After spending the past few years railing against the Biden administration for its supposed attacks on free speech and censorship of social media platforms, Fox News is now calling for a CBS News journalist to be locked up and his show canceled for warning college graduates that “freedom of speech is under attack.”
What appears to be most rankling to the conservative news network’s stars are Scott Pelley’s comments in a commencement speech at Wake Forest that were sharply directed at President Donald Trump.
A week after Pelley delivered an impassioned address, clearly targeted at Trump, MAGA world fully melted down over it after clips were shared online by a pro-Trump account. The speech went viral over the Memorial Day weekend as conservatives lashed out in anger and Fox News picked up the mantle after the holiday.
“Does he hate half the country as much as he hates President Trump?” anchor Harris Faulkner huffed on Tuesday morning’s broadcast of The Faulkner Focus.
“He never mentions anything about the 76 million people who voted for Trump as being valuable and loved in the country. He goes after the man they voted for.”
(Fox News)
The portion that specifically incensed conservatives and Trump supporters was Pelley — whose network is currently facing a $20 billion lawsuit from the president over an edited 60 Minutes interview of Kamala Harris in the stretch run of the presidential campaign — having referenced Trump’s attacks on the media and the nation’s sacred institutions. The longtime 60 Minutes correspondent did not mention the president by name.
“But in this moment, this moment, this morning, our sacred rule of law is under attack. Journalism is under attack. Universities are under attack,” he declared. “Freedom of speech is under attack. And insidious fear is reaching through our schools, our businesses, our homes, and into our private thoughts. The fear to speak in America.”
Noting that “ignorance works for power,” Pelley also pointed out that they first “make the truth-seekers live in fear” when they “sue the journalists and their companies for nothing,” an apparent reference to the president’s lawsuit.
Paramount, the parent company of CBS, is considering a settlement of that complaint in an effort to coax the Trump administration to approve a mega-merger with Skydance Media. The possibility of settling a lawsuit that legal experts describe as frivolous has resulted in the abrupt resignations of 60 Minutes’ executive producer and CBS News’ chief, along with Democratic senators suggesting that the company could be breaking anti-bribery laws.
Pelley also took aim at the administration’s efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
“With that done, power can rewrite history with grotesque, false narratives,” he stated. “They can make criminals heroes and heroes criminals. Power can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. Diversity is now described as illegal. Equity is to be shunned. Inclusion is a dirty word.”
Faulkner wasn’t done with her hyperbolic and breathless indignation over Pelley’s speech. During the midday roundtable show Outnumbered, which she co-anchors, she seemingly accused CBS News of antisemitism while suggesting the White House could soon turn its attention to shutting down the network.
Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany suggests that CBS News’ Scott Pelley should be arrested following his fiery commencement speech at Wake Forest this month. (Fox News)
“We know what is happening. They are losing their relevancy and soon will be losing their funding,” she said, perhaps confusing CBS with PBS, which Trump directed to be defunded by an executive order this month.
Referencing a previous interview with former Fox News pundit Leo Terrell, who now leads the president’s so-called antisemitism task force, Faulkner noted that Terrell told her “we are not stopping with Harvard” and will be going after other institutions.
“The administration has an answer for this,” she concluded. “And Scott Pelley – well, I don’t know – maybe it won’t be 60 Minutes anymore. Maybe he can just go on a speaking tour.”
Former Trump press secretary turned Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany went even further during Tuesday’s broadcast of top-rated panel show The Five. After the network’s resident “comedian” Greg Gutfeld jokingly brushed off Pelley’s warnings by pointing out “he wasn’t arrested after that,” McEnany called for that very thing to happen.
“He should have been, because there was an overt lie,” she exclaimed. “What do you know about journalism being under attack? What does he know about that? I mean, 60 Minutes should be reduced to zero minutes.”
CBS journalist Scott Pelley addresses Wake Forest University graduates, which has since prompted a meltdown from Fox News and MAGA influencers. (Western Lensman/X)
Grumbling that Pelley recently interviewed a Democratic attorney for a segment on Trump targeting law firms, one of several 60 Minutes reports that have drawn the president’s ire, McEnany fumed that Pelley knows “nothing about journalism” and that his commencement speech was a “load of garbage.”
Naturally, the right-wing network’s primetime lineup – which includes the president’s shadow chief of staff Sean Hannity – kept the outrage flowing through the evening.
“Scott’s still a whiny liberal and still bitter,” Laura Ingraham growled during an eight-minute show-opening monologue about Pelley’s speech. “What he will never admit is his own role of tanking the credibility of the press he supposedly is so desperate to save. His influence has waned, the power of his old network is gone. And now he’s not shy about showing the rank bias we knew he harbored all along.”
Hannity, meanwhile, complained that the former CBS Evening News anchor’s address was “full of rage and anti-Trump rhetoric,” adding that Pelley is a “biased liberal radical talk show host and here’s the proof.”
The evidence, according to the Fox News star, was Pelley saying that “journalism is under attack.”
