The Mirror

Fox News Tries To Get Obama, Gets Itself Instead

Betsy Rothstein Gossip blogger
Font Size:

Fox News may want to get its White House lingo down before casting aspersions on former President Barack Obama.

Maybe President Donald Trump can host a master class on Sean Hannity‘s show?

In a story published Wednesday, seemingly aimed at ripping Obama’s supposed “political correctness” inside high-level cabinet meetings, the reporter fails to understand that White House “PC” — outside the culture of Trump — actually means something wildly different.

“PC” meetings are Principals Committee. Those are meetings at the Cabinet Level, such as Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and so on.

Robbie Gramer, a national security reporter at Foreign Policy, relayed the gaffe that was first caught by Rebecca Ingber, a law professor at Boston University.

Unfortunately, the story’s error was right smack in the headline:

“CIA staff complained about Obama White House’s political correctness, new book claims.”

The book is Doug Wead‘s newly released Inside Trump’s White House: The Real Story of His Presidency. The tome is obviously pro-Trump.

Here are just some of the topics addressed in the book from the flap (my fave is #6, second fave is #7):

*Why Donald Trump ran for the presidency, and why he and his family say that all of the other books have it wrong.
*How President Trump defied the predictions of the most famous economists in the world and kept his promise of becoming “the greatest jobs president God ever created.”
*What he did differently that spelled doom for the ISIS Caliphate.
*How he has brought home so many Americans held hostage abroad. Hear the stories directly from the captives themselves.
*How foreign intelligence services knew the facts about the Russia collusion hoax within days, while it took the Mueller investigation two years.
*How Don Jr., Jared, Ivanka, Eric, Lara, and Tiffany avoid rivalries and misunderstandings.
*How the President and the First Lady rely on each other to endure the false stories that bombard the White House daily.

The Fox News lede lays it all out there and simultaneously gives Trump a big kiss.

“A new book claims that top CIA employees have compared President Trump favorably to his predecessor, indicating that former President Barack Obama’s administration micromanaged intelligence matters and was too concerned with political correctness.”

The juicy part displaying Obama’s, er, “political correctness” meetings are as follows:

“Next thing they said was that, in the previous administration, they spent a lot of time in the White House doing nonstop PC [political correctness] meetings. They would have a meeting every week, and at the conclusion of the meeting there was always the suggestion, ‘Let’s meet again in two weeks.’ Nothing was every resolved. Nothing was ever good enough.”

Walter Shaub, former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, cracked on Twitter, “How embarrassing for our unofficial state media.” (RELATED: Fox News Correspondent Is Run Out Of An Establishment Because Of Where She Works)

The mistake is understandable, as these days “PC” most often does refer to “politically correctness” and Trump’s determination to annihilate it at ever turn. (RELATED: CNN’s Media Team Screws Up Kasie Hunt’s Name)

But in this case, FNC attempted to bash Obama’s White House and instead, revealed a reporting blind spot.