Pardon Who? Fox News Primetime Hosts Downplay Trump’s Clemency for Corrupt, Powerful White Men

If President Donald Trump takes a buzzsaw to his own campaign promise to “drain the swamp,” does it make a sound on Fox News primetime?

After Trump handed out pardons and commutations to some of the most infamously corrupt public figures in recent history — among them former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, former NYPD Commissioner Bernie Kerik, and former junk bond trader Michael Milken — the answer turns out to be: barely a peep.

Instead of railing against government corruption and calling out the lack of accountability for elites — an almost nightly theme for that network’s primetime hosts — Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham were suddenly, curiously silent about the president’s brazen acts of clemency for a veritable Who’s Who of mostly white, male, convicted felons. Blagojevich, of course, was a former contestant on Trump’s TV show, Celebrity Apprentice, and Kerik served under former New York City mayor — and current Trump attorney — Rudy Giuliani before the pair formed their own consulting firm.

All these tangled connections at work in Trump’s clemency moves compelled The Five’s Greg Gutfeld to acknowledge that the Blagojevich commutation directly contradicted Trump’s promise of “draining the swamp.” But other than a two-minute, straight-news report about Blagojevich’s commutation during the 8:00 p.m. hour, the primetime trifecta of Fox News hosts spent all of 10 seconds on Tuesday night discussing what was, elsewhere in the news universe, a huge story.

The first Fox News dog not to bark was Carlson, who only briefly mentioned Trump’s move while teeing up a “Fox News Alert” on the commutation. Blagojevich, Fox News’ Matt Finn noted, was up until Tuesday night, serving a 14-year sentence after being convicted in 2011 on 17 charges of wire fraud, attempted extortion, and conspiracy to solicit bribes. In his report, Finn pointed out that Carlson had also hosted Blagojevich’s wife on his primetime show in 2018, where she pleaded for mercy for her husband — an appearance that the president himself implicitly credited as a prime reason that he commuted the former governor’s sentence.

Finn then wrapped up his story with a startling fact: “The Illinois Republican House delegation released a statement slamming the president’s decision today.”

Despite the newsworthiness of such a rare example of intra-party criticism of Trump and the fact that the president all but attributed his act of clemency to Carlson’s own show, the Fox News host couldn’t move on from the story fast enough. Instead of taking a victory lap or offering an unapologetic analysis about the merits of allowing Blagojevich out of prison six years early, Carlson merely wrapped up the segment with a nothing-to-see-here sign-off: “Matt Finn for us in Chicago tonight. Thanks a lot, Matt.”

In Fox News’ 9 o’clock hour, however, Sean Hannity couldn’t even be bothered to give that much scant attention to Trump’s highly controversial acts. During the handoff between his show and Carlson’s, Hannity dropped a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it mention of Trumps’s clemency for Blagojevich, Kerik, and Milken. A renowned, rhetorical bomb-thrower who never refuses to speak his mind, Hannity was now strangely circumspect and reserved, and could only manage one meaningless, throwaway line: “Interesting times.”

Hannity’s decidedly tame response to Blagojevich et al. being summarily freed and forgiven was even more striking because, later on that very same show, he called out the urgent need to “hold those that abuse power and that have been corrupt accountable.” Of course, to Hannity, Trump confidantes like Roger Stone and Michael Flynn, who have been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to witness tampering and lying to Congress, and lying to the FBI, respectively, are the real victims. In his eyes, the federal prosecutors and FBI agents involved in those cases are the ones somehow corruptly abusing their power to punish Trump.

The final hour of Fox News primetime continued the evening’s trend of diminishing coverage, as Ingraham didn’t see fit to mention Trump’s generosity toward Blagojevich — or any of the other corruption figures — at all. Just complete silence.

But lest you think Ingraham’s decision not to touch the story meant her show would steer clear from obvious hypocritical posturing, think again. Guest John Eastman, senior fellow from the right-wing Claremont Institute, showed up to blast the Mueller probe for the umpteenth time, while offering up this oh-so-ironic observation.

“The president is extremely frustrated with what has gone on and the unequal treatment under the law,” Eastman claimed. “The president’s friends ought not to get special, favorable treatment, but neither do they ought to be targeted for special, unfavorable treatment, merely because they are the presidents friends.”

But as Trump once again demonstrated on Tuesday, “special, favorable treatment” is exactly what people get if they fit his very personal definition of persecuted or if it sends the right signal to his fervent, right-wing base. And, based on the nearly three-hour blackout from Fox News’ most-watched personalities, they have no interest in disabusing their millions of viewers of this inconvenient truth.

Watch the videos above, via Fox News.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.