On "Fox & Friends" Monday, co-host Steve Doocy was speaking to Florida Representative Daniel Webster -- the first person to announce publicly their intention to run to replace outgoing Speaker of the House John Boehner -- when he made a curious statement about the outgoing Speaker's politics vis-a-vis those of Fox News.
Doocy began by noting that most insiders believe California Representative Kevin McCarthy will be the next Speaker -- though somehow neither noted that if a novelist included an incoming House Speaker named "McCarthy" in their next political thriller, they'd be told, rightly, that they're being far too obvious. He explained that in his interview on CBS's "Face the Nation," Boehner warned of "absolutely unrealistic...false prophets spreading noise about how much can be done."
"This plan never had a chance," speaking of a failed attempt to defund Obamacare that led to a government shutdown in 2013. "But over the course of the August recess in 2013 and the course of September, a lot of my Republican colleagues who knew it was a fool's errand, they were getting a lot of pressure at home to do this. And so we got groups here in town, members, the House and Senate here in town who whipped people into a frenzy believing they could accomplish things that they know, they know are never going to happen."
Boehner added that current GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz was among those who led that charge, and referred to his previous comments about Cruz being a "jackass" when asked how he felt about that.
Apparently, this line of argument doesn't sit well with the more radical conservatives at Fox News who are eager to have a House leader who will represent their views, as Doocy inexplicably confused the current GOP leadership with "Hollywood."
"So many people are looking at the presidential race and saying, 'We don't need Hollywood,'" he said, before catching himself, "'We don't need any of the GOP party elites, we need an outsider.'"
Doocy laughed it off, and Webster didn't acknowledge it, other than to say that if he were elected House Speaker, he'd be offering the people of the United States an outsider's perspective -- but the confusion is at the very least indicative of the climate in the Fox News newsroom. After all, if a committed serial obstructionist like Boehner can be so easily confused with the right's caricature of "the Hollywood elite," that indicates that the political calibration of the culture at Fox News is painfully, if not dangerously, askew.
Watch the entire interview below via Fox News.
Shares