CNN anchor Brianna Keilar on Tuesday went off on rival network Fox News for peddling an easily debunked lie that a President’s Day rally for former President Donald Trump was “organic” and “spontaneous.” The right-wing cable network has become “it’s own worst nightmare,” she said.
During an event hyped as the “Presidents’ Day ‘Peaceful and Patriotic’ Pro-Trump Rally,” a few hundred MAGA diehards lined a street in West Palm Beach to greet the former president on Monday afternoon after he returned from a golf outing. Flashing a thumbs up as his motorcade slowly drove past them, the gathering represented Trump’s first public appearance since the Senate acquitted him of inciting an insurrection.
Despite the rally being hyped for a week on far-right media, sycophantic Fox News hosts Pete Hegseth and Sean Hannity both insisted the gathering was not pre-planned in an apparent effort to boost the disgraced ex-president’s ego.
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“Fox is becoming its own worst nightmare, completely predictable,” Keilar declared on Tuesday. “Worship Trump, blame Democrats, spotlight fear. Rinse, lather, repeat.”
She sardonically added: “And despite the lies and conspiracy theories being documented and deconstructed on a daily basis, they make like the Brady Bunch kids and keep on, keep on, keep on, keep on all through the night.”
After airing a clip of Hannity insisting “thousands of people” gathered “spontaneously” to cheer on Trump, Keilar explained that there was an organized police presence at the rally and shared a copy of the online invitation sent out by media groups.
“But Sean Hannity is never one to let facts get in the way of things,” the CNN anchor continued, playing another clip of the Fox host and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. gushing over the “totally organic” event.
“When you go to bed with lies, you wake up with them on the channel too,” Keilar then noted, sharing a clip of Hegseth on Fox & Friends lying that it was “not a planned event.”
The CNN dayside host, who had become increasingly outspoken against Fox during the Trump era, warned her viewers that “these lies are not harmless” as they are “dividing family” and constituting “part of the bigger lie about what is true and what isn’t.”
Sharing a letter from Rep. Adam Kinzinger’s family slamming his vote to impeach Trump, Keilar pointed out that the Republican lawmaker’s relatives specifically expressed embarrassment that the congressman had lost the respect of Fox hosts Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, and Hannity.
“And now just to run through that cast of characters,” she said. “Lou Dobbs is off the air, booted off by Fox after spreading conspiracy theories about voting machines.
“Tucker Carlson has mocked the Capitol attack, denying it was domestic terrorism, denying any racism was involved even though their verifiably was and, we should point out, Fox successfully defended Carlson in a slander lawsuit saying viewers shouldn’t believe what he says,” the anchor further exclaimed.
Noting that Fox News has helped “fan the flames” of the “Big Lie” that the election was stolen from Trump, Keilar bemoaned the fact that so many American families are listening to right-wing media.
“These television personalities push lies and conspiracy theories disguised as patriotism and traditional American values when really they’re just home-wreckers who wouldn’t offer up the truth if it landed in their snake oil,” she concluded.
