Political Scientist Shuts Down Fox News Claim That Comey Testimony Was a Bust for Democrats
Donald Trump tweeted (and lied about) a Fox News segment asserting that former FBI Director James Comey‘s closed-door testimony before Congress was a whiff for Democrats, but in the debate segment that followed, political scientist Dr. Jeanne Zaino destroyed that talking point in about ten seconds flat.
At the start of the debate segment, Fox & Friends First co-anchor Rob Schmitt repeated the premise of the tease that Trump misquoted, telling viewers that “Democrats did not get a whole lot of ammo from the James Comey testimony last week. The transcript didn’t provide much evidence of collusion at all, so what impact will that have on all the talk of Russian collusion, which we’ve been hearing for so long now?”
Schmitt then asked Republican Strategist Holly Turner “What did you make of James Comey’s testimony?”
Turner opined that “there was just not much there to help the Democrats out with their effort to provide any backing to there collusion storyline that they’ve been telling for two years now,” and added that she expects Democrats to continue talking about the Russia investigation and impeachment.
Then, it was Zaino’s turn, and she destroyed the entire premise of the segment in mere seconds by pointing out that “it wasn’t the Democrats who invited James Comey in to testify, it was the Republicans.”
She went on to add that “It is Republicans who are looking for something that they simply cannot find, and that is to try to turn the page, and change the focus from what has been the federal prosecutors in New York, and of course the Mueller investigation, and to refocus attention on James Comey, Hillary Clinton, who came up a whopping 114 times in his testimony.”
Dr. Zaino is correct, it was Republicans who insisted that Comey appear, and as Comey noted in his post-testimony press conference, it was Republicans who went fishing for ammunition against Hillary Clinton.
And as Comey himself also noted following his testimony, the Justice Department prohibited him from discussing any details of an ongoing investigation, which would include the Russia probe.
Things didn’t get much better for Hunter. Later in the segment, she tried to claim that special counsel Robert Mueller “has produced absolutely nothing” since his investigation began.
This was too much even for Schmitt, who interrupted her to point out that “We don’t know what he’s produced yet, I mean he’s been very secretive, he’s a very secretive guy, he doesn’t like to show his cards at all until he has to.”
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