MSNBC's Chris Hayes Catches Fox News Red-Handed Deceiving Its Audience to 'Clean Up' for Trump

MSNBC's evening news anchor Chris Hayes walked his audience through an overt deception perpetrated by Fox News Wednesday night as the right-wing cable outlet used selective editing of Donald Trump during Bret Baier's primetime interview with Kamala Harris.

The line of questioning from Baier stemmed from recent public remarks Trump made in which he said "the enemy from within" was the most serious danger to the nation and that he would use both the National Guard and U.S. military to go after "radical-left lunatics," which he claimed included Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), a centrist member of the Democratic Party currently running for U.S. Senate in California.

When Harris invoked these comments to criticize Trump for threatening to turn the U.S. military against people who have different political beliefs than him, Baier interrupted her to say that the former Republican president had been asked about those very remarks earlier in the day during a separate town hall-style event, also hosted by Fox.

But in the clip shown by Baier to the television audience and to which Harris was asked to respond, Fox only included a small part of what Trump actually said on the subject during the town hall, leaving out his clear repetition of calling Schiff and others "the enemy from within" who must be dealt with.

As Hayes explains during his examination of what transpired, Baier used a selected "soundbite to try to clear Donald Trump of saying a thing in which he cut out the part where says it."

Watch the segment:

"Do you see what they did there, on their own network?" asked Hayes of the selective editing by Fox producers. "[Trump] said—he repeated—'They are the enemy within... they're sick people... they're evil.' He repeated it! And then Brett Baier's like, 'Let me play you what [Trump] said today,' and just cut out the big chunk."

In her reaction to the clip showed by Baier, Harris said, "Bret, I'm sorry and with all due respect—that clip was not what he has been saying about the 'enemy within' when he has been speaking about the American people. That's not what you just showed."

When Baier tried to explain that he was just trying to show his response to a question, Harris interjected, "You and I both know that he has talked about turning the American military on the American people. He has talked about going after people who are engaged in peaceful protest. He has talked about locking people up because they disagree with him."

"This is a democracy," Harris continued. "And in a democracy, the president of the United States should be able to handle criticism without saying they are going to lock people up for doing it. And this is what's at stake, which is why you have someone like the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff saying what Mark Milley has said about Donald Trump being a threat to the United States of America."

For his part, Hayes said the entire episode—in which Trump refused to climb down from his fascist positions, but Fox still tried to "clean up" for him—represents "the same playbook we see over and over from Fox."