Blasting Democratic 'Support' For Alleged Smugglers, Fox Ignores Hernandez Pardon
How do you spin the president you support pardoning a notorious drug trafficker amid your weekslong campaign to convince viewers that your political enemies are pro-trafficker? For the propagandists at Fox News, the answer is just to pretend it didn't happen.
President Donald Trump announced on November 28 his intention to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been serving a 45-year sentence in federal prison after a U.S. court convicted him of “helping drug traffickers send tons of cocaine to the United States in exchange for millions of dollars in bribes that fueled his political career.” Trump claimed Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly,” though he later said he knew “very little” beyond what he had been told by “very good people that I know.” (Axios credited, in part, a “persistent lobbying campaign” by former Trump adviser and fellow pardon recipient Roger Stone, who touted his role in securing the pardon.) Hernández was released following the pardon’s issuance on December 1.
Fox has devoted just over six minutes of airtime to the Hernández pardon, according to a Media Matters review of the network’s programming from November 28, when Trump announced his intention to pardon Hernández, through Monday. Special Report, the flagship “straight news” show anchored by Trump golfing buddy Bret Baier, and the weekend daytime shows The Sunday Briefing and Fox News Live provided the bulk of the network’s coverage. Fox & Friends Weekend also ran a headline read.
The only other mentions of the story on Fox came when Democratic co-hosts on the panel show The Five raised the issue during segments about the Trump administration’s purported counternarcotics effort aimed at alleged drug trafficking from Venezuela, which Trump claims is directed by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Since early September, U.S. military strikes undertaken at Trump’s behest, aimed at what the administration claims are boats trafficking drugs in the Caribbean, have killed at least 87 people and destroyed 23 boats.
Co-host Jessica Tarlov pointed out on December 2 that Trump’s pardon of Hernández disproves “the story about this administration being focused on eradicating American society of drugs.” On Monday, co-host Harold Ford Jr. similarly challenged his colleagues to state whether or not they approved of the president granting clemency to a convicted drug trafficker (Fox contributor Tyrus and co-host Dana Perino responded that they did not, while co-host Kayleigh McEnany mocked Ford for landing on a “niche issue” she said she hoped Democrats would “hang on” in the midterm campaigns).
Fox’s chyron as Ford began talking — “Dems stick up for narco terrorists” — speaks to the tenor of Fox’s coverage of the U.S. strikes off Venezuela. While experts have described the U.S. campaign of extrajudicial killings as “patently illegal,” the strikes have been widely praised on Fox, where hosts and anchors regularly accuse Democrats who raise legal questions about them of supporting the traffickers.
“It's either you're pro drug dealers, drugs going throughout Europe and throughout this country, or you're for taking out those boats,” host Brian Kilmeade said on Friday’s Fox & Friends — a program which has so far not covered Trump’s pardon of a man actually convicted of helping traffic drugs “throughout this country.”
Likewise, Fox host Will Cain has said of Democratic criticism of the strikes, “Maybe it’s that they are against law and order,” while anchor Harris Faulkner asked of those questioning the strikes, “Are they working against America and for the drug cartels?” Neither has addressed the Hernández pardon on their program or questioned whether it shows Trump to be “against law and order” or working “for the drug cartels.”
And Fox stars Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, and Sean Hannity have not told their viewers about the pardon, even as all three have praised Trump for authorizing the Caribbean boat strikes.
Reprinted with permission from Media Matters
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