As the news broke that some of Trump's allies are trying to run away from Kash Patel's remarks about jailing journalists, Fox is also trying to downplay Trump's "dictator" remarks as just a "joke." As Raw Story reported today, apparently Patel saying the quiet part out loud that he would like to put journalists in prison if Trump puts him in charge of the CIA isn't sitting too well with some of Trump's advisers:

But according to The Washington Post, Trump's camp is starting to worry about all the backlash comments like this from both Trump's allies and the former president himself are generating.

One Trump adviser said of the Patel comments, “Idiotic comments like this have nothing to do with our campaign.”

And yet the problem rums deeper than Patel, with Trump himself refusing to give a straight answer on whether he would govern as a dictator at his town hall in Iowa with Sean Hannity this week, as well as the reports about Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation blueprint for a coming GOP administration that outlines how to implement Christian nationalism and reshape the entire civil service into a loyalist army. Trump's inner circle have begun to try to walk back from that as well, according to Marianne LeVine, Isaac Arnsdorf, and Josh Dawsey.

Per the report, media analyses of Project 2025 "prompted Trump campaign senior adviser Susie Wiles to complain to the project’s director, Paul Dans of the Heritage Foundation, saying that the stories were unhelpful and that the organization should stop promoting its work to reporters, according to a person familiar with the call."

Meanwhile, you've got Fox completely ignoring what Patel said to Bannon, completely ignoring Trump's potential AG making similar threats to journalists last month, ignoring what Trump said about MSNBC this week, ignoring the team of deplorables he's like to have in his cabinet and as Vice President, and only focusing on the remark he made to Sean Hannity during the farce of a "town hall" this week.

Fox's Jesse Watters opened his show up this Friday, which you can watch above if you're a glutton for punishment, calling the warnings about Trump a new Democratic "hoax" and laughing out loud over the possibility of Trump donning a crown, and claiming he's just "teasing" the press, telling MSNBC they need to "relax," and pretending that just because we didn't see Trump do a lot of the things he's promising in his first term, it's never going to happen during his second term either.

That was basically the same argument Hugh Hewitt made during an appearance on Bret Baier's show earlier the same day, where he called the warnings about Trump "silly."

I think they've all realized that saying the quiet part out loud about wanting to arrest journalists finally got the attention of our useless corporate media, and they're in damage control mode trying to walk it back. It's not going to work as long as his henchmen can't keep their mouths' closed.