MSNBC's Gabe Sherman: Impeachment So Simple, 'Even Fox Audience Can Understand'

September 29th, 2019 12:56 PM

Sometimes, the liberal media will pull back the curtain and reveal the depth of the contempt in which it holds conservative Americans.

It happened this morning on Joy Reid's MSNBC show. MSNBC contributor Gabriel Sherman -- hired to speak because he obsesses over all things Fox News -- spoke of conservative  Americans in contemptuously condescending terms, asserting that the case for impeachment is such:

"a very simple story that even a Fox audience can understand."

Reid could be heard agreeing with Sherman's ugly take.

 



Sherman's slur came after Never Trumper Charlie Sykes raised the possibility that, at some point, Fox News might no longer support President Trump in his fight against impeachment. Sherman, who wrote a nasty biography of Fox News creator Roger Ailes, claimed that at the moment, "inside Fox there's a lot of confusion . . . and even Sean Hannity, behind the scenes, understand[s] the gravity of this." 

Not that conservatives have doubted that the liberal media views them as a bunch of benighted bumpkins, but still, it's bracing to hear someone like Sherman spit it out in such palpably patronizing terms. 

Here's the transcript.

MSNBC
AM Joy
9/29/19
10:56 am EDT

CHARLIE SYKES:The other obvious question is, and Gabriel Sherman can talk about this a little bit more, is what happens if there starts to be cracks in the conservative media?. What happens if Fox News begins to break through this alternative reality wall that Donald Trump is counting on to protect him? But the odds still remains heavily in favor of Republicans staying out in the tall weeds.

JOY REID: We’ll ask that question, Gabriel. Here's the thing, Donald Trump has this conversation that we don’t know if there are tapes of it on the US side. But we do know he was talking with a foreign nation: they could have taped it. The Russians, who have an active war going on in which they are still attacking Ukraine. We don't know if they taped it. What if there are tapes? How does Fox News then respond to Donald Trump in his own voice? Becaue we only got a summary. We don’t know the full context and presumably they put the best summary they could. 

GABRIEL SHERMAN: Of course. There's a lot of ellipses there.

REID: Lots of ellipses. So what if the full voice of Donald Trump comes out and then what does Fox News do then?

SHERMAN: Well, really, this is a moment where inside Fox there's a lot of confusion, right? You have a lot of people in the newsroom understand, and even Sean Hannity, as I reported, behind the scenes, they understand the gravity of this. The President of the United States using our foreign policy to leverage a foreign country to take out a rival. That’s a very simple story that even a Fox audience can understand. 

REID: Yeah.

SHERMAN: So, I think, what they're looking at now is that, basically, trying to distract. We see this morning, the Washington Post reported the State Department is still investigating Hillary’s e-mails. I think they’re going to try to say, look over here and not over here. But the problem is, this story is so easily understood. I don’t know if that reality-distortion field can work.

REID: Right.