Fox’s Trump-friendly Outnumbered show echoed Republican complaints that the Democratic National Convention did not discuss ISIS enough. Yet, when retired four-star Marine Gen. John Allen, former commander of troops in Afghanistan took to the stage to endorse Clinton as an ISIS-fighting commander in chief, Fox cut away from his speech, right before he mentioned ISIS, in order to get criticism from Trump supporter, Michael Flynn.
On Wednesday, the third day of the DNC, Outnumbered cohost Sandra Smith began a segment with the introduction, “Well, not one mention of ISIS by name on Day One of the DNC and on Day Two, just seven mentions from six of the 56 speakers that took that stage. Headliner President Bill Clinton not among them.”
As if Bill Clinton should have made a speech about his wife about ISIS, instead.
Smith next played a clip of terrorism non-expert, and Trump supporter, Herman Cain complaining on Fox:
CAIN: They’ve had all of the proof in the world all along with all of these other incidents and they are still in denial. They wanted to call the Republican convention last week and the speech that Donald Trump gave as dark? No. This has started off dark because they are not admitting the problems that this country faces and one of the biggest problems is our fight against radical, Islamic terrorism and they are in denial and they won’t even mention ISIS.
Guest Tucker Carlson sneered that the supposed omission was because Democrats hate America more than they hate ISIS:
CARLSON: It doesn’t comport with their world view. I mean, the real threats are threats created by America always. It’s our bad police, it’s our CFCs going into the atmosphere, it’s out bad attitudes, it’s our middle class too heavily armed, too religious. So the problem with ISIS is, in the Democratic world view, they’re utterly foreign and they’re from poor countries that are totally different from ours culturally. Therefore, they are morally superior to us and yet, wait - they’re monsters. So it just completely frazzles the liberal brain.
If it could be proved that ISIS was headquartered in Omaha, then we would have a full-scale war against them tomorrow, trust me.
There was no pushback on this outrageous comment, not even from Democratic cohost Julie Roginsky. Instead, Roginsky gave credence to the right-wing meme with her lukewarm defense. She noted that Bill Clinton was there to talk about his wife but said she was “surprised” former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had “taken references of ISIS out” of her speech.
That prompted a lecture from cohost Harris Faulkner: “It’s not like, you know, the topic is falling out of the sky for no reason,” she began. She was referencing the recent spate of terror attacks in Europe. “The fact that the Democrats woudn’t mention it means they’re not even really paying attention to the headlines that do matter to a lot of Americans,” she scolded.
Instead of defending Democrats, Roginsky piled on by complaining that the DNC should have mentioned the martyred French priest.
“By a sympathizer to ISIS! Not some random guy!” Faulkner yelled. She admonished Roginsky, “You need to call the people in your party and let them know! They’ve got another night tonight. They can do this.”
Again Roginsky furthered the right-wing meme instead of defending Democrats. This time, she rhetorically addressed her party and said, “Lets do it right now.”
And yet, Fox repeatedly chose not to cover DNC speakers who talked about 9/11 and terrorism.
On Tuesday night, 9/11 survivor Lauren Manning spoke. She suffered such life-threatening wounds that she was not expected to recover. She talked about Clinton’s support for her and for our first responders. “Fair and balanced” Fox went to a commercial instead.
Last night, Khizr Khan, the father of Humanyun Khan, a Muslim U.S. Army captain posthumously awarded a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service in the Iraq war, indicted Donald Trump’s jingoism in a moving, memorable speech. Fox couldn’t be bothered with it. As Media Matters explained:
“While CNN and MSNBC aired the video and Khan’s speech in full, Fox News’ The Kelly File instead continued with its regular commentary featuring Brit Hume, then went to commercial as the speech began, showing slightly more than two minutes of the speech in a small window as commercials—including a Benghazi attack ad—overplayed it.”
You can watch how Fox “honored” this terror-fighting hero below.
And then there was Allen. Kelly aired a probing, Trump-damning interview with Allen that was prerecorded. But she played only a brief excerpt of his DNC speech. She dipped in after Allen said, “Every American in uniform” must be “a force for unity,” including “every race, every ethnicity, every faith and creed, including the Americans who are our precious Muslims.”
Kelly cut away from the speech just before Allen said, “America will defeat ISIS and protect the homeland.” Apparently, the urgent need to criticize Allen’s choice, from a guy who was on Trump’s VP short list, was more important than what was previously a vitally important need to hear about ISIS.
So the next time you hear someone from Fox complain about the lack of attention to ISIS and terrorism at the DNC, remember that Fox didn't want to hear about it when they had the chance.
Watch the three segments below, from the July 26 Outnumbered and the July 28 The Kelly File.
Bwaaah!
“Gallup: Trump’s speech the worst ever tested”
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/7/28/1553840/-Gallup-Trump-s-speech-the-worst-ever-tested
I pointed out in a comment below nearly 1/3 of neo-fascist Hair Hitler’s Nuremburg Rally speech viewers were watching Fox News. Despite a huge chunk of viewers being glued to Fox News’ Leni Riefenstahl inspired broadcast and follow-ups, Der Furor’s performance completely bombed. Like no one before him.
Apparently most of those not getting their #RNCinCLE coverage filtered through Fox weren’t impress. More like depressed.
Hey, if you’re going to fail, fail yuuuuuuuge! ;^)
The cherry on top is The Donald, being informed his #RNCinCLE audience trailed the #DemsInPhilly audience on ad supported networks leading up to Hillary’s speech (LA Times night 3 Neilson numbers obviously differ from what I saw on TVNewser), refused any responsibility and in characteristic thin-skinned manner immediately went nuclear raging against the GOP as it’s all their fault. Uh-huh.
Oh, as an aside, the ratings I mentioned below in a comment didn’t including PBS, the network I mostly watched during both conventions. I was curious how they did and I found out night 3 of #DemsInPhilly they weighed in at 2.8 million viewers, far more than I expected. I’d love to have their nightly number for each convention because it might provide even more evidence all bragging rights go to #DemsInPhilly.
I can’t wait for the polls next week!
Just like Jon Stewart skewered Sean Hannity on Stephen Colbert’s show. You can never please these people. You are on a fool’s errand to even try.
So they complain about not enough terrorism/ISIS mentions at the DNC yet cut away when terrorism/ISIS actually was mentioned? Sounds to me like FOX “news” is rigging its DNC coverage to fit its talking points. How convenient. This network really needs to change its name from FOX “news” to GOPTV.
What FOX did was unconscionable, but not unexpected. Their viewers do live in the bubble, in an alternate world that has no bearing on reality. To them the fact that some Muslim was on TV is nothing but the “librul media” and must be shunned. They’d rather watch reruns of Lucy than have facts intrude upon their world.
Sad to have to admit they are our fellow citizens.
https://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/megyn-kelly-airs-images-of-isis-fighters-while-muslim-dad-of-slain-u-s-soldier-speaks-to-dnc/
So, we were supposed to be on her side?
Fuck her. This is the real Megyn Kelly.
The next trick up their sleeve, I predict, is to crow how Trump’s final night speech drew ‘millions of more viewers’ than Hillary’s. While true, the conclusion they will want people to draw is false.
I did some quick analysis of the #RNCinCLE and #DemsInPhilly ratings. Prime time only. Night by night. Network by network. Total viewers. I picked this for ease of analysis, not to cherry-pick convenient statistics to make an argument.
As has been reported by liberal blogs, on night 1 and night 2 #DemsInPhilly crushed #RNCinCLE in total viewers. No debate.
Night 3 was about even: #RNCinCLE at 17,892,000 compared to #DemsInPhilly at 17,648,000. But that isn’t the interesting part. 41% of #RNCinCLE’s audience was via Fox News. Let that sink in for a moment.
Night 4 you’re going to hear the Foxies crow #RNCinCLE whooped #DemsInPhilly 30,040,661
to 27,823,000 respectively. What Fox won’t likely tell you is 31.14% of #RNCinCLE‘s audience was Fox’s audience. Only 10.89% were Fox viewers for #DemsInPhilly. Again, let that sink in.
Fox’s nightly viewership was down between 45% and 67% from #RNCinCLE to #DemsInPhilly. Let that sink in.
You might find all this boring but I’m fascinated with how the ‘fair and balanced’ network is proved to be a bubble for right-wingers. The right-wingers tuned out #DemsInPhilly and that’s okay by me because you’re not going to change their intolerant minds anyway.
When you take Republican mouth organ Fox News out of the equation, #DemsInPhilly crushed #RNCinCLE in total viewership by the millions each and every night. This is your independents for the most part. Your liberals except a handful of liberal Fox News watchdogs like the Newshounds crew.
#ImWithHer! I had plenty of company.