TENSION IN THE RANKS

Shep, Judge Nap, Tucker and the Fox News Civil War Over Impeachment

The rift between Fox’s news and commentary wings has never been more apparent.

As an impeachment inquiry looms over President Donald Trump, some Fox News anchors and right-wing commentators have begun openly insulting one another over the president asking Ukrainian President Zelensky, via a July phone call, to investigate Joe Biden.

“It is a crime for the president to solicit aid for his campaign from a foreign government,” Judge Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News senior judicial analyst, said Tuesday on consummate newsman Shepard Smith’s daytime broadcast.

That analysis clearly irked a frequent Tucker Carlson guest, Joe diGenova, a right-wing conspiracy theorist, who later that night called Napolitano a “fool” on-air.

The next afternoon, Smith looked sternly into the camera and called the insult of a fellow Fox colleague “repugnant.”

And, of course, that was followed by diGenova reprising that evening on Carlson’s show for a segment in which the primetime host mocked Smith’s “repugnant” line and diGenova said he would “educate” the judge.

Outside of the Shep/Judge vs. Tucker/diGenova spat, Fox’s mid-afternoon gabfest The Five also had a blow-up of its own this week when its lone liberal panelist Juan Williams accused his co-hosts of peddling White House talking points on Ukraine.

“Asking a foreign government to investigate a political rival is illegal,” Williams referred back to Napolitano’s analysis. In return, his co-host Jesse Watters, a Trump booster, accused him of using the judge’s “talking points.”

Watch the video above to see the sparring in action.

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Tasia JensenVideo Journalist

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