Fox News anchor Neil Cavuto on Wednesday confronted one of the network’s most loyal Trump defenders, dismantling Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett’s latest pro-Trump book that asserts the president is the victim of an ongoing “witch hunt” by the so-called Deep State and Democrats.
As Jarrett promoted his new book on Cavuto’s show, the pro-Trump pundit immediately remarked that his host’s copy of the book was marked with a “lot of yellow Post-It notes.”
Cavuto, meanwhile, went on to note that Jarrett focuses much of his book’s attention on blaming the media for the purported witch hunt against Trump, which Jarrett claims the Ukraine scandal is part of. After the Fox analyst claimed the media was “lazy,” suffer from a “liberal bias,” and “shoot from the hip,” Cavuto wondered aloud if Jarrett could say anything negative about the president’s behavior and tendency to lie and misspeak.
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“But do you say that the president does not sometimes confuse people?” Cavuto asked. “He says something and then says something else?”
Jarrett tried to deflect, complaining about reporters accepting “intelligence leaks,” prompting Cavuto to press again.
“I get that, and you well-researched that and documented with great detail, and it is impressive,” the Fox anchor noted. “But do you fault the president for anything?”
Pausing for a moment, Jarrett responded that the one thing he can fault Trump for was hiring Jeff Sessions as his attorney general, something he added Trump himself has said he was wrong to do.
Cavuto, who is one of the rare Trump-skeptic voices on Fox, further confronted his colleague on Trump’s lies and flip-flops on payments he made to women he had alleged affairs with, causing Jarrett to shrug that off. The host then moved on to Trump attempting to get a foreign leader to dig up dirt on a political opponent.
“With the Ukraine situation, when you look at that—now you are the lawyer, I don’t know what is considered a high crime or misdemeanor, might not fit the case here—is it proper for a sitting president of the United States to talk to a foreign leader about involving himself in a campaign?” Cavuto asked.
The pro-Trump Fox personality, however, took the opportunity to make an argument he’s made in the past—that Trump was "duty-bound" to ask Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family if he believes a crime was committed, and it would be a dereliction of his Constitutional duty if he didn't. (There is no evidence Biden or his son did anything illegal or wrong in Ukraine.)
After a bit more back and forth, Cavuto eventually tried to get Jarrett to admit at least one thing: Doesn’t it “look bad” that Trump pressed Ukraine to investigate Biden?
“It looks bad to Democrats,” Jarrett said. “It does not look bad to me.”
This gentle but telling confrontation comes on the heels of a network civil war between the Fox news division and opinion hosts and commentators, which recently spilled out on air. Earlier this month, amid these clashes, longtime anchor Shepard Smith announced he was departing Fox News after 23 years.
