Fox News Covers Russian Bounties on U.S. Soldiers During Fox & Friends — Leaves Out That Trump Knew and Did Nothing
Fox News covered the bombshell New York Times story about Russia offering bounties to the Taliban for killing U.S. soldiers, but left out President Donald Trump’s role in the story — while finding time to recite denials from Russia and the Taliban.
On Friday, the Times published a report that said Russian military intelligence campaign offered secret bounties to Taliban militias for killing US soldiers in Afghanistan, and that Trump has known about it since March — but has yet to take action against Russia over it, or even to confront them.
Fox & Friends Saturday co-anchor Griff Jenkins reported on the news Saturday morning, but left out any mention of Trump’s involvement in the story.
While running through headlines, Jenkins said “And get this: Russia is accused of paying the Taliban to kill U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. The New York Times reporting Moscow offered the extremist group bounties on coalition forces during peace talks.”
Jenkins then displayed a Russian government tweet onscreen and said “The Russian embassy blasted the report as ‘fake,'” and added that “the Taliban also denied the accusation, saying it had no contact with Russia.”
“20 Americans were killed in Afghanistan last year. It’s unclear if any were linked to the bounties,” Jenkins said.
The NYT report cited current government officials as sources, and said that Trump was briefed about the operation months ago:
The intelligence finding was briefed to President Trump, and the White House’s National Security Council discussed the problem at an interagency meeting in late March, the officials said. Officials developed a menu of potential options — starting with making a diplomatic complaint to Moscow and a demand that it stop, along with an escalating series of sanctions and other possible responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step, the officials said.
Watch the clip above via Fox News.
Update: Fox News later responded to note that correspondent Mark Meredith filed this report on the story in the afternoon. In Meredith’s package, he did note that President Trump was briefed in March and read a pair of tweets from Trump critics, but also omitted the New York Times reporting on Trump’s failure to act thus far, or to confront the Russian government over the bounties.
