Fox News anchor Shepard Smith fact-checked his network’s accusations that Hillary Clinton funnelled uranium to Russia in exchange for campaign donations, angering viewers.
The accusations against Clinton are rooted in “Clinton Cash,” a book published in 2015 by a Breitbart editor. In his 2015 book, Breitbart editor Peter Schweizer claimed that Clinton transferred 20% of America’s uranium to Russia while she was head of the State Department and that the transaction had netted her $145 million in donations to the Clinton Campaign. Donald Trump repeated the accusations while on the campaign trail, to supporters’ chants of “lock her up.”
The accusations have gained traction in recent weeks among presidential supporters eager to distract from the recent Russia scandal. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has looked into a special council on the accusations, and various Fox personalities have called it the Democrats’ “Watergate.” Recently, talk show host Sean Hannity said of the allegations, “We know laws were broken. We know crimes were committed. The evidence is overwhelming.”
But in a segment on November 14th, Fox anchor Shepard Smith played a clip of the president’s accusations against Clinton before saying that they were “inaccurate in a number of ways.” He pointed out that the deal was approved by the heads of nine federal agencies, that none of the uranium was actually exported to Russia, and that most of the donations to the Clinton Foundation came from a man who had sold his stake years earlier.
“The nine department heads all approved the sale of Uranium One,” Smith said, during the segment. “It was unanimous, not a Hillary Clinton approval. We don’t know definitively whether Secretary Clinton participated at all directly,” he added.
This is not the first time Smith has broken with his Fox colleagues over accusations of truthiness. In July, angered by Trump Jr.’s conflicting memories of his meeting with a Russian lawyer, Smith asked co-worker Chris Wallace. “Why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie?” Smith also previously defended CNN and White House Correspondent Jim Acosta after the president accused them of promoting fake news. “It is crazy what we are watching every day,” Smith said of Trump during the defence. “He keeps repeating ridiculous throwaway lines that are not true at all and sort of avoiding this issue of Russia as if we are fools for asking the question. Really?” Smith said. “Your opposition was hacked, the Russians were responsible for it, and your people were on the phone with Russia on the same day it was happening and we’re fools for asking the questions?”
Smith’s fact-checks have earned him the ire of core Fox supporters, who accused the anchor of being “slanted,” a “liar,” or “drinking Hillary’s Kool-Aid.” Many suggested that Smith would be more at home on a more left-leaning network like CNN. Even friend and fellow Fox anchor Sean Hannity believes that Shep is too left-leaning. “I like Shep,” Hannity said, after July’s scandal. “But he’s so anti-Trump.”
Fox News’s Shepard Smith debunks his network’s favourite…
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