Of Course Fox News Already Found a Way to Defend Trump's Ukraine Call

If you’ve been blessed with the gift of observation, the memo of the call between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is damning. If not, then, well, at least Fox News has your back.

Within minutes of the White House publishing the memo of the phone call between Trump and Zelensky, Fox News chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge comforted viewers, alleging that this document is not the smoking gun that Democrats think it is, despite the memo detailing Trump directly asking Zelensky to pursue an investigation into Joe Biden’s son.

And why is that? Because, as Herridge said, Trump didn’t mention the Bidens multiple times—just a handful. Three by their count. Yes, that is literally what she said.

“The key thing from the initial reading of this transcript, Bill, is that there are not multiple references as widely reported to the former vice president and his son,” Herridge said. “Based on our count there’s a key reference and then some follow-on references, so a handful. Approximately three.”

Nice dictionary definition of “multiple” you’ve got there, which I’m sure you would find Fox has consistently used in the past if you were to go back through their archives.

Herridge went on to report that the memo did not include Trump saying that he would withhold military aid to Ukraine—which, yes, we have noted as well—though Trump himself admitted to doing that exact thing on Tuesday. Again, this document isn’t a documented memo of the conversation and not a verbatim transcript; regardless, how strange it would be that Trump would admit to doing a bad thing he didn’t do when it’s so often the other way around.

Suppose we’ll just have to see how firm House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats stand in the face of the Math and Grammar Knowers at Fox News—and the most craven members of the GOP—insisting that this is totally fine.