To everything, there is a season. And apparently this is the season for Fox News to find itself in the confusing position of shielding Donald Trump from any and all criticism (which is their foundational mission), and recognizing a little thing called reality. Surprisingly for Fox News, on Monday reality somehow managed to prevail.
The debate over whether or not Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election exists only on right-wing media. And the leading purveyor of blatantly conservative bias is Fox News. That’s true despite the fact that Fox called the election for Biden on Saturday, as did all the other television news networks. Although Fox made the call last. Which is also where their ratings for the day were.
In the days that followed that demonstrably rational call that was supported by the data, Fox’s primetime hosts smeared their own so-called “hard news” colleagues for what they regarded as caving in to George Soros and the liberal cabal that orchestrated the “hoax” that Biden had won. Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Tucker Carlson, have all adopted Trump’s delusional insistence that, contrary to the facts (and the votes), he “won by a lot.”
Trump is still filing lawsuits to overturn the election even though they keep getting dismissed in court for lack of merit or any evidence to support his claims. But in some selected circumstances, Fox News isn’t playing along with his fantasies. One of those circumstances occurred during an interview of Republican attorney Cleta Mitchell by Fox anchor Sandra Smith. The exchange included this dramatic hot mic episode:
Mitchell: Just because CNN says – or even Fox News says – that somebody is president doesn’t make them president.
Smith: What? What is happening. Trace, we called it.
Mitchell: I think everyone wants to know that this was done properly and legally and we can trust the results. And I think we have to look into every one of these concerns.
We are all Sandra ?
https://t.co/8eBPyHIIyd— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) November 9, 2020
The look on Smith’s face says it all. She is stunned by Mitchell’s pigheaded assertion that there is still some ambiguity about the election’s outcome. But Mitchell is a fully indoctrinated Trump cultist who is only capable of regurgitating the talking points distributed by Trump’s White House Office of Propaganda. There are no credible legal analysts who regard Trump’s claims as valid. And even if they were, there wouldn’t be enough votes affected to change the results in any state.
Despite this obvious example of what some Fox News personnel are thinking, there are scant few examples of them embracing these views on the air. To the contrary, we have far more examples of Fox’s Trump-fluffers slobbering over the “president,” lashing out at his critics, and defending his lies. and that will continue for another couple of months until Trump is evicted from the People’s House. Then it will be on to full time anti-Biden programming at Fox for the next four years.
How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.
