Last night, during his rally that Fox News promoted throughout its town hall with Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Donald Trump goaded his crowd with inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants, then jokingly appreciated someone’s “shoot ‘em!” response. Today, “objective” Bill Hemmer helped the Trump campaign pretend that never happened as he also agreed with a Republican guest that Trump rallies are “fun” and “humorous.”

Although Trump didn’t say “shoot ‘em” at his rally in Panama City Beach, Florida, he clearly goosed the crowd for some kind of vigilante lawlessness:

“When you have 15,000 people marching up, hundreds and hundreds of people, and you have hundred and hundreds of people and you have two or three border security people that are brave and great, and don’t forget we don’t let them and we can’t let them use weapons, we can’t,” Trump told the crowd. “Other countries do, we can’t. I would never do that. But how do you stop these people?”

“Shoot them!” a rallygoer replied.

Trump and the rest of the crowd laughed, and the president said, “Only in the Panhandle can you get away with that statement.”

Trump should have added, “and on Fox News.” Today, Media Matters caught a discussion on America’s Newsroom, which is supposedly part of Fox’s “straight news” programming, in which Hemmer and Republican guest Josh Holmes, a former campaign manager for Sen. Mitch McConnell, marveled at how much fun Trump rallies are.

“It’s the candidate who looks like he’s having the most fun is usually the one that’s winning,” Holmes said in his opening comment, which he described as “a good golden rule of politics.” He said about the rally, “everyone seemed to be having a lot of fun.” He contrasted that with Democratic candidates “marching around the country in this sort of dour mood full of negativity.”

Instead of pushing back on the notion that joking about shooting immigrants is “a lot of fun,” Hemmer helped validate and expand the propaganda: “Humor sells, right?” Hemmer “asked” Holmes. When Holmes agreed, Hemmer added, “It’s very underrated.”

Holmes took the hint to go further with the talking point:

HOLMES: [N]obody does it better than President Trump, you know? It starts with the nicknames, but he also just keeps it light. I mean, these have got to be the first entertaining rallies in the history of politics. I mean, mostly these things are pretty dry and it’s all about speaking to the partisans. But I think most people can watch this and be entertained one way or another.

No challenge from Hemmer there, either. No, he marveled that there were “even bigger crowds than 2016” (as per Trump’s campaign manager) and prompted Holmes to “contrast that with Joe Biden’s appearance in South Carolina last Saturday where some of the reports suggested he had a couple hundred people down there.”

Media Matters noted that America’s Newsroom also ran a “straight news” report on the rally that also failed to mention the “shoot ‘em” incident. Coincidentally, that was in lockstep with the Trump campaign. Today, ABC News reported, “The Trump campaign worked into the night on Wednesday trying to clean up the president’s reaction to a supporter who shouted immigrants crossing into the U.S. should be shot.” ABC News also reported, “The campaign's Deputy Director of Communication and Rapid Response Matt Wolking replied to a number of Twitter users discussing the incident, sending a transcript that excludes part of the president’s reaction to the outburst.”

Today, Fox News “straight news” division did its part to make the hideous and dangerous comment go away and pretend the rally was all in good fun.

Watch Hemmer help the Trump campaign rewrite history below, from the May 9, 2019 America’s Newsroom, via Media Matters.