Fox News Discusses A Cheeseburger Emoji (And Anything Else) Instead Of Paul Manafort’s Indictment

After a long weekend of speculation following reports of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller’s first indictments in his ongoing Trump-Russia collusion probe, former campaign manager Paul Manafort and his aide, Rick Gates were ordered to surrender. The story quickly dominated the major cable news and broadcast networks, though as many media watchdogs quickly noticed, Fox News didn’t cut away from its opinion-heavy Fox & Friends morning show for coverage. Instead, they gave the floor to co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Brian Kilmeade. Also, a “cheeseburger emoji controversy” was involved.

“If you’re just joining us right now,” Doocy said briefly, “the breaking news, according to the New York Times: Paul Manafort and a former business associate by the name of Rick Gates were told to surrender to federal authorities, and apparently they will sometime this morning.” After passing the ball to Earhardt and Kilmeade, the latter immediate noted the time and moved on to other subjects. Frequent Fox News contributor Alan Dershowitz did come on the program briefly to discuss the indictments against Manafort and Gates, which were still sealed at the time, but Fox & Friends and the subsequent morning news programming ultimately avoided the topic. Unsurprisingly, everyone monitoring the channel noticed.

Especially since, per Doocy, a “controversy” involving Google cheeseburger emoji — which placed the cheese below the meat instead of on top — was brewing. “I Googled it and it showed the cheese should be on top of the burger,” he explained.

https://twitter.com/ChrisReimer/status/924948269872148486

https://twitter.com/jbarro/status/924980049186607104

Aside from the cheeseburger emoji nothingburger, both Fox & Friends and Fox News’ additional morining programming covered an array of topics that ranged from the Hillary Clinton campaign’s apparent collusion with Fusion GPS and the Trump-Russia dossier, to whether or not the Obama administration was responsible for any of this.

https://twitter.com/poniewozik/status/924976650739167232

https://twitter.com/matthewjdowd/status/924983600772198400