This is an explosive revelation coming out about Fox News and the debate. Fox News Channel Vice President Bill Sammon, has a daughter who is Brooke Sammon, the national Press Secretary for Marco Rubio. Bill Sammon is one of the Fox executives who help write questions for the debate. He was personally negotiating with Trump’s campaign manager on the debate. This is a clear conflict of interest. Fox News has violated journalistic rules on full disclosure.
Sammon is in a position to aid the Marco Rubio campaign and should never have been allowed to participate in the debate in any manner. It also explains why Fox News has been pushing so hard for Rubio. Well, that and Rupert Murdoch’s desire for abundant cheap foreign labor that an open borders candidate like Rubio.
Corey Lewandowski, campaign manager for Donald Trump, appeared on CNN with Erin Burnett, who asked him about the snide statement put out by Fox and the accusation that he had threatened Kelly over the debate. Lewandowski denied making any such threat and Fox News itself may have already conceded that was a lie because their announcement on the debate was complete with the exception of the removal of the accusations of threats.
Lewandowski said:
“Not only did I not make threats, but the conversation with the Fox News executive—his daughter works for the Rubio campaign, he’s one of the executives on Fox that writes the debate questions so maybe he has his own ulterior motives, I’m not sure.”
“But his daughter is a senior executive on the Rubio campaign, maybe he should disclose that before he’s writing the debate questions for Fox. There were no threats made. The bottom line is this isn’t about me and it’s not about Megyn Kelly. It’s about the way that Fox News put out a statement about Mr. Trump that’s wholly inaccurate and unfair and it’s very difficult to treat someone fairly when they’re the GOP frontrunner when you put out a statement like that.”
To nail down this story, we need to go back to August 2nd, 2015. Howard Kurtz was interviewing Chris Sirewalt and Kurtz asked Stirewalt how Fox News goes about picking the questions for the debates. Stirewalt answered:
“Well, the first thing is we have a secret weapon and that is Bill Sammon, who is the best at not only team cohesion and keeping everybody on point about what the point is, but in crafting the questions.”
“Absolutely, he’s a managing editor and a great mind and a great journalist and so that is a big help.”
This is journalistic malpractice. Trump was smart to boycott the debate.