Did the Trump campaign give Fox a heads up on their line of attack prior to his campaign stunt at Arlington National Cemetery this week? It sure looks like it since they were using the exact same line of attack against both Harris and Biden prior to the news breaking that Trump's campaign staff had an altercation at the cemetery, and that the campaign photo-op was illegal.
As we already discussed here, TPM reported that the entire fiasco was just something invented by the Trump campaign so they could attack Harris and Biden for not attending what was actually a campaign event, and that's exactly what we heard from Fox's Sandra Smith, who was filling in for Harris Faulkner this Tuesday, and her guest and fellow Fox host, Brian Kilmeade.
Here's Smith and Kilmeade parroting Trump's attacks on this Tuesday's The Faulkner Focus, and of course ignoring that Trump is the one that negotiated the withdrawal and that released 5000 Taliban fighters from prison.
SMITH: Trump attended the wreath laying ceremony yesterday, but President Biden and VP Harris did not go to any commemoration ceremonies. White House national security communications adviser John Kirby faced questions about that yesterday.
KIRBY: Neither going to Arlington nor any individual paper statement is ever going to be enough to repay these families and to try to make sure that they know they're supported and that they're loved and they're respected and admired for what they're going through and nothing's going to assuage their grief.
Nothing we can say, nothing we can do, no flowers you can lay is going to take that pain away.
SMITH: Family members of those 13 service members say the Biden administration has never reached out to them in the three years since the Kabul bombing.
My heart breaks for them, Brian. We had a gold star mother on our program yesterday on America Reports and the grieving is still like this happened yesterday. I mean, she lost her son, Ryan, and to think this administration has never reached out.
I wonder, Brian, what you think about the fact that we can roll tape on Kamala Harris saying she was the last person in the room with Biden when they made the decision that led to this this horrifically chaotic withdrawal.
BRIAN: The biggest military disaster in our history, Sandra, we've been over it. In fact, I played the sound bites from the families on our show from your show yesterday. And the one thing you could find, too, CNN did one interview yesterday and that mother, I think, shocked them when she came out and said, yeah, I never heard anything from Joe Biden except for I watched him check his watch at Dover when my son, his his casket was coming out down the ramp. I noticed that. So did the other families. Number two is for him to stay on the beach on a day like this, people make mistakes. But this was the biggest mistake in American history.
And this was something that was anticipated by the generals who testified that they told Joe Biden that this was going to happen. Joe Biden tells George Stephanopoulos. no one ever told me, and nobody wants to pursue that.
The other thing they're trying to do is say, well, the Vice President was the last one in the room. But listen to her statement that she wrote, she put out. “As I have said, President Biden made the courageous and right decision to end America's longest war over the past three decades. Our administration has demonstrated we can still eliminate terrorists, including the leaders of Al-Qaeda and ISIS.”
First off, if you talk to the FBI Director, he knows we've lost all our eyes and ears in the area. It's been devastating. He's scared to death of what's coming through our southern border at the same time. It's an impossible mix of terror hell. Number two is, you notice she said, as I've said, President Biden made the courageous decision.
She didn't say we, because she wants to be able to say, that's him, not me, but we're not buying it, and we shouldn't.
SMITH: Just like she hasn't been in charge of the border either, right? Brian, the family's grieving, you'd think John Kirby was defending Kamala Harris and Joe Biden not being at these events, but you'd think this could be a step in the right direction. How about just show up?
KILMEADE: Oh, yeah.
SMITH: I know so many of these families feel that way. We talk to them on this network and our program all the time.
I haven't found any other sources for this, but on his podcast this Thursday, Keith Olbermann reported that Trump skipped this so-called the commemoration the last two years. Maybe some of our useless corporate media could look into that as well.
Once the news broke about the altercation and that what Trump did was illegal, Fox hasn't done many segments mentioning Arlington. Gee, I wonder why? They'll just memory hole this one like they do everything else that's not favorable to Trump. It makes me wonder if they'll even air the debate if Trump doesn't chicken out.
