Brian Kilmeade must be fired today, Saturday, August 13, 2022. Post-haste.

Kilmeade had a doctored photograph of Judge Reinhart with Ghislaine Maxwell, getting a foot massage, no less. Judge Reinhart is the man whose life is in danger for signing the search warrant that turned up material applicable to the Espionage Act, nuclear secrets of some sort, TS-SCI. The find was so important that Kilmeade’s picture from Thursday night when he filled in for Tucker Carlson went unnoticed by people who follow real media. It is bad enough that Kilmeade published the judge’s picture, increasing the danger to the judge. But to imply that Kilmeade was “intimate” enough with Maxwell to get a foot massage?  Unforgivable.

See if you can find any indication that this was “in jest.”

“Here’s Murdoch’s Fox News passing off a doctored photo of a US judge as the genuine article. All in a bid to discredit the search warrant against Trump. Subsequently, Murdoch’s host says he knew it was fake—but showed it ‘in jest’. Take a look. Complete rubbish.”

Brian Kilmeade, filling in for Tucker Carlson tonight, shared a clearly fake, photoshopped image of the judge involved in approving the Mar-a-Lago warrant pic.twitter.com/W3cxHdy6id

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 12, 2022

Reinhart had helped represent Jeffery Epstein as a criminal defense attorney, which means that he did nothing more than his highly paid job. From Politico:

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade on Friday sought to clarify the news organization’s use of a fake image depicting Judge Bruce Reinhart, who signed off on the Mar-a-Lago search warrant, with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

“So a picture of Bruce Reinhart. This is the judge in charge of the… warrant. We’ll see if he’ll release it next. He likes Oreos and whiskey,” Kilmeade said Thursday night. Now Kilmeade has released a statement on Twitter, telling viewers he wanted to make sure they were aware it “wasn’t real.”

“Last night while subbing for Tucker Carlson, we showed you an image of Judge Bruce Reinhart w/ Ghislaine Maxwell that was sourced on screen to a meme pulled from Twitter & wasn’t real,” the post said. “This depiction never took place & we wanted to make clear that we were showing a meme in jest.”

You will note that there is no apology in the statement.

This is disgusting misinformation and puts Judge Reinhart’s security at greater risk. Photo on top of Maxwell and Epstein is real. Photo on bottom, broadcast on Fox News highest rated prime time show, is a fake photoshop.

In any other news network, there’d be dire consequences. https://t.co/oBXBihQEik pic.twitter.com/exvvJ5bv76

— Ana Navarro-Cárdenas (@ananavarro) August 12, 2022

Fuck you, Kilmeade. “In jest,” my ass. You’re a lying scumbag who deserves to be fired. Of course, it’s Fox News, so your job is safe.

— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) August 12, 2022

No. This is unacceptable. It wasn’t in jest. Millions of people took that seriously. You lied to get people worked up. You lie all the time. You cause shame to real journalists. You cause shame to your family and the people that educated you. You should resign and rethink it all.

— Susan Joliver 🟧☮️ (@SeekingSusie) August 12, 2022

Shameless. Fire him. Now.