FOX & Friends completes transformation into official Trump media headquarters by shamelessly airing 'exclusive sneak peak' into 2020 campaign

On Tuesday Donald Trump is "officially" launching his 2020 presidential reelection campaign. But like everything Trump does, it's a phony stunt with a purpose wholly unrelated to what is advertised. In fact, Trump launched his reelection bid the day of his inauguration in 2017. The rally that Trump is planning in Orlando is just another opportunity to assemble his cult hordes and rant incoherently for two hours about Democrats, the press, and how awesome he thinks he is.

It's no coincidence that this rally is taking place a week before the first Democratic primary debate, also in Florida. Trump is fond of stepping on the political events of others. It's his campaign equivalent of photo-bombing. And he's preparing for the big day by enlisting his State TV (aka Fox News) confederates in the promotion effort. To that end, the "Curvy Couch" potatoes of Fox and Friends booked Trump's campaign press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany for a few minutes of uninterrupted Trump-fluffing (video below).

The segment began with a "sneak peek" at Trump's first campaign ad for the 2020 cycle. It was predictably jam-packed with words and pictures that exalted Trump as the returning Messiah. Notably, the clip that Fox and Friends aired prominently displayed a number to send a text message to the Trump campaign. Then they silently re-played the same segment - with the text number showing - in two-thirds of the screen while interviewing McEnany.

Following the campaign video, Fox and Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt introduced McEnany, and asked her "What do you think?" That's right. She asked the spokesperson for the Trump campaign what she thinks about the advertisement produced by the campaign. That's the sort of hard-hitting "journalism" we've all come to expect from Fox News. And naturally, McEnany's response was the typical snake oil patter of a dedicated StormTrumper. Without even bothering to reply as to what she thinks about the ad, McEnany veered into an attack on "the dozens of socialists running in the Democratic field." Fill-in co-host Dan Bongino then weighed into to ask a probing question which he prefaced by saying that...

"The tax cuts worked, the economy's booming, unemployment is at historic lows, red tape is being cut. But when you look at polls - I was reading an article a while ago from the New York Times - a lot of Americans don't even believe they got a tax cut. Contrary to the data which says they did. Do we as Republicans need to do a better job of getting the message out, that this economy is due to a change from the older Obama liberal ways?"

What we have here is an outright declaration by a Fox "News" host that he and his colleagues are Republicans and are seeking advice from Trump's press secretary on how to advance their shared political agenda. Not that we didn't already know that, but they don't often admit it on the air. The rest of Bongino's "question" was really a thinly disguised campaign pitch for Trump that was littered with provable lies. Most notably that the American people are somehow ignorant of their own tax burdens. Actually, they know very well that Trump's Tax Scam has hurt them while helping corporations and the wealthy.

Then Earhardt returned to the video's text message number. Because, just like any other commercial, you can't repeat that often enough. At this point Fox and Friends began to sound more like the Home Shopping Network for Trump. She queried McEnany saying...

Earhardt: At the bottom of that video we just saw it says to text "Trump" to [REDACTED]. What happens if you do that?"

McEnany: It's really important. It allows us to update our data. We have the best data in the business, Ainsley. That means we know what doors to knock on. We're going to be able to isolate the handful of the few million voters who will decide this election. Because of that text you allow us to update our data. You also get to be a Trump volunteer. What's better than that?

So now Fox News is participating in refining the Trump campaign's election databases and recruiting volunteers. What's better than that? This was followed by co-host Steve Doocy raising the issue of Trump's floundering poll numbers. He noted that "The story over the weekend was that the President is not doing very well in his internal polls."That's true, and after denying that these polls exist, Trump fired the pollsterssuspected of leaking the data. McEnany waved it all off with some lazy and transparent spin. But what Doocy didn't bother to mention was that there was another poll over the weekend with similarly bad news for Trump. That one was by Fox News itself, and it showed Trump losing to all five of the Democrats that they pitted against him.

This is just the beginning of the 2020 election cycle, and already Fox News is fully engaged in their role as the media arm of the Trump reelection effort. If anything, they are even less ashamed of exposing their partisanship than in previous cycles. If there were any justice, Fox News would be forced to declare itself a political operation and report its services as in-kind contributions to Trump's campaign. Unfortunately, that isn't going to happen because integrity at Fox News is as rare as it is in the candidate they are working for.