Creating “Plausible Deniability” – Report: Fox News Reconsidering Advocacy Position For Marco Rubio’s Candidacy?…
March 2, 2016
Fox News’ primary agenda driver, Rupert Murdoch, was conspicuously absent from commentary following the last GOP debate, staged cage fight. It was the only debate where Murdoch did not announce Marco Rubio the winner.
A few days later the New York Times embarrassed Fox News by revealing the corporate media agenda, including secret meetings with DC politicians and media, to advance Marco Rubio’s gang-of-eight proposals and benefit their ideological immigration agenda (outlined below).
Both owner Rupert Murdoch and Fox executive President Roger Ailes have been positioning the network to do as much damage to Rubio’s opponent Donald Trump as possible for the past 8 months. Fox News political executive director, Bill Sammons, is the father of Marco Rubio’s national spokesperson, Brooke Sammon. The agenda has been transparent from the outset.
However, today a report surfaces where Roger Ailes is reportedly reconsidering the media conglomerate’s position.
[…] According to three Fox sources, Fox chief Roger Ailes has told people he’s lost confidence in Rubio’s ability to win (link).
NOT SO FAST – The timing, just hours before the network broadcasts yet another attack debate favorable to Rubio, reeks of a corporate entity trying to position themselves with plausible deniability; and isolate themselves from the growing backlash of an audience who have woken up to the manipulative intents of the network.
The owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdochhas been a staunch advocate for Marco Rubio for several years. Murdoch leveraged his entire news apparatus, and his most important and visible investment,Megyn Kelly, to advocate on behalf of the comprehensive immigration tool.
Not coincidentally, Megyn Kelly signed a book deal with another of Ruperts’ business interests, Harper Collins books. Ms. Kelly’s book deal is worth somewhere north of $5 million, and many observers are putting the deal around $10 million. Quite a beneficial backdoor payday for Ms. Kelly from her boss, Rupert Murdoch.
However, Murdoch’s manipulative agenda is more visibly found in his advocacy for Senator Marco Rubio. Observers will note almost no debate discussion on the advocacy of Rubio for the Trans-Pacific trade deal (TPP), or comprehensive immigration reform. However, it should not come as a surprise, the head of Fox News even structured media coverage on behalf of Rubio during the Gang-of-Eight legislative fiasco in 2013.
Mr. Murdoch, who is also leading the executive decision-making on Fox programming, also contracts pollster Frank Luntz to appear on Fox News broadcasting during the 2016 election cycle.
[…] since June, Murdoch has been attending Ailes’s daily executive meeting held on the second floor of Fox headquarters. The secretive afternoon gathering in Ailes’s conference room is attended by about a half-dozen of the network’s most senior lieutenants. It’s where some of the most sensitive decisions about running the channel are discussed. (link)
Frank Luntz has sub-contracts with Marco Rubio and a long-term relationship with Rubio going back to the Freshman Senator’s time in the Florida Legislature. Rubio alone has paid Luntz $350,000+
Frank Luntz focus groups regularly find Marco Rubio as the winner of debate and opinion programming.
The executive in charge of Fox News debate programming, debate questioning and debate structure is Bill Sammon. (circled below)
The Washington Post has an outlinedescribing how Bill Sammon runs the entire show at Fox regarding debates; and how he is the person who Chris Stirewalt, Megyn Kelly, Chris Wallace and Brett Baier directly report to for all debate issues, construction, and question organization.
In essence, Bill Sammon runs the show.
Bill Sammon’s daughter is Brooke Sammonwho is the press secretary for Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign.
A generally interested observer would consider this a conflict of interest worthy of full disclosure. However, none of the above have ever been publicly disclosed prior to the media presentation by any Fox entity.
Additionally, it has now surfaced what approach Megyn Kelly was going to take when questioning Donald Trump at the Fox News debate he skipped prior to the Iowa Caucus.
During a television interview with Steven Colbert Kelly shared:
“[Trump] recently said that his supporters are so devoted to him that they could go in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and he wouldn’t lose a single voter. In response to which, I was going to ask him, ‘Were you talking about me?'”
During the Fox Business News debate several political junkies noted a rather curious omission: Senator Marco Rubio was never questioned about the 2013 Senate Gang-of-Eight bill and his stance on Comprehensive Immigration Reform. In fact, if you were to review the debate substance you’d note that candidate Rubio wasn’t directly questioned about his immigration positions at all.
Candidate Jeb Bush attends Chamber of Commerce dinner with Fox’s Rupert Murdoch and Valerie Jarrett
(December 2014)
It is not disconnected that during the 2013/2014 Gang-of-Eight immigration constructs, Fox News was an active participant in the promotion of the immigration reform proposals. In order to facilitate the congressional immigration intent Fox launched a previously unknown pro-amnesty propaganda blitz to support senate immigration bill.
What follows below is an evidenced expose’ of their agenda.
♦ It was less than a year ago when Mickey Kaus was chastised by Tucker Carlson, a Fox Contributor, for writing an article in the Daily Caller outlining the relationship between Rupert Murdoch, his company Fox News, the talking heads under his control and authority, and Murdoch’s request for pro-amnesty propaganda to be broadcast on the network.
Carlson took down the article from the Daily Caller, and subsequently Mickey Kaus quit in disgust over the agenda-driven editorial decision. Apparently some things are just too sensitive for sunlight and exposure.
What Mickey Kaus outlined was a pattern within Fox to push immigration reform and included a first person excerpt between David Axelrod and Rupert Murdoch:
On page 424 of his recent memoir, Obama’s former top strategist David Axelrod describes running into Fox chieftain (and immigration amnesty supporter) Rupert Murdoch at a dinner in the fall of 2010:
During the dinner, Murdoch, who was seated beside me, insisted that the president had to move on immigration reform. ….
“But the solution has to be comprehensive,” I said. “We can’t just attack a piece of the immigration problem. And you know, there’s one big thing that you can do to help, and that is to keep your cable network from stoking the nativism that keeps us from solving this.” [Emphasis added] (link)
Kaus goes on to outline how Fox News followed the plan and conspicuously avoided any mention of the crafting: “in the spring of 2013 when the “Gang of 8” amnesty bill snuck through the Senate“. Mickey uses a historical timeline, day-by-day story leads, showing how Fox was intentionally NOT COVERING the story (see here).
♦ However, even before Kaus discovered -and outlined- proof of what his research into Fox revealed there was a prior article written by Ryan Lizza in The New Yorker Magazine [June 2013] which was even more revealing:
New Yorker 2013 – […] Fox News has notably changed its tone since the election. A Democratic policy staffer who worked on the issue in 2007 and has helped write the current bill said, “NumbersUSA and FAIR”—two groups that want to dramatically limit immigration—“managed to convince Fox News back then to be their twenty-four-hour news channel of the anti-immigrant point of view. Fox has now totally bought in to the idea that we just need to figure something out.”
Rush Limbaugh, who fiercely opposes the bill, has come to sound resigned. “I don’t know if there’s any stopping this,” he said on January 28th, the day the Gang held the press conference announcing its framework for the legislation. “It’s up to me and Fox News, and I don’t think Fox News is that invested in this.”
McCain told me, “Rupert Murdoch is a strong supporter of immigration reform, and Roger Ailes is, too.” Murdoch is the chairman and C.E.O. of News Corp., which owns Fox, and Ailes is Fox News’s president.
McCain said that he, Graham, Rubio, and others also have talked privately to top hosts at Fox, including Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Neil Cavuto, who are now relatively sympathetic to the Gang’s proposed bill. Hannity voiced support for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, which he previously dismissed as “amnesty,” on the day after the 2012 election. “God bless Fox,” Graham said. “Last time, it was ‘amnesty’ every fifteen seconds.” He said that the change was important for his reelection, because “eighty per cent of people in my primary get their news from Fox.” He added that the network has “allowed critics to come forward, but it’s been so much better.” (link)
So there’s a trio of GOPe Republicans in the so-called Gang of Eight huddled with leading figures at Fox News Channel. A few days later Bill O’Reilly interviews Marco Rubio and urges the Senator to come to him if anyone opposes the proposal.
♦ As you watch this segment in retrospect, with the information you now possess, consider that both Bill O’Reilly and Marco Rubio have pre-discussed the entire topic and worked out exactly what the framework of questions and answers would be:
Rubio Discusses Borders & Benefits In Immigration Bill w/ Bill O'Reilly
Rupert Murdoch, Wall Street, The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the entire GOPe apparatus -including House Speaker Paul Ryan- are 100% behind comprehensive immigration reform to include amnesty.
Now, lets contrast this historic information against the backdrop new information within the republican debates. There is a particular clarity that resonates, no?
Few people know how close we came to seeing this immigration usurpation actually come to fruition as law. Our nation was literally a few hours away from fundamental change.
There is an incredible story to be told of two unheralded heroes named Zach Werrell and Gray Delany, who, together with representative Dave Brat of Virginia, fundamentally saved the construct of the U.S. as we know it. And that is not even the slightest bit of exaggeration. Without them, there wouldn’t even be a Donald Trump campaign today.
The he-said, he-said, between presidential candidates Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ted Cruz provides an opportunity to highlight just how close passage of Amnesty law was in 2014.
The senate “Gang of Eight” comprehensive immigration reform bill, which included amnesty legislation was not blocked by Ted Cruz nor Marco Rubio – it specifically passed the senate because of them, not despite them.
A very insightful PBS documentary “The Immigration Battle” lays out exactly what took place during the 2013/2014 legislative time frame. If you have not watched the documentary I would strongly recommend you do so, it is profoundly enlightening.
The documentary walks you through a timeline explaining exactly who was doing what at the times discussed.
Here’s the trailer:
Watch Full Documentary – HERE
After the Senate passed the comprehensive immigration reform bill, the activity shifted to the House of Representatives. Paul Ryan was part of the team supporting passage.
Eventually, against ever increasing pressure from President Obama’s bully pulpit, it came to a moment in the House (June 2014) where Speaker John Boehner was going to take up a vote on the Senate Bill.
Speaker Boehner, Paul Ryan and a few other close insiders had been holding secret meetings discussing support for the bill. On Friday June 6th 2014 Boehner recognized there was now enough support for passage – he also knew it was going to be controversial.
Boehner asked Kevin McCarthy (House Majority Whip) to whip the vote and get a confirmed vote count on Monday June 9th 2014. Unbeknownst to both GOP and DEM rank-and-file membership Boehner, Ryan and Eric Cantor already knew they had the votes for passage – the request to McCarthy was merely to confirm.
Speaker John Boehner was planning to schedule the vote for Thursday June 12th or Friday June 13th the consideration on either date circled around political benefit through the media: Was it better to celebrate, if so Thursday -or- was it better to pass and get out of dodge, if so Friday.
So the GOP House Members were officially whipped on Monday June 9th. The results confirmed what John Boehner and Paul Ryan already knew – They had enough votes to pass it.
On Tuesday June 10th Speaker Boehner, Eric Cantor (Majority Leader) and Kevin McCarthy (Majority Whip) had lunch together discussing timing the vote Thursday night or Friday Morning.
However, later that same night the results from the 2014 Virginia primary showed an unknown conservative outsider, Dave Brat, had defeated (primaried) Eric Cantor. At 7:00pm Tuesday night the first word went out that Cantor had lost.
Boehner, McCarthy and Cantor were STUNNED beyond belief.
The next day, Wednesday June 11th, the House of Representatives was also in a state of shock – Almost the entire reason for the defeat was the controversial immigration position of Cantor.
Immediately panicked GOP congresscritters were calling Kevin McCarthy and revoking their previous (2 days earlier) positions of support for the bill. By lunchtime Wednesday June 11th it was obvious the Immigration Bill was NOW DEAD in the House.
That’s how close it was. Literally within hours of a vote for passage.
Amnesty didn’t die because of Senator Ted Cruz or anything he did or didn’t do. The gang of eight bill had already passed the senate.
Amnesty died exclusively because candidate Dave Brat beat House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Period.
….Once you see the strings on the marionettes it’s impossible to go back to a time when you don’t see them any longer !