Trump nominates former Fox & Friends host to be ambassador to United Nations
December 8, 2018 by middleamericandemocrat: Opinion Leave a Comment
Heather Nauert, Elisabeth Hasselbeck & Maria Molina on Fox & Friends. Source: Fox News.
On Friday, Donald Trump confirmed that he was nominating Heather Nauert to be the next ambassador to the United Nations:
Vox: Trump nominates Heather Nauert to be next UN ambassador
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert may become the next US ambassador to the United Nations.
President Donald Trump confirmed Friday that he is nominating Nauert for the job.
Nauert, a former Fox News host, joined the State Department as its top spokesperson in April 2017. She's largely been an effective messenger for the agency, and her clout in Washington has grown, particularly since the exit of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
From March until October of this year, Nauert also served as the acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a high-ranking post at the State Department.
Who is Heather Nauert? She has worked in government for a little over a year. However, the bulk of her "experience" has been working for Fox News, where she was working when she was first chosen to work in government by Donald Trump:
Nauert joined the State Department after working for 15 years as a correspondent and on-air-host. She was at Fox News for much of that time, and even worked on Trump's favorite program, Fox & Friends.
Heather Nauert is not the only Fox News veteran to have moved from that entertainment channel into a role with the Trump administration. The current White House Communications Director, Bill Shine, is actually still being paid by Fox News while he works in the White House:
Daily Beast: Report: Bill Shine to Get Paid by Fox News and White House Simultaneously
White House communications chief Bill Shine received an $8.4 million severance package upon leaving Fox News in May 2017 and will continue to be paid by the network for two more years, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Financial disclosure forms cited by the Reporter also showed that Shine is due to receive a bonus and options valued at about $3.5 million both this year and next year from 21st Century Fox. Before becoming President Trump's deputy chief of staff for communications, Shine was accused in multiple lawsuits of enabling and helping to cover up alleged sexual harassment by Fox News on-air talent and late chairman Roger Ailes. Upon becoming the Trump administration's sixth White House communications director in 18 months last July, he received a 68-day extension on his financial disclosure form. The form, released to the Reporter on Friday, indicates he will now be paid simultaneously by both the Trump-friendly Fox News network and the White House.
This melding of Fox News with the White House has produced troubling results in the past. In September, there was an incident that illustrated just how much Fox News is influencing White House policy, and vice versa, when the White House announced that Trump had ordered selected intelligence documents from the Russia investigation to be declassified. Note that it was not all documents, just a few that he specifically wanted declassified. National security experts immediately denounced this action, for good reason:
Business Insider: 'Off the charts': National-security experts sound the alarm after Trump moves to selectively declassify the Carter Page FISA application
"The release of FISAs like this is off the charts," Kris wrote. "It is especially unprecedented considering that the FISAs have already gone through declassification review and the President is overruling the judgments of his subordinates to require expanded disclosure."
Then, news came out that Trump hadn't even read the documents he wanted declassified:
Business Insider: Trump hasn't read the classified Russia documents he wants released to the public
There's one caveat, according to The Hill: the president has not read the materials he wants released to the public.
"I have had many people ask me to release them," Trump said.
So, who were these "many people" who asked Trump to declassify these sensitive intelligence documents? Turns out it was Fox News hosts Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Jeanine Pirro:
Daily Intelligencer: Trump Ordered the Release of Sensitive Intelligence at Sean Hannity's Request
Buck Sexton: Have you reviewed the memos yourself? What do you expect them to show, if so?
President Trump: I have not reviewed them. I have been asked by many people in Congress as you know to release them. I have watched commentators that I respect begging the president of the United States to release them….I have been asked by so many people that I respect, please — the great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro.
The President of the United States ordered the declassification of United States intelligence, overruling the opinions of intelligence officials, because Fox News told him to. Why did Fox News tell him to declassify this information? So that they could have a new topic to talk about during their Fox News shows. They were basically creating the news they wanted to report on, and no doubt planned to use this "news" to further discredit the United States intelligence departments and the Mueller investigation, in an attempt to further cloud the very serious investigation of the Trump campaign's collusion with Russia during the 2016 election. It is not hyperbole to suggest that this was Soviet Union and Nazi Germany levels of propaganda that was being orchestrated by the White House and Fox News.
This also wasn't by any means the first time Fox News had influenced Trump White House policy. Let's look at another recent example: the brouhaha that Trump created against Google in late August:
WSJ: Trump Accuses Google of Suppressing Positive News About His Presidency
WASHINGTON—President Trump on Tuesday accused Alphabet Inc.'s Google search platform of elevating critical news stories about his presidency at the expense of friendly conservative voices, adding to the growing scrutiny of tech giants from policy makers.
But, what was not reported was that Trump was just repeating what he saw on the Fox Business News show Lou Dobbs, almost word for word.
The Lou Dobbs show from the night before:
Trump Tweet the next morning:
Google search results for "Trump News" shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. In other words, they have it RIGGED, for me & others, so that almost all stories & news is BAD. Fake CNN is prominent. Republican/Conservative & Fair Media is shut out. Illegal? 96% of….
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 28, 2018
As usually happens, all of this media attention of Trump's own words eventually had to be responded to by the White House. Well, the White House apparently didn't want to explain that the crazy old man who is our President was just doing what crazy old men do: watch Fox News and get pissed off. So, instead they sent Larry Kudlow, Donald Trump's Economic Advisor, out to pretend that they were actually looking into it.
And thus, a bogus Fox News segment became official White House policy:
Politico: Kudlow: White House 'taking a look' at Google regulations
White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Tuesday that the administration is "taking a look" at imposing regulations on Google following President Donald Trump's tweet Tuesday accusing the search giant of favoring news outlets critical of him in search results.
This was all so ridiculous, and dangerous, for so many reasons.
The mainstream media pretends that this is all somewhat normal, acting as if the White House is actually thoughtfully looking into policy decisions. THIS IS NOT NORMAL (all caps for the Fox News fans).
Fox News is directing White House policy. Besides their ridiculous right wing bias, Fox News' agenda is not to make the country better, it is to get more people to watch Fox News.
Part of how Fox News tries to get more people to watch Fox News is by discrediting the American government.
Fox News knows full well that Trump is watching them and taking direction from them, so Fox News also knows that no matter what, they can never turn against him personally. Because Trump is their biggest cheerleader. He watches Fox News to feed his ego. If Fox News says bad things about him, he will turn on them as fast as he has turned on James Comey, Michael Cohen, Omarosa, Jeff Sessions…
Because Fox News knows that they can't risk Trump's ire, they are willing to discredit any and everybody in government who might oppose him.
Trump's followers also watch Fox News, so when they see the President repeat Fox News talking points, it creates a never-ending loop of validation: the President agrees with Fox News so Fox News must be correct; Fox News agrees with the President so the President must be correct. This is a big part of why they will keep following him until the bitter end.
We are being led by a literal cult creating apparatus that does not care if it brings harm to the American government or the American people.
This is the same type of propaganda coordination between a White House and Fox News that helped lead the country into the Iraq War under George W Bush.
And now we will have a Fox News veteran who will be tasked with representing the United States to the rest of the world.
This is not good for the country.
Just one example is this interview from a few months ago, when Heather Nauert, who Donald Trump has nominated to be the next ambassador to the United Nations, suggested that the D-Day invasion was an example of the great relationship the United States has with Germany:
Wait, THIS Heather Naurt? "We have a very strong relationship with the government of Germany. Looking back in the history books, today is the 71st anniversary of the speech that launched the Marshall Plan. Tomorrow is the anniversary of the D-Day invasion. pic.twitter.com/Pt2XJHeUJY
— Holly Figueroa O'Reilly (@AynRandPaulRyan) December 7, 2018
Filed Under: Trump