Chris Wallace and Shep Smith aren’t shrugging off the Russia story Photo: Paul Morigi/Getty Images

Though Fox News is dominated by unhinged conspiracy-mongers (Hannity, Sean) and disingenuous outrage-peddlers (Carlson, Tucker), the network retains a few “real” journalists who function as a reputational fig leaf for the network, just so people don’t get the impression that it’s all propaganda over there.

Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace are the two most prominent faces of relative normalcy at Fox headquarters, and not surprisingly, they’re reacting to the Trump-Russia affair a little differently than most of their co-workers. While the rest of the network is either convincing its viewers that colluding with Russia to torpedo a rival presidential candidate is no biggie or somehow still blaming Hillary for everything, a video from Friday’s episode of Shepard Smith Reporting shows Smith and Wallace treating the story as the bombshell it is.

Shep Smith: "The deception, Chris, is mind-boggling...why are we getting told all these lies?"



Chris Wallace: "I don't know what to say" pic.twitter.com/DQKOAC8a2o — Leanne Naramore (@LeanneNaramore) July 14, 2017

Reacting to the revelation that an eighth person attended Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting of suspicious characters, an incredulous Smith asks what most of us have been thinking: “If there’s nothing there, and that’s what they tell us, why all these lies? Why is it lie after lie after lie?”

“The deception is mind-boggling,” he goes on, before issuing what could have been a warning to some of his co-workers: “There are still people out there who believe we’re making it up, and one day they’re gonna realize we’re not, and look around and go, ‘Where are we? And why are we getting told all these lies?’”

“I don’t know what to say. There’s a lot of truth to everything that you’ve said,” a stunned-sounding Wallace replies.

There sure is, Chris. There sure is.