A set of screengrabs making the rounds on Twitter is an amazing encapsulation of the Fox News approach to political email scandals.
The first image depicts one of the many scenes from Fox’s all-out coverage of the Hillary Clinton email scandal last year. Here it is:
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The second shows Fox & Friends Friday morning, following Thursday night’s revelations from the Indianapolis Star that Mike Pence used a personal email address while governor of Indiana — and was hacked. Here it is:
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Now, the 180 treatment of Democrats on Fox News versus Republicans is not surprising. Still, the “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” line challenged even those expectations. We couldn’t help but ask: Could this possibly be real?
After scouring the tapes, Vox can confirm that the chyron — “NOTHING TO SEE HERE” — is, in fact, how Fox responded to the Indianapolis Star report. The text appeared briefly on the screen around 7:40 am EST.
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And, as Vox’s Matt Yglesias wrote earlier today, the Pence email case may actually be legitimately more troubling than Clinton’s.
What’s perhaps most interesting about the Pence story is that, as the Indianapolis Star’s investigation shows, the merely hypothetical security risks Republicans raised about Clinton’s emails were genuine problems with Pence’s account:
“Pence communicated via his personal AOL account with top advisers on topics ranging from security gates at the governor’s residence to the state’s response to terror attacks across the globe.”
“Pence's personal account was hacked last summer.”
“In one email, Pence’s top state homeland security adviser relayed an update from the FBI regarding the arrests of several men on federal terror-related charges.”
