In a Friday article titled “North Carolina GOP town hall turns heated as self-described veteran escorted out by security,” Fox News implicitly questioned whether the unnamed local man who screamed “You have nothing to say but lies. You’re lying. I’m a veteran, and you don’t give a fuck about me!” at last week’s raucous public forum hosted by North Carolina MAGA Congressman Chuck Edwards is actually a military veteran, unsubtly hinting that he might be a stolen valor dickhead.

The article, which includes a photo of a large, angry, tattooed man who does not seem at all like a cupcake, continuing to shout while being asked to leave by two police officers, was printed around the same time the Asheville Watchdog posted an interview with the man, identifying him as 54 year-old Jay Carey, who served 20+ years in the Army and saw action in the first Iraq War, Afghanistan, and Bosnia, earning a Bronze Star during one of the campaigns. The Watchdog’s article also mentions that Carey’s a registered Democrat who in 2022 ran in the district’s House primary, a background Fox News might have done well to have looked into or at least later followed up with.

Might have been a better look for them to – quite likely correctly – paint Carey’s outburst as a pre-campaign stunt ahead of a 2026 challenge to Edwards, one in which he filmed free footage for a future ad about standing up for his fellow veterans against a feckless twat McDonald’s franchisee who whined about having to face constituents. That would’ve had the effect of casting Carey’s intentions as “grandstanding” and thus given the Fox audience the permission structure they crave to dismiss him as a “fake” veteran. Would’ve worked better than weakly questioning his service to the country, something incongruous at best for a propaganda operation that regularly fetishes right wing veterans with horseshit like “Vietnam veteran says he’s ‘honored’ to give Trump his Purple Heart after assassination attempt,” without any qualification of whether the medal was authentic.