Former top Trump campaign official Roger Stone was led away in handcuffs on Friday, but in their primetime coverage, Fox News was talking about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Lego Movie 2 appearance.
The conservative news network has been slammed by critics for devoting as little coverage as possible to the damaging developments for Donald Trump, which on Friday included the sixth arrest of a former top campaign official. Stone was nabbed by FBI agents in a pre-dawn raid and charged with several counts of lying under oath and witness tampering. Stone has denied the charges and said he did not intentionally lie, but legal experts said the case against him appears to be air-tight.
Fox News viewers who tuned into Laura Ingraham’s program on the evening of the arrest learned about a very different scandal , however. The program devoted a segment to the Supreme Court justice getting a figurine in the upcoming Lego Movie sequel. The segment included a questionable joke about Ginsburg — who recently suffered another bout with cancer — wishing that she came with a “lifetime warranty,” and Fox News is the same network that just ran a fake graphic claiming that Ginsburg had died, which the network said was an error.
The director of the Lego Movie 2 , Mike Mitchell, told USA Today that the decision to include Ruth Bader Ginsburg happened naturally.
“These movies are so full of surprises. And we were thinking, ‘Who’s the last person you would think to see in a Lego film as a minifig?’ Ruth Bader Ginsburg!” Mitchell said. “And we’re all huge fans. It made us laugh to think of having her enter this world.”
Video of the Fox News coverage gained some attention on Twitter, where many couldn’t believe the lengths the network would go to avoid reporting on damaging news for Donald Trump. Others noted that it was announced several days ago that Ginsburg would be memorialized as a Lego minifigure, yet it didn’t reach the primetime coverage until a day when Trump desperately needed a distraction from the bad news.
Guys, Fox News is devoting primetime coverage to outrage over Ruth Bader Ginsburg getting her own LEGO figure pic.twitter.com/VRGD2PejjS
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) January 26, 2019
The network had already been drawing some criticism for its ability to downplay the story at other points during the day.
Fox News has decided to focus on this right now instead of the arrest of Roger Stone pic.twitter.com/08ddgxdTt8
— Roland Scahill (@rolandscahill) January 25, 2019
Fox News did end up devoting some screen time to Roger Stone’s arrest and charges at other points during the day, though they did give plenty of attention to the longtime political operative’s denials of any wrongdoing and the defense from President Donald Trump.
