White House Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham lied and whined her way through impeachment softballs from Fox host Harris Faulner. But when asked about White House messaging after today's House vote formally endorsed the impeachment process and set forth rules, Grisham obviously didn't know.
Although Grisham shirks her job as press secretary, she has managed to get herself into the news of late. Last week, she said Never Trump Republicans deserve to be called "scum." Over the weekend, she attacked former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, after he dared to criticize Trump, with a comment that could have come straight out of North Korea: "I worked with John Kelly, and he was totally unequipped to handle the genius of our great President."
She also has a rather disturbing history for such a high government official, as The New York Times noted:
Her career history contains red flags that most administrations might deem troubling. They include losing a private-sector job after being accused of cheating on expense reports, a later job loss over plagiarism charges and two arrests for driving under the influence, the second while working on Mr. Trump’s campaign.
Faulkner said this was the first time Grisham had appeared on Outnumbered Overtime, a supposedly "straight news" show. But there were no questions for Grisham about her record, even though the “scum” comments were made on Fox & Friends.
Grisham didn't seem drunk at all but even without alcohol, she was hardly sober. She baselessly claimed Speaker Nancy Pelosi “has lost all control” over the House. That's an old White House talking point that couldn't seem more out of date today. 231 of the 234 Democrats voted for today's impeachment measure which Pelosi obviously supported.
Grisham continued by asking, “Are we going to be able to see any of the transcripts?” Lead House impeachment investigator Rep. Adam Schiff said weeks ago that he will release the transcripts and the House just voted to authorize that. Faulkner didn't mention it.
Grisham also whined that the White House won't be represented during the process. Fox's own legal expert, Andrew Napolitano has debunked this complaint twice. He , before this show, that Schiff is following the rules written by Republicans and that the eventual impeachment process will use material that has been “challenged and aired in public.” Napolitano has previously said on Fox that eventually there will be a public presentation of this at which lawyers for the president can cross-examine these people and challenge them.” Faulkner didn't mention any of that either.
Then Grisham claimed that the “transcript” of Donald Trump's July 25 call with the president of Ukraine (which the White House says is not a verbatim transcript) showed “the president did absolutely nothing wrong.” That's quite debatable, to say the least, but Faulkner let the assertion go unchallenged.
Instead, Faulkner moved on to ask how the White House messaging will change.
“We released that transcript weeks ago. Anybody who wants to look at the transcript will see that there was nothing done that was wrong. … The message is simple, it's what we've been saying: the president had concerns about releasing foreign aid, as he does with many countries, until there's no corruption and to make sure the burden sharing with other countries happens. Ultimately, the aid was released, it had nothing to do with quid pro quo. The president did nothing wrong. That's always been our message.”
That suggests there is no coherent strategy in the White House. But Faulkner didn't question that, either. No, she
played a Trump campaign commercial and opened an opportunity for Grisham to yammer about Trump's greatness. “We're gonna keep working,” she said about possibly the laziest man in Washington. “The president's done nothing wrong and that's the end of the statement there.”
Faulkner followed up with the hard-hitting question, “Will the president talk about this topic at upcoming rallies?”
“I'm sure he will,” Grisham said, laughing.
And who wouldn't laugh when you can BS with such abandon on a supposed news network?
Republished with permission from Newshounds. On Topic: Media Matters notes that the entire White House Press Secretary operation has moved to Fox News.
