“This is the stuff you would expect in authoritarian states, in Russia or North Korea,” 

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Jeanine Pirro of Fox News Helps an Old Friend: President Trump


A few years ago, not long after Jeanine Pirro paid a visit to Donald J. Trump at his Trump Tower office, a box arrived at her home in Rye, N.Y.

Inside was a gift: a selection of shoes from the latest Ivanka Trump footwear collection.

Ms. Pirro, the prosecutor-turned-politician-turned-television personality who hosts a weekend show on Fox News, has been friends with Mr. Trump for decades, their careers forged in New York’s tabloid caldron. But these days their relationship is playing out on a bigger stage.

Ms. Pirro has lately emerged as a force in a right-wing media effort to undermine the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is leading the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Like other pro-Trump commentators, Ms. Pirro has called for Mr. Mueller to be fired. But she has gone further, saying on the air that “individuals” in the F.B.I. and the Justice Department “need to be taken out in cuffs.”

In a fiery monologue on Dec. 16, she told her viewers: “There is a core group of arrogant, corrupt and lawless individuals that felt that they, and not we, should decide a presidential election. And when they failed, they conspired to create the false narrative to not just muddy our choice for president but to bring down his presidency and his family as well.”

She is not the only media figure attacking the inquiry and the law enforcement officials in charge of it. Other Fox News commentators, like Sean Hannity, have labeled Mr. Mueller and his team hopelessly biased. On Jesse Watters’s Fox News show last weekend, an onscreen graphic asked, “A Coup in America?” The Wall Street Journal — like Fox News, a media property owned by Rupert Murdoch — called for Mr. Mueller to be fired on its editorial page.


“This is the stuff you would expect in authoritarian states, in Russia or North Korea,” said David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s chief political strategist. “It’s an obvious effort to lay the groundwork for ending or discrediting the probe, even at the cost of further eroding trust in our institutions.”

Ms. Pirro, 66, who declined to be interviewed for this article, is undeterred by such criticisms — and her increasingly severe denunciations of Mr. Mueller have translated into big ratings.

Her show, “Justice With Judge Jeanine,” reaches more than two million viewers on Saturdays at 9 p.m., up 25 percent from a year ago. When she guest-hosted Mr. Hannity’s prime-time show on Monday, she pulled in more viewers than MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, who was on at the same time.

One of those viewers is Mr. Trump, who rarely misses an episode and who has urged his Twitter followers to tune into her show along with him. In May, Ms. Pirro conducted one of the few one-on-one interviews with the president that he has granted since taking office.

Ms. Pirro’s ex-husband, the businessman and lobbyist Al Pirro, served as Mr. Trump’s Westchester County power broker in the 1990s, navigating deals for the Manhattan developer. That was before Mr. Pirro went to prison for conspiracy and tax evasion, a scandal that hindered Ms. Pirro’s tenure as district attorney in Westchester and, later, her brief candidacy for United States Senate.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/22/business/media/jeanine-pirro-of-fox-news-helps-an-old-friend-president-trump.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0

Last edited by Goose (12/23/2017 7:37 am)