Fox Business anchor Dagen McDowell grew seemingly annoyed with her colleague Jason Chaffetz on Monday morning, chiding the former GOP congressman to come up with a new joke after he repeatedly claimed the IRS is performing an “enema” on Americans.
Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed earlier this month, Republicans and right-wing pundits have stoked outrage over a provision increasing the IRS budget to hire additional employees. While the funding would be primarily used to return staffing to previous levels and replace employees set to retire over the next ten years, conservatives have falsely claimed that the agency is going to unleash 87,000 new agents—many of them armed—to “hunt down and kill” middle-class Americans.
During Monday’s broadcast of Fox News’ The Faulkner Focus, McDowell—filling in for regular host Harris Faulkner—complained about Democrats accusing Republicans of “fearmongering” about the IRS staffing budget, adding that the move is “sparking audit fears for everyday Americans.”
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Chaffetz, who left Congress in 2017 to join Fox News, not only agreed with McDowell that the public should be scared of additional audits from the IRS—but he likened it to a rectal procedure.
“They want every American to have an enema, and they’re going to get one from the IRS,” he exclaimed. “They are throwing literally tens of billions of dollars at the IRS. Don’t tell me that, ‘Oh, we’re not going to touch anybody [making] under $400,000. You have nothing to worry about.’ There is no worse feeling in this country than getting a notification from the IRS that you are under audit, and that’s what the Democrats are asking for.”
While McDowell seemed unfazed by Chaffetz’s comment the first time around, she wasn’t all that pleased when he went back to the well again looking for laughs.
After the Fox host pointed to a Wall Street Journal editorial suggesting small business owners were being unfairly targeted by the IRS, the former Republican lawmaker said he spent years in Congress trying to expose that.
“I worry about the targeting,” Chaffetz declared. “And don’t tell me—if you have a small business, you are going to get an enema from the IRS. It’s that simple. It is nothing else in that. Again, Democrats could have spent the money anywhere. This is where they chose to do it.”
McDowell shot back: “How about let’s use ‘corkscrew to the chin’ or something instead of the other way around?”
Chaffetz, still very proud of his turn of phrase, boasted that it was “very descriptive,” only for McDowell to shut him down.
“Yeah, twice?! Once is okay. Twice? Moving on,” she retorted before jumping to another topic.
