January 2, 2024

Fox’s Dagen McDowell is a business pundit, not a lawyer. But she played a constitutional expert on the Outnumbered show Tuesday when she declared that any judge who rules that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment disqualifies Donald Trump from the presidency should not be on the bench.

McDowell did not say anything about violence but I’m sure Fox News viewers got the fascist message loud and clear, the same way they hear Trump. Don’t tell me she didn’t know that.

McDowell claimed she was just joking when she said Maine’s secretary of state, who threw Trump off the ballot under that constitutional provision, for engaging in insurrection, “has not been treated for the derangement syndrome a lot of people on the left are still suffering from.” As if we should all just get over a presidential candidate who plotted a coup to overturn the last presidential election and did nothing for hours to stop a violent mob storming the Capitol, shouting “Hang Mike Pence.”

It’s one thing to argue that the secretary of state made the wrong call but on Fox “News” it’s almost always about demonizing anyone who disagrees with the MAGA party line.

Then McDowell took it one step further: “In terms of the Supreme Court, it better be a nine-naught ruling,” she demanded. “It better be nine-nothing, because if any of those justices vote to remove Trump from the ballot, they do not deserve to sit on that bench. They do not deserve to adjudicate traffic violations. They don't deserve to sit on a park bench if they go the wrong way on this,” she said.

So, winning the case is not good enough for this phony-baloney “expert.”

Even worse, she said this on the same day an intruder broke into the building that houses Colorado’s Supreme Court, held a security guard at gunpoint and started a fire, just two weeks after that court ruled Trump ineligible for the primary ballot.

Can you help us out?

For nearly 20 years we have been exposing Washington lies and untangling media deceit, but now Facebook is drowning us in an ocean of right wing lies. Please give a one-time or recurring donation, or buy a year's subscription for an ad-free experience. Thank you.

Discussion

We welcome relevant, respectful comments. Any comments that are sexist or in any other way deemed hateful by our staff will be deleted and constitute grounds for a ban from posting on the site. Please refer to our Terms of Service for information on our posting policy.
Mastodon