Following ThinkProgress’ investigation revealing that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce takes money from foreign corporations into the same account it uses to fund attack ads, Fox News personalities and conservative pundits have rushed to the right-wing business group’s defense. Former Bush advisor (and current Fox News contributor) Karl Rove and former RNC chair Ed Gillespie, who together have started their own shadowy attack outfits, have been some of the Chamber’s staunchest defenders. They have tried to paint the business lobbying behemoth as an innocent victim, while reflexively — and baselessly — attacking the Center for American Progress Action Fund, ThinkProgress’ parent organization.
The Chamber and its defenders on Fox repeatedly claim there is “not one scintilla of evidence” supporting the foreign money charge, and thus have declared the allegations a groundless “smear.” But as the Daily Show with Jon Stewart pointed out last night, these same pundits had a very different view of undisclosed foreign money just two months ago when they were apoplectic about the Islamic Community Center near Ground Zero and its supposedly nefarious foreign funding.
Playing back-to-back clips of Fox personalities alternatively fear mongering about the mosque’s alleged foreign funding, and dismissing that of the Chamber, Stewart adeptly points out the hollowness their defense of the business group:
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Of course, Fox’s parent company News Corporation gave the Chamber $1 million just last month.
Meanwhile, the Chamber and the media have still failed to explain away key concerns raised by the ThinkProgress investigation. Mainstream media reports have focused almost entirely on so-called “AmChams,” but these entities represent only a small piece of the puzzle and have been used as a red herring by the Chamber to distract from the real concern — direct donations from large corporations headquartered abroad. If Fox’s personalities spent as much effort hyperventilating about the Chamber’s foreign funding as they did about the Islamic community center’s, maybe the Chamber would be forced to finally disclose its fundraising and clear up the supposedly fraudulent charges leveled against them.
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