One of the most important roles for the media is to hold elected officials accountable, and it’s always refreshing to see Fox News, which features many opinion personalities who lean right, push back against hyperbole dished out by a Republican.

That’s exactly what Shannon Bream did in a recent interview with Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick when he made an absurd comparison between the several hundred protestors who have occupied a small section of downtown Seattle (the “Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone,” or “CHAZ”) and the ISIS shock troops who have been invading and terrorizing cities across the Middle East.

Patrick told Bream that what was happening in Seattle would never happen in Texas, “not on your life.”

Patrick, an ardent supporter of President Donald Trump, added, “This is what America will be if Joe Biden and the Democrats win…your family will be in danger.”

Bream pushed back, asking Patrick if that wasn’t “a bit much, are you overstating it by saying people’s lives will be in danger because of activities like what we are seeing in Seattle?”

Patrick ratcheted up the hyperbole, calling Seattle “no different than ISIS taking over cities in the Middle East.”

Bream interrupted, “Well, they’re not beheading people and throwing them off buildings!”

Patrick was forced to concede the point.

Bream could have just let it go but she did what a journalist and host should do. She challenged her guest on a matter of facts and spin and got the right answer out on the air for her viewers. That's how it's supposed to work.

Kayleigh McEnany has had a bumpy ride in her two months as White House Press Secretary, and Thursday was no exception. McEnany’s unenviable duty was defending Trump’s opposition to renaming U.S. military bases named after Confederate generals because it would tell soldiers that the bases themselves were  “fundamentally and inherently racist.”

In answer to a reporter, McEnany said that Trump “believes these bases are most notably identified by the heroes within it, by the acts they did, and winning two world wars, and defeating anarch--defeating fascism across the globe. That’s what these bases stand for, not the names on them.”

“So he doesn’t want to change the names, he’s vehemently opposed to that, and also as I noted yesterday, where do you draw the lines?” McEnany questioned. “Are we to remove from history George Washington? Are we to remove Thomas Jefferson? Are we to remove FDR?"

OK, let’s sort through this word salad. First of all, if the bases are “identified by the heroes within” them, and not the names on the signs out front, then changing the names isn’t really that big of a deal, right? This suggestion that removing Confederate names is a “slippery slope” to erasing American history is a common and weak go-to for the revanchist defenders of memorials to traitors and losers.

A Republican-controlled Senate Committee voted on Thursday to direct the Defense Department to rename bases, buildings, ships, aircraft, etc. named for Confederate leaders, his own top military advisers have publicly stated they’re amenable to renaming the bases, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi is getting bipartisan cheers for removing the Confederate statues in the Capitol’s National Statuary Collection from public view.

His outburst was lonely, and it wasn't well-defended. And right now, on this subject, that's not just bad its hurtful.