Uh, no. Did you watch the clip?
And is Anne Coulter mad because he didn’t think of it first.
LOL…“he” 
Heck, Groucho Marx once said the only hope of the nation was the assassination of Richard Nixon. The wire services jumped on it and the Secret Service was unamused.
The only thing even vaguely “new” about this sort of thing is the youtube element.
Isn’t it just a little different when a humorist does it?
I was going to say that this is very unusual behavior for a journalist and that at someplace other than Fox, Trotta probably would be suspended or fired for what she said. The I saw that she used to work for the Washington Times. She’s worked a lot of other places, but with that in mind, it’s hard for me to see her as anything other than an idiot loony.
I dunno, I find Fox News to be pretty darn comical.
Let’s not forget that the host of the segment didn’t provide any boilerplate such as, “You don’t really mean that.” Instead it was more like, “Moving on.” So there are at least two Fox News employees who acted inappropriately.
And what about the Producer and Director? Wasn’t some casual disclaimer appropriate after the commercial? (Was one made?)
This American thought it was understood that you don’t joke about hijacking on an airplane and you don’t make utterances that might concern the Secret Service.
Do you remember how outraged the right was when moveon.org ran the General Petraeus/Betray Us ads? And not only that, they’re outrage got plenty of mainstream airtime. But yet another right winger makes a joke about shooting an black Democratic Party presidential candidate and no one in the media really cares.
I thought it was Hilary that was suggesting Obama’s assassination?
Well, you thought wrong.
Hillary’s remark about Obama is to be interpreted as, “some of these races still go to June. Remember. . .it was June when Kennedy got shot.”
The FOX News anchor said “some people thought Hillary was suggesting we knock off Obama” and then basically added on her own, “well, if we could.”
She said of the Clinton remark:
… some are reading as a suggestion that someone knock-off Osama errr Obama … well both would be nice.
A double whammy.
It’s hard to reach an objective conclusion based on a 30 second clip that removes the entire context of the quote. And anyone who does reach any concusions based on this 30 second clip, especially one that is preceded by an ad for ResultsMakeMoney.com, should be ashamed of himself.
I hate the blind partisanship that is stinking up this country.
Although I do disagree that there’s plenty of blind partisanship in this country, a newscaster saying “and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama … uh … um … Obama … well, both if we could”, has nothing to do with partisanship at all. Nada. Zip. Unless you think it’s partisan to be upset about newspeople nonchalantly joking about knocking off politicians on air.
If there’s a context where this off-handed “joke” by a journalist can be explained away, please go on and do so. It would make me feel a lot better about the times I’m living in.
I like to think of myself as being pretty generous lately when it comes to media gaffs and foot-in-mouth incidents, but it is damn hard for me to think having the broader context would change the meaning of Trotta’s words so that they would be less offensive. If anything, it would make them more offensive. She has to know that people are genuinely concerned about Obama’s assassination. Plus, this year marks the 40th anniversary of two major political assassinations: MLK and RFK–two icons that Obama has been symbolically linked to. So the broader context clearly explains why her comments were NOT funny. I’m curious what other context would counter this.
It’s obvious she thought it was joke. I don’t think anyone is saying she was issuing a serious call for assassination on national TV. But it’s a joke she shouldn’t be making as a representative of a major news network. If I were a fan of Faux News, I’d be enraged that she would deign to lump me into her “we”.
WOnt sum1 please think of teh IRANIANS?!?!!?
To which the response was,
“Get over it.”
Some may remember this oldie but goodie:
“We begin bombing in five minutes.”
WOnt sum1 please think of teh SOVIETS?!?!!?
It’s humor. It’s in horrible taste, don’t get me wrong. But it’s humor. Nobody’s advocating anything, any more than the OP is committing libel against the reporter.
Actually, the libel claim may have some merit. 
I didn’t think the ‘we begin bombing’ was particularly funny either. And, while we are comparing apple to oranges, neither was ‘bomb, bomb, bomb Iran’. A lot of people didn’t and still don’t. But politicians making jokes about places they’d like to start a war with and a journalist on a news show advocating for the assasination of a presidential candidate are two very, very different things. As if you didn’t already know this.
Still waiting for the context in which Trotta was taken out of.
Don’t know where you’re going with this.
We’re comparing apples and apples. “Jokes” in horrible taste (did you read that?) about killing people who shouldn’t be killed, made by people who (in the context of the joke) have the power to make it happen.
If you think I’m defending anyone here, the best thing for you to do would be disabuse yourself of that notion. All I’m saying is:
- McCain made a joke in poor taste, but nobody thought/thinks he’s itching his finger on the button cover.
- Reagan made a joke in poor taste, and people went nuts for a few hours (BAD NEWS), byt nobody rationally thought that he was running to Cheyenne Mountain.
- Trotta made a joke in poor taste, but nobody thought/thinks it’s the official policy of Fox News to kill presidential candidates.
The only thing I’m taking umbrage at is the OMG FOX NES IS TEH AYVIL!!! AND DEY GOTS THA DETH SQUADZ!!!111111!!! tone of the thread title.
Trotta’s still an idiot. Just not evil.
Are you serious. You don’t think McCain wasn’t itching to go into Iran? He was sure rattling that saber pretty hard back then. Do you think that Reagan wouldn’t have ran to Cheyenne Mountain if it was politically possible? Those jokes were in in poor taste exactly because of this.
Who here or anywhere said that Fox official policy is to kill presidential candidates? As strawmen go, that one is pretty transparent. But Trotta’s supposed to be a journalist. She was trying to refute the fact that Hillary called for Obama’s assasination-- and then jokingly called for his assasination.
I’m not fine with journalists even jokingly calling for the ‘knocking off’ of politicians and all your listings of other people doing stupid things isn’t changing that.
FOX news is an oxymoron. They are a pox on serious journalism. Trotta should be roundly and soundly chastised for her bad taste joke. Maybe even penalized. But, again, nobody is saying what you say they are saying.
Anyone else notice that about 90% of the time the ‘But it was taken out of context’ defense is offered for comments for which there is virtually no context in which they wouldn’t be offensive?
There are a number of things which make these comparisons invalid. For one thing, the other examples are much more obviously silly and abstract (they invole whole countries, not an individual), for another thing, they were jokes made about putative enemies of the US, not about an American citizen and a Presidential candidate. Obvious jokes about going to war with or bombing enemies of the US are not even in the same ball park with jokingly wishing for the assassination of a political candidate (especially a black candidate). Lastly, this remark was made by a journalist on a news network. It is beyond inappropriate for a news network to take sides to the extent where it could even joke about killing the other guy “if we could.”
Hell, even the comparison to bin Laden is asinine and offensive and inappropreiate for someone who calls herself a journalist.
If Keith Olbermann ever made a joke about killing McCain “if we could,” the rest of thje media would explode in indignation and Keith O’s career would probably be over. Bill O’Reilly would lead with it every day for a month.