Eric Shinseki has resigned. Until today, it sure looked as if Fox News wanted this to happen -- on various Fox platforms, one commentator after another after another has said that Shinseki needed to go.
So what's the lede of Fox News's story on the resignation?
President Obama announced Friday that embattled Veterans Affairs Secretary Eric Shinseki would take the fall for the rapidly growing scandal over veterans' health care, accepting his resignation under pressure from members of both parties.(Emphasis added.)
Oh, so now his departure is a phony gesture. Right. Got it.
The panel on the Fox show Outnummbered added that Shinseki wasn't fired, so, y'know, it doesn't really count:
Harris Faulkner asked Powers why - with veterans dying due to a lack of care from VA facilities - the president did not fire Shinseki and instead chose to wait for him to offer his resignation.So, really, Shinseki failed when he didn't disband the VA medical system and privatize veterans' health care in his first week in office.
"It sends a completely different message when you fire somebody," said Faulkner.
[Kirsten] Powers said she's not sure why the president doesn't fire people...
[Tucker] Carlson made the point that even if the president himself resigned, it wouldn't fix the VA, which has had problems for decades.
"The problem is the government's not that good at delivering medical care actually. Or anything else that requires precision and nuance and human touch. Big bureaucracies just aren't good at that," said Carlson.
Well, this is S.O.P. for the right (hat tip: SheriffFruitfly):
This is how absolutely political the debate over Shinseki is. See the timeline of this GOP-aligned vets group: pic.twitter.com/Bt8y9NJx1h
— Brandon Friedman (@BFriedmanDC) May 18, 2014