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Fox Showing More Love For Trump Supporters Than Trump

Posted by Ellen -7842.60pc on January 14, 2021 · Flag

As Fox News eyes Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, it appears to be turning its worshipful eyes to Trump supporters and away from the disgraced Dear Leader

Brian Stelter has a good summary:

Right-wing media has made a shift from "pro-Trump" to "pro-Trump-supporter." This week the talk shows are all about sympathizing with the voters, who are generally depicted as downcast and discriminated against. "Right now in America it is hard to be a Trump supporter, and it is getting harder, a lot harder," Newsmax's Greg Kelly said Tuesday night. His message was that "we have nothing to be ashamed of, and we should be proud." His colleague Rob Schmitt said "the left wants to rip the soul out of anyone who supported Donald Trump over the last four years."

On Fox Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson made a similar argument while attacking Mitch McConnell. Carlson said McConnell should not be focused on the future of Trump -- who he described on his show as "elderly and retiring" -- but instead "the tens of millions" of Trump voters. Carlson claimed Trump voters have been "redefined as domestic terrorists" in the past week. He straight up said he doesn't care about Trump: "What I care about are his voters." Later in the evening, Laura Ingraham said impeachment was actually an attempt to "impeach the Americans who support his policies," which is obviously not true. One of her first guests, Ben Domenech, said that voting for impeachment was akin to telling Trump voters, "CNN's right about you." Later in the hour, guest Lara Logan imagined a new "war on terror" targeting Trump supporters.

That focus on Trump supporters’ feelings, as opposed to the facts of the election and Trump’s incitement of violence at the Capitol, is seen all over Fox. In Maria Bartiromo’s discussion this morning, on Fox Business Network, she slyly signaled her solidarity with Trump supporters without actually agreeing that the election was rigged: “Well, we know that there were irregularities in this election. We know that 70% of Trump voters have said, ‘We're not buying this election, we think it was rigged.’”

Ditto for Fox & Friends cohost Ainsley Earhardt. Last week, she suggested the “feelings” of Trump voters were more important than the facts. After her two cohosts noted that Trump has been unable to produce any evidence of voter fraud, Earhardt shrugged that off, saying, “I think people who are staunch conservatives in our country just feel so, just so defeated because of this election. They do feel like it was rigged.”

Martha MacCallum’s jaw-dropping comment during the armed insurrection at the Capitol also fits the pattern: “Obviously, this is a huge victory for these protesters. They have disrupted the system in an enormous way.”

Stelter also noted (via CNN’s Oliver Darcy) that Fox mostly stuck with its usual programming during yesterday’s impeachment, rather than having its lead anchors, Bret Baier and MacCallum host a special report.

Can’t ruffle those Trump supporters fee fees, don’t you know!  

(Trump caricature by DonkeyHotey via Creative Commons license.)

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Ellen commented 2021-01-15 23:22:31 -0500 · Flag
EOF is on Twitter under the same name we know him. I suggest writing him there and asking him to come back. Maybe once Trump is out of office (knock wood), he’ll reconsider.
Bemused commented 2021-01-15 04:05:32 -0500 · Flag
Yes. I miss EOF, too.
Bemused commented 2021-01-15 04:04:48 -0500 · Flag
The constant fear-mongering about the Dems “packing the courts” is really infuriating. I mean, really: that’s precisely what the GOP is saying their Dear Leader “succeeded” in doing. And they’re proud of themselves for imposing a one side’s position over that of the majority.
John McKee commented 2021-01-15 01:31:26 -0500 · Flag
In the somewhat unlikely event you are catching up with what your old mates are up to, please rejoin us Eyes on Fox. We miss your contributions.
Kevin Koster commented 2021-01-15 00:15:42 -0500 · Flag
No surprise that Fox News is trying to thread this needle. They’re figuring, probably correctly, that they can get back the angry Right Wing viewers who’ve jumped over to Newsmax and OAN for a minute, by continuing their usual pattern of hate-mongering and propagandizing. The move to call Arizona was a tactical one – useful in terms of being able to insist that they’re “impartial journalists”. (It’s similar to how many extreme Right Wing partisan judges rammed onto benches by the Pence White House and Repubs over the past 4 years now have a sliver of cover for themselves by denying the nonsense filings of Giuliani and Powell and the others over the election. When anyone points out the extremism of their upcoming rulings effectively banning reproductive choice and voting rights, those judges will of course point to the election cases and say “See? I ruled against Trump.”

Frankly, we cannot “move on” in a civilized society if the people who attacked the rest of us are allowed to get away with the attempt. We’ve had too much of the “let’s just let bygones be bygones”. Too much of the turning of the other cheek and just hoping that angry Right Wingers will somehow learn their lesson by not being called out for their behavior.

What is needed now is a really stern approach. Fox News abetted the Pence White House and in fact helped direct many of its most vicious acts. Fox News pundits sang the praises of Pence’s childish spokesman throughout, after spending 8 years viciously attacking the Obama White House, and after spending 8 years before that abetting the Cheney/W White House and cheering them on. When W was clearly on the downswing after the 2006 midterms, Dems took the “high road” and said that we would avoid impeachment and we’d let all that illegal behavior go. When President Obama took office, Dems took the “high road” and assumed that Repubs would come along and try to help get the country out of the Recession. We saw what the results were. Angry Right Wingers sneered at everyone else and fumed until they were able to squeak Trump through the swing states in 2016. And when Dems complained about the viciousness, how did these reasonable angry Right Wingers respond? They tried to bully everyone else with the screams of “WE WON! YOU LOST LIBTARD!”

The way to move on from the miserable epoch of the Pence White House is twofold. The first is to clean up the mess they made – in terms of the pandemic, in terms of the judiciary, in terms of the Tax Transfer. And the lasting one is to never allow angry Right Wingers to ever try to lecture anyone again. The response when someone pulls this nonsense in the future shouldn’t be any more complicated than “NO. YOU VOTED FOR BIGOTRY. YOU SUPPORTED BIGOTRY AND HATRED. YOU DON’T GET TO LECTURE ANYONE. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.”
John McKee commented 2021-01-14 19:04:24 -0500 · Flag
If there’s going to be a War on Error, then sign me up. Why are these creatures so allergic to truth?








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