Memo to Fox News: insulting Democrats for deciding not to hold a primary debate on your network is probably not a good way to persuade the DNC to reconsider.
Yesterday, Fox News Senior Vice President Bill Sammon begged Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez to reconsider his decision to keep the party’s 2020 presidential primary debates off Fox News. Perez’s decision was at least partly based on Jane Mayer’s New Yorker bombshell that showed just how intertwined and enmeshed Fox News and Donald Trump have become.
Sammon promised that Fox’s debate team of Chris Wallace, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum would “embody the ultimate journalistic integrity and professionalism.”
It’s a good thing Sammon didn’t say anything about respect.
Today on Fox News Radio, Wallace accused the “left wing of the Democratic Party” of having “Fox Derangement Syndrome” and “just looking for an excuse” not to debate on Fox “and The New Yorker article gave it to them.”
FNC’s Outnumbered crew was even more derogatory.
“It’s the DNC’s job to best represent the candidates,” cohost Melissa Francis said, clearly hinting that the DNC was not doing so.
Cohost Allie Beth Stuckey “asked,” “Wasn’t it Donna Brazile, through CNN, that fed questions to Hillary Clinton? I just find this extremely rich.”
Francis shifted gears to suggest that Democrats were not up to handling a Fox debate. “Maybe it is in the best interest to keep the Democratic candidates from being pursued by somebody like Chris Wallace, who’s a really tough questioner, or Martha MacCallum or Bret Baier. I mean, maybe the Democrats feel like they can’t stand up to that kind of debate prep and questions,” she said.
Cohost Jillian Mele ignored the elephant in the room, as did the rest of the sour grapes crowd, which is that the DNC decision was for a Democratic primary, not the general election. I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts, as my mother used to say, that the eventual Democratic nominee will willingly debate Trump on Fox or anywhere else. Furthermore, nothing is stopping individual candidates from appearing on Fox News and submitting themselves to the tough questions. In fact, candidate Amy Klobuchar has already been interviewed by Baier.
But Mele said, “I think both sides should have the opportunity to talk to everybody.”
Cohost Lisa "Kennedy" Montgomery sneered, “I think this is a cowardly move. … I think Democrats, if they really want to win the general election, they need to get outside of the echo chamber … and submit yourself to this level of scrutiny.”
The show’s “One Lucky Guy,” Democrat Jake Maccoby, missed an opportunity, in my view, to confront Fox on its tactics, both in this segment and in general. Regardless of The New Yorker report, Fox’s friendliness to Trump, along with its demonization of Democrats as dangerous enemies of America is on full display, for all to see, every day.
I guess Trump TV couldn’t pass up this opportunity to malign Democrats, either.
Watch it below, from the March 7, 2019 Outnumbered.
Fox News is not a legitimate journalist organization and there is no reason for anyone not in the Trump camp to want to appear there. Fox News has no interest in asking “tough questions” of Democratic candidates. They want to ask “gotcha questions”. And there’s a BIG difference. With the former, which can come from real journalists, there is a chance for a candidate to show how they deal with a real issue and a real challenge. With the latter, which is all Fox News has been doing for the past two decades, the only opportunity is for a Fox News pundit to ask nonsense questions like “When did you stop beating your children?”
Fox News, like the rest of Right Wing media, has spent the past three years in a non-stop bullying campaign, where they have tried to shove the rest of the country’s nose in the dung, gloating all the while. When this epoch of our history is finished, hopefully in less than 2 years, there will be no way for Right Wing media to walk back their conduct. People who engaged in this behavior, emboldened by Trump and his acolytes, will have to own their bigotry and accept the judgment of the rest of the country.
They could coach their management and talking heads in how to stop making things worse everytime they open their mouths. They just don’t seem to understand how to speak with people with different perspectives without being bullying, demeaning or insulting. Of course, all this assumes that they actually do want to host a Dem debate more than they want to use the disagreement as another weapon in their culture war.
