If you thought Fox might have been deterred from promoting Trump’s lies about the criminal charges against him because promoting Trump’s election lies just cost the network $787.5 million, think again.
If you missed the banner on the top image, here it is larger. In this case, a picture is worth more than a thousand words:
The rhetoric here closely matches that of Fox News contributor Tammy Bruce on the night of Trump’s indictment. In a wildly melodramatic commentary about the indictment, she said, “It's never been about Donald Trump. It is about indicting and stopping [Biden’s] main political opponent.”
Now, the network has endorsed that outlandish rhetoric as truth.
When a supposed cable news network covers news, in this case a Trump speech, presumably the banners will be “straight news,” not commentary. But this is further proof that there is no difference between news and opinion at Fox. Or, to put it another way, Fox isn’t even trying to hide the fact that it operates as a propaganda machine.
And I will bet you that just like the top Foxies knew Joe Biden won the 2020 election legitimately but pretended otherwise, they know Trump is very likely guilty of mishandling and abusing classified information. And just like the network was willing to undermine our democracy after the 2020 election for the sake of ratings and money, now it’s willing to undermine our national security for the same, plus political power.
You can watch the clip that goes with the banner below, from the June 13, 2023 Fox News Tonight, via Media Matters.
(This post was originally published on June 13, 2023)
6/15/23 update: Yesterday, Fox News very dubiously told The Washington Post that a rogue employee had written the chyron. I wrote about this in a post for Crooks and Liars yesterday:
After the chyron went viral, and The Washington Post published an article about it, Fox News issued a statement, saying, “the chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.”
Well, not really immediately. The Post noted that the chyron stayed on the screen for 27 seconds.
Given that the chyron echoed sentiments spoken on Fox, given that chyrons with similar sentiments had been posted on the same program, given the fact that chyrons are generally approved by a senior producer and given the fact that Fox said nothing publicly about the chyron until The Post published its articles, I was very skeptical of Fox's excuse.
Just now, I learned that the chyron writer no longer works at Fox. But it also turns out the employee was a veteran of the company, meaning that he or she had a long record of following company policy. So the chyron writer looks to me more like a scapegoat than a rogue, I wrote in an update to the C&L post.
6/15/23 Update: The Daily Beast reports that the chyron writer resigned, offered to stay on for two weeks and was told to leave immediately. So it's not clear that he (reportedly Alex McCaskill, a long-time producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight) was fired, as I originally wrote.
Anyway, my bottom line is the following: a range of highly sensitive documents were found where they were not supposed to be found. Full stop. Turn the page. There is absolutely no way to even entertain the claim that documents not written by Trump, himself, personally, could belong to him, personally. As those documents were written by highly specialised agencies, those agencies should have a say in whether and how to handle them. There’s a procedure for declassifying them and that procedure was ignored. Anybody other than Trump would already be cooling his heels in a prison cell.
I am, however, glad to see the Justice Department bending over backward to give Trump as much rope as he needs to hang himself in the eyes of his own base. As I recall it, about a quarter of Nixon’s supporters stood by him only to flip at the bitter end. The same sort of “never liked the guy” claims were common in Italy and Germany after WW2. Fascists are brave only when they are winning. I await the day when many MAGAts will alluvasudden claim they never heard of the Dear Leader.