journalistic beauty today as he broke into Gretchen Carlson’s show to demolish a fear mongering, conspiracy-theory promoting guest who called the New York Stock Exchange suspension of trading part of “a major attack."

Guest Greg Keeley, supposedly a cybersecurity expert, didn’t have any evidence beyond a hunch, tweets from North Korea taking responsibility and animosity toward the Obama administration. But that was all he needed to announce that the NYSE problem plus computer problems at The Wall Street Journal and United Airlines all added up to a major cyber attack.

Keeley called it “a little bit disingenuous” for the White House to have “so fast and so vehemently” label the NYSE problem a computer glitch. Then citing North Korea’s tweets, he said it’s “very, very possible” they truly were behind the attack.

Although Carlson later assured Smith she had challenged Keeley, she did plenty to validate him. She brought up a tweet from Anonymous yesterday, saying, “Wonder if tomorrow is going to be bad for Wall Street… we can only hope.” She asked Keeley, "What do you make of that?"

Keeley called it “another one of these strange coincidences that are being brushed off today by the administration, by the DHS and by the FBI. I just cannot fathom how this is possibly a day chock full of coincidences. These are major attacks…”

Again, Carlson did not challenge that conclusion. She did say she didn’t think “there are politics here but that Capitol Hill is behind the times.” She further added to Keeley’s credibility by asking, “So what do we need to do?”

He claimed there’s technology that can “plug these holes” but that the government is “too gun shy to pull the trigger and deploy these technologies and defend the nation. This is a major attack and for us to bury our heads in the sand is very troubling.”

Rather than challenge Keeley head on, Carlson questioned whether the government is responsible for cyber security at United Airlines and the stock exchange.

“There is no way that United Airlines, to my mind, can be hit with two technical glitches,” Keeley opined. “It’s just not feasible that this is all happening at once and that it’s all some kind of technical glitch.”

Smith must have been watching the show and seething. He broke in, to Carlson’s obvious surprise, not to tease his upcoming show but with a “Fox News Alert” in which he lowered the boom on Keeley.

“You know, Gretchen, the level of irresponsibility on behalf of the last speaker is really difficult for me to quantify,” Smith said.

Watch him blast his own network's expert in the video above, from this Wednesday's The Real Story with Gretchen Carlson.

It’s too bad Smith missed Andrea Tantaros’ nearly-as-irresponsible hypothesis that the computer issues were a “trial run” for an ISIS attack.

Crossposted at News Hounds.
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