Immediately following the conclusion of Thursday’s House impeachment inquiry hearing, Fox News viewers were greeted by anchor Neil Cavuto telling them that Republicans laid an egg and produced no new evidence against President Joe Biden.
“Where there was smoke, today we just got a lot more smoke,” Cavuto shrugged. He, of course, wasn’t the only conservative who was left disappointed by the House Oversight Committee’s lackluster performance on Thursday. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon was livid that the committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), called Fox News legal analyst Jonathan Turley as an expert witness, with Turley promptly admitting in his opening remarks that he didn’t believe the current evidence supports impeachment.
Republican staffers and lawmakers, meanwhile, told reporters that it was an “unmitigated disaster” that the GOP picked “witnesses that refute House Republicans’ arguments,” adding that “Comer and staff botched this bad.” Others said that it was “shocking that House Oversight would tap witnesses that don’t enforce your narrative.”
Shortly after Comer gaveled the hearing to a close, Cavuto took over his mid-afternoon Fox News broadcast and came clean with the network’s audience. “I don’t know what was achieved over these last six-plus hours,” he flatly stated.
“James Comer, the Oversight Committee chairman, said there would be presented a mountain of evidence against Mr. Biden,” Cavuto added. “But none of the expert witnesses today presented, yet, any proof for impeachment.”
Noting that “none of the witnesses today were fact witnesses,” the veteran newsman pointed out that they instead “testified of no direct knowledge” of Republicans’ allegations that the president was involved in a bribery scheme tied to his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.
“In other words, that this—the way this was built up where there’s smoke there would be fire,” he said. “Again, I’m not a lawyer, and I’ll be talking to smart ones in a moment. But where there’s smoke, today we just got a lot more smoke.”
Cavuto went on to say that the “best” Republicans could say following the hearing is that they were going to try to get more bank records from the president and Hunter Biden to determine whether a crime was committed.
“But none of that was presented today, just that they would need the records to further the investigation even though this occurs after months of Republican probes that failed to provide anything resembling concrete evidence,” Cavuto continued. “We do not already know, for example, a charge that was made today that Joe Biden took a bribe. That might in fact be the case and might come up in this inquiry when we get more evidence but that is still an unproven allegation.”
Offering up the caveat that actual evidence may still materialize, Cavuto pointed out that House Republicans had long promised “explosive testimony” and failed to deliver.
“Now, again, I’m not a lawyer. I’m not even smart in interpreting legal shows that I see on TV,” Cavuto quipped. “But when you begin to trumpet what you have as the beginning of an explosive inquiry into the president of the United States to potentially remove him from office, you think you’d bring your A-game.”
He concluded: “Maybe this is part of a pattern and a legal process of which I’m totally unfamiliar. Guilty as charged. But this took over six hours today, my friends. Over six hours. I wonder.”
While the vast majority of Fox News hosts and commentators have parroted the GOP’s narrative about the “Biden crime family” and aggressively pushed for impeachment, some network personalities have been a bit more skeptical.
Besides Cavuto, Fox & Friends co-host Steve Doocy has also not been fully sold on Republicans’ allegations that the president was involved in a “criminal scheme,” repeatedly pressing the Comer to show the “goods” to back up his claims.
