New Trump-Allied Fox Contributor Helps Fox News Mislead About The Trump Campaign's Russia Ties

David Bossie, Who Served As Trump’s Deputy Campaign Manager, And Host Shannon Bream Also Push Conspiracy Theory Of An Obama “Shadow Government”

Fox host Shannon Bream and new Fox contributor David Bossie downplayed meetings between President Donald Trump's aides and associates with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. Discussing the news that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had met with that ambassador and reports that former national security adviser General Michael Flynn and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner did as well, Bream claimed that “that's what ambassadors do.” Bossie, Trump's former deputy campaign manager, claimed that the meetings “shouldn't surprise” people because Trump officials were “in transition mode.” In fact, multiple Trump aides and associates had meetings with Russian officials and connections to Russia well before the election, without disclosure and while the FBI was investigating allegations of ties between the campaign and Russia. Later in the segment, Bream pushed a right-wing media conspiracy theory that an Obama “shadow government” was seeking to “go after” Trump and referenced a claim from the tabloid Daily Mail that Obama adviser Valerie Jarrett was moving into Obama's new Washington, D.C. home, a claim that Jarrett has said is false. From the March 3 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom:

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SHANNON BREAM (CO-HOST): OK along with all those meetings, I got to say, we're finding more and more about Democrats on the Hill, the White House potentially, all kinds of places that the ambassador's gone and met with people. I mean that's what ambassadors do. 

DAVID BOSSIE: It's normal course of business for any ambassador. Forget which one we're talking about here. That's what they do. They go and they sell their wares. They try to make folks in our government understand why we should work with their governments. So they're trying to benefit and obviously our elected officials are trying to do the same thing. 

BREAM: OK. The New York Times, you got to give it to them, they are very focused on the Trump campaign and they are digging and they are finding things. So when they did find out about this meeting that took place at Trump Tower, and again it was after the election. So the president was then president-elect. The campaign was over. Here's what Hope Hicks, a White House spokeswoman, said to The New York Times. She said, “They generally discussed the relationship and it made sense to establish a line of communication. Jared [Kushner] has had meetings with many other foreign countries and representatives, as many as two dozen other foreign countries' leaders and representatives.” So can the Trump team get ahead of this. What do they do now? Do they go out and disclose every possible contact and meeting they've had, no matter how innocuous it is, because it seems like the left is very excited about finding anything, whether there's anything nefarious to it or not, to put it out. It side tracks from the conversation about getting things done on the Hill, the speech on Tuesdaynight that the White House felt good about. How do they get ahead of this? 

BOSSIE: Well first of all, look, the polls show that seven in ten Americans believe strongly in the policies that President Trump was espousing in his speech and his very Reaganesque, really unbelievable speech. And I was incredibly proud of him. I did serve as the deputy campaign manager for the campaign, but I also served as the deputy executive director for the transition. So I saw Jared Kushner firsthand, and I saw him -- he is an incredibly smart and dedicated person to the president's agenda, but he's also dedicated to the American people. He is an unbelievably conscientious person. And he had meetings with literally dozens of foreign leaders, and so to have a 20-minute meeting in the normal course of business with a foreign leader, whether it's an ambassador or not, it just is not surprising and it shouldn't surprise anyone that General [Michael] Flynn and others from the campaign would, during the transition, be in transition mode and about to take power and lead our country. 

[...]

BREAM: [Rush Limbaugh] also talked about the fact that -- and we talked about this yesterday on the show, that reports that Valerie Jarrett is moving in closer with the Obamas and that there is going to be a more concerted effort to go after the Trump administration by elements connected to the president. How long do you think that that continues? Do you think that's too much of a conspiracy theory, or do you think it's legit? 

BOSSIE: No, no. Look, I think maybe Michael Moore and George Soros will be moving in next. It is the permanency of this opposition. That's all they have right now is to distract from President Trump's agenda. We cannot allow that. We have to move forward, we have to move swiftly, and that's what our congressional leadership needs to do.