A trillion here, a billion there ...

Having told the candidate how to campaign, the Fair 'n' Balanced Network does its best to keep him in line:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Sunday that Hillary Clinton’s latest attempt to explain her email scandal -- that her brain had a “short circuit” -- is a “very dangerous” excuse and a new way to “lie about lying.”

“She now has a fundamental way of saying, ‘I didn’t quite lie to you; I just short-circuited,' ” Gingrich, a Georgia Republican and top supporter of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump, also told “Fox News Sunday.” "It’s one thing to lie, it’s another to lie about lying."

He was joined on the show by California Democratic Rep. Xavier Becerra who, like other Clinton supporters, is trying to move past Clinton as secretary of state using a private email server and the related FBI investigation.

And how might the craven LIEberal do that?

Becerra repeated the argument that Trump’s plan would cost the U.S. economy a “breathtaking” 3.5 billion jobs. And he backed Clinton saying last week that Obama didn’t have enough time to fully execute is economic recovery plan, including a nearly $1 billion stimulus plan.

Part lie, part blindside hit, and part -- well, let's go to Fox's rush transcript of the same show:

GINGRICH:  ... Let me give you an example.  If you open up America's energy and mining opportunities, there's at least $7 trillion in potential additional revenue just from making it easier to develop our own energy and only mental resources.  There are a number of steps to take to dramatically accelerate the economy.  If you dramatically shrink to 600 new regulations Obama has imposed, you have an explosion of small business getting created.

In a period of economic growth such as the Reagan era, you in fact do raise a tremendous amount of revenue.

WALLACE:  Congressman Becerra, you can responsible, but I also --

BECERRA:  Breathtaking.  Breathtaking.

WALLACE:  Go ahead.

BECERRA:  The plan you just outlined, which sentence* money mostly to folks at the top has been scored to probably look about 3.5 million jobs by Senator McCain's former economist.  It's also very clear that in increasing debt, Donald Trump really meant he was the, quote, "king of debt".  This is a guy who thinks -- and his quote was wages are too high.

It's hard to say exactly which claim is addressed by the "breathtaking" comment, but it does seem to pretty clearly not be the one about the estimated toll of 3.5 (ahem) million jobs. Let's just score that as a lie. The million/billion might be accidental, given the bit about the size of the stimulus. Here's the story:

“He had a chance with $900 million and blew it,” Gingrich said. “You campaign on things being good enough. We’ll campaign on things should be better. And we’ll see who wins.”

And the transcript:

GINGRICH:  Notice what he had said thought.  We had the chance, we had $900 billion, we blew it, but now trust Secretary Clinton --

Fox, in short, is having a lot of trouble with the whole numbers thing today, making it hard to call any specific blunder the intentional one. But the Fox commenters certainly seem to have gotten the right message about Rep. Becerra:

Becerra repeated the argument that Trump’s plan would cost the U.S. economy a “breathtaking” 3.5 billion jobs------------------is that democrat math?

The ministry of the truth approves this message.

Yes, they think the WH Boy ADDING 16 million to Welfare is a good thing.

Becerra repeated the argument that Trump’s plan would cost the U.S. economy a “breathtaking” 3.5 billion jobs. Newt should have asked how does a country of 300 million people lose 3.5 billion jobs.

Lefties aren't known for being good at math and science. They tend to major in the subjects the math and science people take to pad their GPAs.

So there may be a good reason for overlooking this part of the exchange:

GINGRICH:  ... But the fact is, Hillary's got a run on the grounds that disrupting Libya, disrupting Syria, failing in Russia, failing in Iraq, failing in Afghanistan as a terrific strategy, and she will do more of the same failure, including, by the way, paying $400 billion in cash, which the president assures us was not in fact --

WALLACE:  Four hundred million, and we're going to be talking about that, which is a good way to get you two off the set. 

"No cheering in the pressbox" is another of the nice old rules of journalism that Fox often manages to stay just on the right side of. No blood, no foul: Plenty of guests are set to discuss the usurper's ransom payment, so there's nothing wrong with leaving the former speaker's blunder -- which, unlike Rep. Becerra's, appears to have actually happened -- out of the frontpage story.

So, no. Fox isn't cheering in the pressbox. Then again, when you're the coach, batboy and official scorekeeper, you don't have to.


* I'd probably guess "sends." Transcription is a tough sport.