Fox News continued its defense of Donald Trump on Tuesday, when he was arraigned on 37 federal criminal violations of the Espionage Act, obstruction, and making false statements.
Several hosts framed the indictment as unfair and political because he’s a former president, while others insisted his alleged crimes – which reportedly could land him in prison for up to 400 years – were merely “process” crimes, or that Trump was being indicted for the “crime of being Donald Trump,” or for mere “carelessness,” or over “where a piece of paper goes,” and perhaps most egregiously, that he shouldn’t be indicted because “no one got hurt,” and there are “no dead bodies.”
“We most certainly enter a plea of not guilty,” Trump’s lawyer, Todd Blanche, told U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman.
But over at Fox News, the verdict was not guilty.
“The big question really is motive,” Fox News co-host Greg Gutfeld announced on “The Five.”
“The obvious answer, there wasn’t one, right? Carelessness or ignorance isn’t a motive. It could be unlawful violation of a process, but the idea that he had this intent to commit treason is obviously a political line of thinking.”
Not only is it a political line of thinking, it’s one no one in authority is stating. Gutfeld is preying on Fox News viewers’ ignorance, letting them equate “Espionage Act” with “treason,” a charge Trump is not facing.
“The bottom line is you just can’t indict over carelessness, a president, even if you can, right?” Gutfeld declared. “You may be able to do it, but you shouldn’t and I get it. Politics dictates that you should destroy people, but patriotism would say, ‘Don’t destroy a president, you know?’ ‘Move on, get on with your life.'”
“If this indictment had caused some kind of damage,” Gutfeld continued, “I mean, if the crimes that they’re indicted on had caused some damage or some injury, I get it, but it didn’t,” Gutfeld says without evidence.
“So this punishment is for a different crime. And that crime is being Donald Trump. All this is it’s like – and we know this, he plays outside the game. He doesn’t know when to stop. He plays by his own rules. There are risks involved. And this is one of the risks.”
The indictment does not state if anyone was hurt, but we do know that in 2017, when Donald Trump shared highly-classified information with Russian envoys during a then-secret meting inside the Oval Office, two of President Vladimir Putin’s top officials, the CIA was forced to extract “from Russia one of its highest-level covert sources inside the Russian government,” according to CNN.
“A person directly involved in the discussions said that the removal of the Russian was driven, in part, by concerns that President Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly mishandled classified intelligence and could contribute to exposing the covert source as a spy,” CNN reported in September of 2019.
So Gutfeld’s claim that Trump’s alleged crime did not cause damage or injury are unproven.
Gutfeld was not the only Fox News host to rush to defend Trump by minimizing his actions.
Fox News host Jesse Watters, also on Tuesday’s edition of “The Five,” tried to downplay what trump is alleged to have done, while insisting if it ever gets to the U.S. Supreme Court, they would overturn any guilty verdict.
“So don’t act like this is some sort of slam dunk case,” he said, as Media Matters reports. “You’ll probably lose, you’ll probably appeal. It’ll go to the Supreme Court. And there is no way in hell the Supreme Court is going to uphold a conviction of a former president — possibly current president — over where a piece of paper goes. There’s no dead bodies, there’s no bribes, there’s nothing.”
Removing and refusing to return hundreds of classified, secret, and top secret documents, property of the U.S. government, documents that reportedly include war plan of the highest classified levels, nuclear secrets, and more, and not mere pieces of paper. Human lives are put on the line daily to defend those secrets, and to defend those who obtain secrets for the U.S. from there sources.
Watters’ claim that there are “no dead bodies” may or may not be true.
Watch a clip of Greg Gutfeld below or at this link.