Here’s the Only 40 Seconds of Fox News Covering Trump Not Knowing Who He Pardoned
President Donald Trump’s startling claim in his 60 Minutes sit-down on Sunday, that he has no idea who the convicted ex-Binance chief he recently pardoned is, merited just one 40-second clip on Gutfeld! Monday night as the sum of Fox News’s entire engagement with the story.
Trump was quizzed by CBS reporter Norah O’Donnell about Changpeng Zhao, commonly known as CZ, and why he pardoned him.
“I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt,” the president replied, before warning he could walk off the interview when pressed further.
The extraordinary admission ricocheted across social and political media in recent days — covered by MSNBC, CNN, and ABC — even prompting a blistering autopen jibe on The View.
Fox News, however, remains an exception and has given the moment barely a shrug.
The only mention came on Gutfeld! late Monday night when comedian Tom Shillue riffed on the answer and laughed it off. Shillue told the panel:
There are so many good clips in this interview and you selected some of them, but there was other gems in there as well. My favorite one in the whole interview was when she asked him about his latest pardon, and it was this crypto guy. I didn’t know about this crypto guy, but apparently she read all the things he was accused of and she said, ‘why did you pardon him?’ And he said, ready for this? ‘I have no idea who he is.’
He said his sons are into crypto. He says, ‘my sons are really into crypto, but I’m too busy to. I have no idea who he is. But, you know, people said that he was railroaded.’ So he pardoned him. Yeah, he just kept. That is my favorite answer ever.
The only other moment the instance came up was from during a roll back of The View’s mockery on Hannity. Trump’s comments went unaddressed by guest Lawrence Jones, who slammed the ABC hosts’ commentary as “slanderous.”
By contrast, Fox has continued to hammer former President Joe Biden’s reportedly extensive use of “autopen” and his own pardons when closing out his term in office – uttering the term 164 times in four weeks – as commentators advanced the line that a pardon someone didn’t personally sign, or wasn’t fully briefed on, is inherently illegitimate.
While it’s not known whether Trump himself used an autopen to sign the pardon, he has, however, casually admitted he doesn’t know CZ.
On Monday, Fox News host Guy Benson took to X to flag alarm at the remarks, and warned they should “draw scrutiny and concern,” but on air, for now, Fox News seems to have decided it’s not newsworthy.
Watch above via Fox News.
