At the end of an Outnumbered segment devoted largely to criticizing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation as a “political assassination” of President Donald Trump, Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner excitedly reacted to one of the panelists reminding viewers that “collusion is not a crime.”
With the House Intelligence Committee voting to send all interview transcripts to Mueller from its now-closed Russia probe, Fox News host and “#OneLuckyGuy” Pete Hegseth said that if “they had anything remotely close to collusion, we would know by now.”
He also lamented that we’ll be hearing about impeachment soon because there are “too many far leftists in the House not for that to happen.”
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Throughout the rest of the segment, Hegseth and fellow conservative panelist Katie Pavlich poo-pooed the current investigations into the president, his businesses, and associates. Hegseth mockingly said “blah blah blah” in response to liberal panelist Leslie Marshall highlighting the number of guilty pleas that have resulted from the probe, while Pavlich claimed Democrats discredit Mueller by moving forward with their own investigations in the House.
“Why are we protecting him?” Hegseth asked of Mueller.
As they wrapped up the segment, co-host Melissa Francis exasperatedly said that she doesn’t think the Mueller report will ever come out. Faulkner, meanwhile, noted that there haven’t been many leaks coming from the Mueller team, suggesting that we may not hear anything about collusion until it is wrapped up.
“And collusion’s not a crime—let’s not forget,” Pavlich chimed in.
“So true!” Faulkner exclaimed, enthusiastically pointing her finger at Pavlich. “Say it again!”
“There ya go,” Francis concluded.
For a while, Team Trump has repeatedly shifted goalposts when it comes to alleged collusion with Russian officials: Starting with the claim there were no communications at all to claiming the meetings didn’t result in meaningful information to eventually settling on “collusion is not a crime.”
Some of the president’s most loyal defenders at Fox have kept pace, spending months on end declaring there was no collusion between Trump and Russia before now parroting this latest talking point.
