President Donald Trump and his campaign are reeling after the release of a whistleblower complaint detailing Trump's pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate Trump's political rival, former Vice President Joe Biden, along with the White House's subsequent efforts to cover up the conversation.
Trump's supporters are desperately trying to shift the focus on Biden to distract from Trump's impending impeachment, citing unfounded claims that Biden withheld aid to Ukraine in exchange for the firing of the country's top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin. Shokin was investigating a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings, on which Biden's son Hunter served as a board member.
In reality, the investigation was already closed before Biden called for Shokin's firing. What's more, Biden was joining leaders of the rest of the Western world in calls for Shokin's firing. Shokin was widely seen as soft on corruption and Biden called for his replacement with a candidate who would work harder to combat it—even if it meant the reopening of the investigation of Burisma Holdings and greater scrutiny on his son.
Now, Fox News's Chris Wallace is calling out the misleading spin of Trump's defenders.
Watch below:
After giving the context of the whistleblower complaint, Wallace said:
"The spinning that has been done by the president’s defenders over the last 24 hours since this very damaging whistleblower complaint came out, the spinning is not surprising but it is astonishing, and I think deeply misleading."
Wallace's words give greater credence to a growing schism among the faces of Fox News. Wallace and other Fox anchors like Shepard Smith are following the Ukraine story as it develops, wherever it goes, pointing out Trump's lies along the way.
Meanwhile the opinion division of Fox News—Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others—have been parroting White House talking points and minimizing the gravity of Trump's interactions with the Ukrainian President.
It's even led to some Fox anchors using their shows to chastise their colleagues for their on-air remarks.
The panel on Fox News' The Five devolved on Wednesday after panelist Juan Williams noted that his co-hosts were using the same White House talking points mistakenly distributed to Democrats that very morning.
People commended Wallace for acknowledging the gravity of the situation and the deceptive attempts by Trump's allies to dismiss it.
But if facts were enough to convince the most Conservative Fox News viewers, they would've woken up a long time ago. Some are considering Chris Wallace a traitor now.
It's unclear if there will ever be a fact that could turn the most devoted of Trump's followers against him, but given that five subpoenas have already been sent to state department officials as the first steps into the impeachment inquiry against Trump, we may be about to find out.
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