Fox News Swoops in to Help Trump With Deceptively Edited Video

Fox News made drastic edits to Donald Trump’s recent Bronx barbershop interview, cutting many of the Republican candidate’s lies and rambling rants.

According to a CNN investigation published Thursday, Fox News cleaned up several of Trump’s weaves and most politically extreme comments during his barbershop talk in New York City over the weekend. An unedited video uploaded to Instagram shows a much less polished performance from the former president, filled with meandering tangents and outright lies that never made it to air.

The Fox News broadcast of the event cut Trump’s comments about “gang members and drug lords” in Aurora, Colorado, and his lies about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. “They just dumped 50,000 people—32,000 migrants from another country—in Springfield, Ohio. They don’t know what to do,” said Trump, greatly exaggerating things. The city estimates somewhere between 12,000 and 15,000 immigrants live in the entire county, not all of whom are Haitian. Those who are Haitian are there through temporary protected status, which means they are in the country legally. But Trump doesn’t care about the facts.

Fox additionally drastically edited Trump’s response to an audience member in the barbershop asking about federal taxes. In the unedited video, Trump can be heard rambling for seven minutes about the Keystone pipeline, tariffs, The Wall Street Journal, and transgender sports, with the audience member generously trying to keep him on track but eventually saying, “I wasn’t able to finish my question.”

The Fox News video just shows what happens in a brief moment after Trump gets shepherded into answering about eliminating federal taxes, cutting out the rest.

Ironically, the Trump team has spent the past month threatening that they’d sue CBS News over Kamala Harris’s 60 Minutes interview if the network doesn’t release the full unedited transcript. This week, Trump’s team threatened to sue the network if it doesn’t comply, despite having little legal basis to do so.

In his critique of Harris’s CBS appearance, Trump wants to blame it on the edit. However, with this new revelation about Fox, he just looks like a hypocrite.

Donald Trump vowed Thursday to “fire” special counsel Jack Smith on his first day in office, in hopes of washing his hands of the two federal cases against him.

During an interview with conservative radio commentator Hugh Hewitt, Trump said it would be “easy” to remove Smith. “I would fire him within two seconds,” Trump said, according to The Washington Post.  

Smith has overseen two investigations into Trump, one regarding his alleged efforts to overturn the election results in 2020, and another into his alleged mishandling of classified documents.  

The special counsel filed a superseding indictment in the election interference case against Trump in September, amending some of the allegations against Trump with respect to the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on presidential immunity for “official conduct.”

Trump has been accused of illegally attempting to block votes from being counted, and to subvert election results by engaging in conspiracies to defraud the government, obstruct and impede the counting of votes on January 6, and conspire against the right to vote and have one’s vote counted.

Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, tossed out Smith’s 42 felony charges against Trump in his classified documents case, ruling that Smith had been unconstitutionally appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith has since appealed Cannon’s decision.

Earlier this week, Cannon’s name appeared on a list of potential candidates to become Trump’s attorney general. 

If Trump wins the presidential election, he’s promised to fire the person trying to hold him accountable for his alleged crimes, while also making plans to hire the one who helped him get out of trouble. 

Right-wing activist Charlie Kirk went full fake fanatic during a campaign event for Donald Trump, attacking Democrats and urging U.S. pastors to break the law.

During the event Wednesday night in Duluth, Georgia, meme-loving fascist Kirk gave the audience a taste of the wildly divisive, incendiary, pseudo-religious rhetoric he’s been trotting out on Trump’s behalf.

“The Democrat Party supports everything that God hates,” Kirk said to cheers. “The Democrat Party is espousing the death of the unborn, the mutilation of our teenage kids, open borders, the destruction of our sovereignty, the elimination of our currency status.

“I believe there is a spiritual battle happening around all of us, but don’t expect a spiritual–uh” he said, appearing to choke on the words. “A spiritual victory, if our own pastors do not engage.

“Right now, this state is a Christian state, I want to see that to continue. But we need the faithful, we need those of you that have influence over your congregation to put pressure on your pastors,” Kirk said, making a call to action.

Kirk then addressed any pastors that might be watching. “I hope you give a Sunday sermon, and you talk about how the Democrat Party believes everything that God hates,” he said.

Kirk’s conservative youth organization, Turning Point USA, has become the centerpiece of an effort by pro-Trump Christian nationalists hoping to motivate religious leaders to violate U.S. tax law by preaching the gospel of Trump. As tax-exempt entities, such as charities and churches, are strictly barred from partaking in political campaign activity, Kirk has previously offered resources to pastors seeking to “challenge the IRS.”

Last month, JD Vance attended a town hall hosted by a virulently misogynist Christian nationalist, who also urges churches to be “courageous” in supporting Trump.

Kirk has previously made similar claims about the Democratic Party, as recently as during the Monday episode of The Charlie Kirk Show.

“Kamala Harris is wired to be repulsed by the name of God. They—she mocks God. Again, everything Democrats love, God hates,” the far-right activist said.

Kirk claimed, “If you’re a Christian that votes to the Democrat Party, you are voting for things that God hates. That’s between you and God.”

The Trump campaign is explicitly working with religious extremists like Kirk to drum up support among Christian voters, who might want to notice that none of the things Kirk listed are things “God hates.” According to the Bible, the only things God doesn’t care for are haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and a man who stirs up dissension among his brothers. I’ll let you decide which presidential ticket that sounds like.

Michael Flynn admitted in a court deposition earlier this year that one of the biggest election fraud claims pushed by Donald Trump and his supporters had no evidence to back it up.

CNN reports that the QAnon devotee and former Trump national security adviser acknowledged under oath in April that he had seen no credible proof to suggest that an executive at Dominion Voting Systems fixed the 2020 election results using the company’s voting machines. This allegation was repeated and pushed by several far-right supporters of Trump in an attempt to claim the election was stolen.

The deposition was part of a lawsuit filed by former Dominion executive Eric Coomer against Flynn’s speaking tour, ReAwaken America, which has been promoting far-right conspiracies including election denial since 2021.

“Have you seen any evidence that you would consider credible, Mr. Flynn, that Eric Coomer played a role in rigging the 2020 presidential election?” Coomer’s attorneys asked Flynn during the deposition.

“I have not, no,” Flynn said. “I don’t really know.” Flynn was asked further about Dominion’s involvement in election fraud, and he claimed to have “seen a lot of evidence” and “read a lot of reports.” But he couldn’t confirm that the so-called evidence was credible.

“Credibility is in the eye of the legal system to determine,” Flynn told the lawyers.

Despite this admission, Flynn still insisted to NewsNation in May that the 2020 election was “filled with fraud,” with “clear evidence” to prove it, but didn’t provide any details when asked. In September, he spoke to Alex Jones about a Marxist plot to steal the election from Trump, and nearly two weeks ago told the audience at a Christian nationalist festival that Trump will unleash the “gates of hell” if he wins the election.

Flynn, who was forced to resign as Trump’s national security adviser after only four weeks at the job and pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI twice about conversations with Russian officials, was pardoned by Trump in the final months of his presidency. After that, he became a QAnon conspiracy evangelist and leading election denialist. His admission under oath suggests that he peddled the election lie for his own benefit, and possibly to cozy up to Trump if he returns to the White House.

Speaking at a rally on Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson likened Donald Trump to “daddy” and described him coming home angrily to give a “bad little girl” a “vigorous spanking.”

Carlson delivered the disturbing speech at a Turning Point Action rally in Duluth, Georgia, alongside his fellow MAGA acolytes Charlie Kirk, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and others, as well as Donald Trump himself. In his address, Carlson went on a manic rant encouraging his audience, whom he described as “an incredibly gentle and tolerant majority,” to fight back against those whom he sees as “parasitic, useless, violent, nasty, aggressive people,” like Kamala Harris, protesters who tore down Confederate statues, and weirdly, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. But that was the least strange part of his speech.

Carlson then launched into a Freudian soliloquy by listing made-up scenarios of parents being too permissive, as a metaphor for how he sees America. If you allow a baby to smear poop on the walls or a “14-year-old to light a joint at the breakfast table,” or, he continued, “if you allow your hormone-addled 15-year-old daughter to slam the door of her bedroom and give you the finger, you’re going to get more of it.

“There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Yeah, that’s right. Dad comes home. And he’s pissed. Dad is pissed,” said Carlson. “He’s not vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be, he loves them. Because they’re his children. They live in his house. But he’s very disappointed in their behavior. And he’s going to have to let them know.” The crowd of thousands went wild for his comparison, chanting “Daddy’s home” as Trump took the stage. Talk about weird. And Carlson, again, didn’t stop there.

“When dad gets home, you know what he says? ‘You’ve been a bad girl. You’ve been a bad little girl, and you’re getting a vigorous spanking right now. And no, it’s not going to hurt me more than it hurts you. No, it’s not. I’m not going to lie. It’s going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts me. And you earned this.’”

Carlson’s speech at the Turning Point rally is not out of the ordinary when it comes to the way MAGA talks about children and women as something you own and can punish. Just last month, Trump creepily promised he will be women’s “protector.” Meanwhile, in states like Missouri and Oklahoma, Republicans have supported corporal punishment in schools, as part of a long evangelical and right-wing obsession with hitting their kids.

This also isn’t the first time that the right has talked about spanking on the main stage. In 2016, Chris Christie threatened Hillary Clinton, promising to “beat her rear end,” and Senator Ted Cruz asked voters to give Clinton “a spanking.” But invoking the image of Trump as “daddy” or as a punishing God and having that message embraced by the frenetic crowd, who also cheered that “Christ is King,” is enough to make any normal person squirm.