Fox Business host Lou Dobbs blasted his own network and colleague on Tuesday over Fox News’ corroboration of The Atlantic’s eye-popping report that President Donald Trump called fallen military heroes “losers” and “suckers,” claiming Fox had no “evidence whatsoever” to back up the story.
Dobbs, an informal presidential adviser who former Trump officials say acts as a “shadow chief of staff,” began Tuesday’s broadcast of his Fox Business program by tearing into The Atlantic’s report and media outlets who have confirmed all or parts of the story.
Calling it a “coordinated attack” by Democrats and the media, the pro-Trump host groused that social media platforms didn’t place a “fact check label” on what he described as a “hit job” against the president.
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“The Associated Press claims to have corroborated the story in its entirety, but then didn’t have any evidence to corroborate it—not a single, single named source,” Dobbs seethed before taking aim at his own network.
“And the Washington Post, CNN, even Fox News claimed to have corroborated parts of the report, despite every news organization having not a single named source, nor any evidence whatsoever,” he continued. “What those unnamed sources did claim doesn’t stand up against the 21 Trump administration officials who are now on the record refuting the Atlantic’s horrible, horrible lies.”
After The Atlantic dropped its bombshell story last week, Fox News initially spent much of the following morning pushing back against its reporting, taking aim at the magazine’s use of anonymous sources. This included Fox News chief White House correspondent John Roberts, who cited anonymous sources of his own to knock down some of the main details of the report.
Hours later, however, Fox News correspondent Jennifer Griffin—citing two unnamed former senior administration officials—reported that she had confirmed a number of key aspects of the story. The president would eventually call for Fox News to fire Griffin, sharing a Breitbart story noting that she didn’t corroborate the “most salacious” detail of the Atlantic’s report.
While several of Griffin’s news side colleagues rallied to her defense on Twitter, especially after the president’s broadside, others on the opinion side continued to call the story a “hoax” and a “scam” while claiming it was “impossible” for Griffin to confirm the story. The network, meanwhile, has not issued an on-record statement regarding the president’s attack on Griffin.
Continuing to rail against the story, Dobbs straight-up called it untrue and ripped into media outlets reporting it.
“By pushing the lie that President Trump said something disparaging of our military, the left-wing national media has given the Biden campaign a chance to gloss over the fact that Biden enthusiastically supported the Iraq War, something President Trump outright opposed and that most Americans now see as a terrible mistake,” the veteran Fox personality grumbled.
“President Trump’s actions and demonstration of respect for the military speak for themselves,” he added. “Shame on the left. Shame on the radical Dimms. And shame on the fake news and fake journalists who manufacture it.”
