How an ex-Fox News host has created a 'fiasco' for Trump with her 'ongoing' incompetence
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Jeanine Pirro at the 2022 Student Action Summit in Tampa, Florida on July 23, 2022 (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
A veteran journalist wrote on Monday that Jeanine Pirro, President Donald Trump’s federal prosecutor, has created a “fiasco” for the president with her incompetence — and it’s only getting worse.
“It was roughly two months ago when the public learned that Donald Trump’s Justice Department had opened a criminal investigation into Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair,” explained MS NOW journalist Steve Benen. “Even by contemporary standards, the whole endeavor was ridiculous: There was no credible evidence of wrongdoing, and it seemed rather obvious that the administration was targeting Powell because he was on the White House’s growing revenge list.”
Adding that several congressional Republicans agreed with their Democratic counterparts that Trump should not have engaged in a politically-motivated prosecution against Powell, Benen quoted US District Court Judge James Boasberg in a recent ruling criticizing Trump.
“Being perceived as the President’s adversary has become risky in recent years,” Boasberg wrote. “In his second term, Trump has urged the Department of Justice to prosecute such people, and the Department’s prosecutors have listened.”
Benen commented, “The president really ought to be asking himself right now whether it was a smart move to tap a former Fox News host to serve as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s capital. Jeanine Pirro’s failed effort against Powell was humiliating, but it coincided with a similarly humiliating effort to indict Democratic veterans in Congress who advised service members to follow the law, which coincided with a separate failed criminal investigation into Joe Biden.”
He added, “In fact, Pirro’s office has lost so many closely watched cases with such regularity that it’s been challenging to keep up with them.”
In terms of her case against Powell, Benen noted that the smart thing to do would be to scrap the case and abandon all appeals, but she has instead “signaled plans for the opposite path, which dovetailed with the president publishing a hysterical tirade to his social media platform, condemning Boasberg and accusing Powell of wrongdoing in the vaguest ways possible.”
He concluded, “This fiasco, in other words, is ongoing.”
This is not Benen’s only criticism of Trump by any stretch. Earlier this month, the longtime producer of “The Rachel Maddow Show” pointed out that the president keeps falsely claiming to have strong job numbers in his second term.
"Since I took office, we created more than 300 — hang on, listen to this — 300,000 jobs now filled by proud, hardworking American women,” Trump argued. “It’s a record... Jobs are coming in through the roof, and we have factories being built all over the country… We’ve taken in $18 trillion-plus in 11 months.”
Benen observed in his column that this claim is blatantly false. The $18 trillion claim is baseless, for example, and there is no basis for the 300,000 jobs argument.
"Is it true, for example, that his administration has created 300,000 jobs?" Benen said. "No, that’s not even close to being correct: As we learned earlier this month, the U.S. economy actually lost 90,000 jobs in February, and looking back over the 14 months of Trump’s second term, the cumulative total was 150,000 jobs. (In contrast, in the final 14 months of Joe Biden’s presidency, the American economy added 1.74 million jobs.)"
Meanwhile, in February, Benen blasted Trump for his overt attempts to politicize the military.
"When the Republican meanders his way through partisan red meat when speaking at a political rally," Benen said, "it's tiresome but predictable. When he delivers the same message to active-duty military personnel, it's a qualitatively different kind of story." He went on the list specific examples.
"The president, speaking at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, seemed especially focused on the state's U.S. Senate race, condemning the leading Democratic candidate, former Gov. Roy Cooper, while touting the likely GOP nominee, former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley, who shared the stage with Trump during the on-base political rally," Benen wrote. "'You have to vote for us,' Trump told the troops, referring to his party and the 2026 midterm elections. There is no modern precedent for any American president engaging in such radical politicking with active-duty servicemembers, though over the last several months, it's become a more common sight."