Dan Abrams called out Fox News hosts angered that recently released private text messages were an invasion of privacy, but they had no compunction covering stories based on similarly released texts, from figures such as Peter Stzok or Chris Cuomo.
Abrams used the latest “Mediaite Moments” segment of his NewsNation show to focus on Congresswoman Liz Cheney’s (R-WY) release of text messages from Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade, all of whom implored Mark Meadows to get Donald Trump to do something about his rioting supporters on January 6th.
The Fox hosts joined Meadows in railing against the text releases, but since Hannity demeaned it as a “smear” attempt, Abrams mused that “it’s not a smear if it shows you doing the right thing, right?”
Abrams switched gears to look at how Fox’s commentators have also slammed the text disclosures as an invasion of privacy, even though they were “lawfully obtained by congressional subpoena.” Abrams noted that he, too, has reservations about using private, leaked information, but “I don’t think they felt that way about the texts between, let’s say, former FBI employees Lisa Page and Peter Strzok who were involved in the Russia investigation.”
From there, Abrams rolled archive footage of Hannity delving into text messages from the Page-Strzok affair. After that, he showed Fox running with the private text messages from former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, plus leaked messages from the Hunter Biden laptop controversy.
“So apparently, they only believe that private texts are fair game if the private texts are someone else’s,” Abrams summarized. He also folded in Fox’s Todd Piro going after CNN’s Don Lemon for communicating with Jussie Smollett about his hate crime hoax.
“So texting someone that is the subject in the news is off-limits unless it’s not,” Abrams said. “Look, again, I think the Fox News hosts did the right thing in writing to Meadows, but you can’t have it both ways.”
Watch above, via NewsNation.
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