Fox’s public enemy #1. Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images

Fox News has recently ramped up its frenzied rhetorical war against special counsel Robert Mueller and the FBI in general, with prime-time hosts (and Trump pals) Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity calling, night after night, for Mueller to be fired and the organization to be purged of partisans.

On Saturday evening, Jesse Watters and the network’s chyron writers went above and beyond even the usual Fox bombast.

During Watters’ World, Jesse Watters railed against Peter Strzok, who was removed from the Mueller investigation after it was revealed that he had sent anti-Trump texts. Fox hosts have used the messages to contend that Mueller’s investigation was fatally flawed from the beginning, though Strozk also sent negative texts about Democrats (and the argument is silly on its face anyway).

“We may now have proof the investigation was weaponized to destroy his presidency for partisan political purposes and to disenfranchise millions of American voters,” Watters said. “Now, if that’s true, we have a coup on our hands in America.”

As Watters interviewed Kellyanne Conway, who stood in front of the White House and joined in Watters’s condemnations, the chyron aped his ominous phrase.

.@KellyannePolls: "The fix was in against @realDonaldTrump from the beginning, and they were pro-Hillary... They can't possibly be seen as objective or transparent or even-handed or fair." @WattersWorld pic.twitter.com/5u0mdmcrXL — Fox News (@FoxNews) December 17, 2017

In a way, the simply framed question is a perfect distillation of the Fox News ethos. As the network’s hosts push for the president to employ banana-republic tactics to halt an investigation into his wrongdoing, they argue with a straight face that it’s the other side that’s the danger to democracy.