In other words, when Trump was in charge of keeping our country safe, his opposition to an important national security law was based on what he saw on Fox News TV.
Media Matters caught the jaw-dropping comment from former Congressman Trey Gowdy during a discussion about the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In case you missed it, Congress has been bickering over its reauthorization. According to The Hill, Senate Republicans are furious after Donald Trump helped derail a compromise. Gowdy, no RINO, told Fox News viewers Trump doesn't even know what he's opposing.
Gowdy was a member of Special Report’s All Star Panel discussion about the reauthorization yesterday. The messaging seemed intended as pro-FISA. I say that because first we saw a clip of FBI Director Christopher Wray telling Congress that failing to reauthorize Section 702 or gutting it “would be dangerous and put Americans’ lives at risk.” The intro closed with a full-screen graphic from the Murdochs’ Wall Street Journal Editorial Board blasting Trump’s opposition:
“Mr. Trump wants to ‘kill FISA’ and what does he think a second Trump administration would do without it? Will it Make America Great Again if the country no longer has the ability to surveil terrorist communications in Yemen or Pakistan? A FISA failure would let President Biden blame Mr. Trump if there’s a terror attack and it would leave a Trump Administration less able to protect Americans.”
That’s a somewhat surprising level of criticism of Fox’s Dear Leader. But maybe the Murdochs were just hoping to guide their big fan into doing what they think is the right thing.
Given that producers and anchors have a general idea of what their guests are going to say, it also spoke volumes that Baier turned to Gowdy for commentary first.
“Obviously, the former president sees FISA abuses in attacks against him directly, and he has mentioned that numerous times,” Bret said.
Gowdy smacked that down immediately, saying in so many words that Trump didn’t know what he was talking about. “It’s a different section that I think the president is complaining about,” Gowdy said. “FISA is already subject to court order. A court has already approved the collection of this information. It is almost exclusively foreign nationals talking. Every now and again Americans get caught up in it.”
“The problem is twofold,” Gowdy continued. “Number one, the FBI really has nobody to blame but themselves,” Gowdy said, because the bureau has “been very slow to embrace reforms.”
The other problem is Trump’s astounding laziness and ignorance:
GOWDY: The other issue, you may recall, Bret, the president once before, President Trump tweeted out that we should oppose reauthorization because he watched a legal commentator who used to be on Fox complain about FISA. [Trump’s CIA Director] Pompeo had to go get in the car and drive over there and flip the president's position. So, he sent out another tweet before we voted.
I don't hear his former national security advisers opposing reauthorization. So, I hear him doing it, but I don't hear the people that he put in charge of keeping our country safe opposed to this reauthorization.
However you feel about FISA, what Gowdy just said is shocking and important: that a former president and current presidential candidate is utterly clueless about a key facet of America's national security. Even worse, he essentially cribbed his policy position from a Fox News commentator without doing a lick of his own study.
Fox likes to tout Baier as some kind of top-notch journalist, but any journalist not in thrall to MAGA world would have stopped the discussion to underscore the significance of what Gowdy had just said. Instead Baier, who once suggested the network reverse its 2020 call for Biden in Arizona because “it’s hurting us,” moved on to discuss the difficult position Speaker Mike Johnson is in.
You can watch Special Report shrug off what it would surely be screaming disqualified a Democratic presidential candidate below, from the April 11, 2024 Special Report.
4/14/24 correction: The link to Media Mattes has been corrected.