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After The Atlantic published the full text thread of national security officials discussing a military strike on the messaging app Signal, top Fox News hosts all tried to spin the massive intelligence leak in their own ways.
Laura Ingraham said the texts actually showed the serious and thoughtful decision-making of the administration; Jesse Watters downplayed the leak by likening it to accidentally adding a relative to a bachelor party group chat; and Sean Hannity simply excused the report, claiming the information wasn’t classified anyway.
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Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz told The New Abnormal’s Danielle Moodie and Andy Levy that despite their excuses, Fox viewers, in this instance, might not be as convinced.
“My pet theory here is that this is very easy to understand and discuss for most Americans,” Gertz said. “It’s the sort of thing where if that’s what you’re getting from your peer group, you’re gonna be less likely to buy the explanations that you’re hearing from your television set.”
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A YouGov poll earlier showed that 60 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Americans see the leak as a “very or somewhat” serious problem.
“I think what it’s telling them is they need to move past this as quickly as possible and hope that the Trump administration can make it go away,” Gertz said. “Because otherwise they’re really at risk of having more cracks in that right-wing media matrix… more people recognizing that what they’re being told isn’t actually the truth.”
Plus! Lawfare senior editor Anna Bower talks about the Trump administration’s escalating legal battles over its efforts to test the limits of presidential power.
Listen to this full episode of The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.
