A lack of any evidence didn’t stop Fox Business Network host Lou Dobbs on Saturday from insisting that Attorney General Jeff Sessions should resign because he has become physically or mentally unwell.
“Sessions has fallen ill, he's incapacitated in some fashion, or he's been coopted or captured: to preserve any dignity, for the good of the country he needs to resign. #MAGA @realDonaldTrump #TrumpTrain #AmericaFirst,” Dobbs wrote in a tweet on Saturday.
The tweet was part of a bizarre far-right media feedback loop that played out on Friday and Saturday.
The FBN host was quoting a tweet from Rep. Matt Gaetz, the camera-hungry Florida Republican who in the last month appeared on conspiracy site InfoWars and invited notorious right-wing troll Chuck Johnson to the State of the Union.
Gaetz’s tweet included a link to a post on the website the Gateway Pundit which summarized the congressman’s recent appearance on Fox News’ Hannity, and described him as a “AWOL attorney general.” The Gateway Pundit has hyped insane, ugly conspiracy theories about everything from the Parkland shooting to that Alabama senate race.
President Donald Trump and his allies in congress and the right-leaning media universe have repeatedly criticized Sessions for not looking hard enough into alleged abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, as well as recusing himself from the special counselor’s Russia probe.
Though much attention is paid to Trump allies on Fox News like Sean Hannity and “Fox & Friends,” Dobbs has been one of the president’s biggest boosters on cable television every night from his perch at FBN.
He’s labeled Sessions as incompetent, implying deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein is actually in charge of the department, and asking whether the attorney general and other top members of the DOJ are “crooked.”
“I think it is safe to say, we now know that we have the most corrupt FBI, the most corrupt Justice Department in our country's history,” Dobbs said in December. “It has been demonstrated.”