Fox News host dubiously reveals how 'CIA could help Biden' at debate
President Joe Biden could get a debate boost Thursday if one Fox News host is to be believed — only this time it's not from baseless cocaine use or energy drinks. This time, the right-wing network suggested it could be from the CIA.
Ahead of the much-anticipated debate Thursday night, host Jesse Watters on Wednesday suggested former President Donald Trump will not only go up against Biden, debate host Jake Tapper, and "the media," he'll also face the nation's massive, secretive intelligence agency.
Teasing the segment, he said he'd reveal how the "CIA could help Biden" — after a quick commercial break.
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Watters then laid out the argument that proved heavy in rhetoric, but perhaps light on evidence, asserting that the CIA illegally "knee-capped" Trump in the last two elections and warned his audience they could do so again.
"The agency's whacked Trump twice in a row," Watters quipped, "what makes you think they won't go for the hat trick?"
His evidence: Some of the 51 senior intelligence officials who "cooked-up" the Hunter Biden laptop letter were, at the time, on the agency's payroll. Trump-appointed director Gina Haspel, he said, likely knew what was going on at the time.
"Obama's acting CIA director rushed the letter out before the debate so Biden could use it to discredit Trump's laptop attack, remember?"
Notably, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, ex-intelligence heads of the CIA and other analysts and officers all told the New York post this month they have no regrets about their actions.
“There continues to be by many a calculated or woefully ignorant interpretation of the October 2020 letter signed by fifty-one former intelligence officials concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop,” Mark S. Zaid, an attorney for seven of the signatories, said in a statement to The Post.
“A careful and objective reading of the document reflects that even today its content is accurate,” Zaid said. He is representing former CIA officers Ronald Marks, Marc Polymeropoulos, Emile Nakhleh, Paul Kolbe, John Sipher and Gerald O’Shea, as well as ex-Defense Intelligence Agency deputy director Douglas Wise.
Watters played a clip of a 2020 debate in which Biden and Trump traded barbs over the laptop, with Trump whining: "Is this where you're going? This is where he's going! The laptop is Russia, Russia, Russia? You have to be kidding — here we go again with Russia."
Watters noted The New York Times plans to have 29 fact-checkers during the debate — but cautioned his viewers that "we know the CIA has a history of infiltrating the press."
"The internet is going to be a battlefield in the aftermath of the debate," Watters added, before launching into an aside that on Wednesday the Supreme Court — dominated by conservatives — ruled that the Biden White House is "free to collude with social media companies to take down 'misinformation.'" (He added air quotes to "misinformation.")
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Watters again repeated his claim that Trump is up against Biden, the media, and the CIA, and warned viewers the trio will throw whatever they have at the former president.
"It's up to you to be alert to their latest subversions," he said.
Former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou, a counter-terrorism consultant, told Watters he also believes the CIA will again come after Trump. He pointed to the casting of Wikileaks as a Russian-front company and the release of founder Julian Assange.
"They do this all the time and this is part of the ongoing problem in CIA, in the intelligence community and in what we call 'the deep state,'" Kiriakou said. "That is that these people think they are the smartest people in town. And that whatever they say should be believed. And it shouldn't be."