Our friends at Grabien flagged down a funny exchange on Thursday’s The Five as FNC co-host Greg Gutfeld lampooned both the biased jury foreman in the Roger Stone case and CNN’s breathless coverage of it as “another episode of WTW, you know Worse Than Watergate” that’s no more than a “pit crew trying to resuscitate an unconscious poodle called impeachment.”
Gutfeld compared the revelation that the “jury foreman was a trained lawyer who hated Trump, who hated Roger Stone who was tweeting during this whole thing” was akin to “having PETA choose your dinner” even though “[y]ou know you're not going to get any meats.”
He correctly noted that he doesn’t “know Stone but I've heard him do some things that are pretty disgusting” and made no attempt to insist he did nothing wrong, but instead how the trial presented question marks with a set of former Mueller team members out for blood.
Gutfeld then made his pivot to the media, with a nod to this CNN segment that offered up yet another tiresome Watergate comparison:
It’s just — it’s almost not worth it, the fact we’re talking about this again is how the media is giving people marching orders to do the wrong thing. I mean, on CNN, they had another episode of WTW, you know, Worse than Watergate, this time starring David Gergen, who's held together by masking tape and ACE bandages, I don't know how old he is. But he’s — what would Gergen and Carl Bernstein do without these stories? And you have — you have CNN, which is basically like the pit crew trying to resuscitate an unconscious poodle called impeachment. That's all this is and as predicted, it’s going to — this is going to keep happening, it's going to keep happening but they have to have — they have to have a new trial for Stone no matter what you think about him. This stinks to high — I mean, how can you have a jury foreman like that?
Earlier, co-host Dana Perino interjected with a brief example of how the liberal media have a double standard when it comes to acts of intervention by DOJ officials:
If you go back to the Justice Department — the DOJ during the bush administration, the media loves James Comey when he went to the bedside of Attorney General Ashcroft to try to get of the terror surveillance program. They’re like, oh, he’s so amazing because he’s pushing back against the president. I mean, that’s just partisan.
Throw in the fear-mongering employed by deranged media types like MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace and you have a horribly unhealthy media ecosystem trying to cause its Resistance-friendly audience to run in fear of Trump and spend nights hiding under their beds each night, curled up in the fetal position.
To see the relevant transcript from FNC’s The Five on February 13, click “expand.”
FNC’s The Five
February 13, 2020
5:05 p.m. EasternDANA PERINO: If you go back to the Justice Department — the DOJ during the bush administration, the media loves James Comey when he went to the bedside of Attorney General Ashcroft to try to get of the terror surveillance program. They’re like, oh, he’s so amazing because he’s pushing back against the president. I mean, that’s just partisan.
JESSE WATTERS: Yeah and I mean, he didn't like the recommendation to begin with, they came in and lied and said they were going to go soft and he went hard.
JUAN WILLIAMS: No, they didn’t.
WATTERS: No, Juan, they came in and said they weren’t going to recommend seven to nine, they flipped the script on him, so then he came in and settled it down and it’s the judge’s decision.
WILLIAMS: You are selling spin so wildly. Let me just remind you, four, not one person who may have said, oh, I said one thing, then they said another thing. No, four career prosecutors resigned. Does that tell you something?
GREG GUTFELD: Yeah. They had too many prosecutors.
WATTERS: Yeah. They’re Mueller prosecutors — they’re Mueller prosecutors and they had an ax to grind. Kennedy, what you think about this Stone trial now? Looks like one of the jurors, the foreman very, very corrupted in terms of her bias against the president.
KENNEDY: Well, regardless of what you think about Roger Stone and some of his associations and things he's done in the ways that he has broken the law, we all hope that if we are ever in the criminal justice system that we receive fair treatment throughout. It doesn't matter who you are or, what you've done and Dana, I know you have done a lot of good work on this very issue because often times, there is bias against people based on the communities they’re from but in this environment, particularly federal cases that are high-profile in D.C., a lot of it has to do with your politics and it is very hard for any of us to divorce ourselves from our politics. The question is how much does that influence? Now, when you are a juror, it's not whether or not you donated to a campaign or you have a political leaning but if you are on social media making comments about the case where you are a jury foreperson, you have not only violated your oath, you have essentially created all the ingredients for a mistrial to be declared.
WATTERS: Yeah, so they may toss the whole thing.
(....)
5:07 p.m. Eastern
GUTFELD: This jury foreman was a trained lawyer who hated Trump, who hated Roger Stone who was tweeting during this whole thing and it’s not a mistrial? Can it call it mistrial? Yes. Maybe.
PERINO: Yeah.
GUTFELD: Who knows. It’s like — I mean, it’s like — it’s — it’s bot — it’s so — it’s like having PETA choose your dinner. You know you're not going to get any meats. So, that’s — I mean, to know and that person is so sophisticated that the jury that — that the jury that’s answering that, you know, she’s the foreman, they’re going to be listening to her.
PERINO: Yeah.
GUTFELD: And so she basically manipulated.
PERINO: But how did the defense attorney’s not find her?
GUTFELD: I have no idea.
WATTERS: Might have called a strike and the judge overruled.
GUTFELD: But here’s the deal —
KENNEDY: You only get so many strikes in — [INAUDIBLE]
GUTFELD: You don't have to like everybody on your side and you don't have to hate everybody on the other side. To you, I don't know Stone but I've heard him do some things that are pretty disgusting, that doesn't matter. That’s out the window. In fact, that should make you even more adamant about him having a new trial because it's got nothing to do with his — how you feel about him. It’s just — it’s almost not worth it, the fact we’re talking about this again is how the media is giving people marching orders to do the wrong thing. I mean, on CNN, they had another episode of WTW, you know, Worse than Watergate, this time starring David Gergen, who's held together by masking tape and ACE bandages, I don't know how old he is. But he’s — what would Gergen and Carl Bernstein do without these stories? And you have — you have CNN, which is basically like the pit crew trying to resuscitate an unconscious poodle called impeachment. That's all this is and as predicted, it’s going to — this is going to keep happening, it's going to keep happening but they have to have — they have to have a new trial for Stone no matter what you think about him. This stinks to high — I mean, how can you have a jury foreman like that?
WILLIAMS: Well, I just think — I think that the lawyers had to know some of this. Remember, people on the jury who were Trumpsters and who were very clear that they love Donald Trump.
GUTFELD: But a jury foreman tweeting who was running for — who ran before? I mean, this stuff is corrupt.
WILLIAMS: Here is the bottom line on today, what you have is a President who is empowered by impeachment to keep going and what he's done is he’s going after his enemies, right?
KENNEDY: Then they should have made a stronger case.
WILLIAMS: He’s throwing out Vindman and now he’s trying to protect his friends and nobody on the Republican side says, this is not the way the — [INAUDIBLE]
GUTFELD: Well, I hope — I hope —
WATTERS: He just wants justice, Juan. He doesn’t want the guy to spend nine years in prison, alright?
GUTFELD: I hope if this ever happens to me. If I get in a trial in all of a sudden there's an anti-Gutfeld lawyer up there, I hope the President steps in and says that’s B.S. —
WILLIAMS: But that’s —
GUTFELD: — he should do that.
WILLIAMS: No, he shouldn't.
GUTFELD: Yes, he should. Why no.
WILLIAMS: Cause this is about a justice system, not a king.
GUTFELD: No, no. That’s your opinion.
WATTERS: Juan, Juan, enough about the king.
GUTFELD: He's the President, he can do whatever he wants.
