No presidency in this nation’s history has gone so far out of its way to undermine the basic tenets of a democratic state more than that of Donald Trump. No president has deliberately sought to undermine the concept of a united country, which despite differences of opinion still manages a level of civility and still capable of coming to together in a time of crisis. No president has sought to sow hatred of others for reasons of race, ethnicity and ideology as much as Trump has. No president has completely undermined the credibility of religion as a means to judge moral and ethical fitness as he has. No president has ever attempted to cling to power despite the reality of his defeat, by espousing wild conspiracy theories to undermine confidence in the electoral process. No president has ever abused his own supporters by lying to them and using them to buoy his own fantasies as much as Trump has.
No losing candidate for president has ever sunk into the depths of delusional depravity that Trump has. With the exception of the delayed concession by Al Gore--who himself accepted the results with grace after the conservatives of the U.S. Supreme Court stopped the Florida recount--every losing candidate conceded as soon as the election was called with dignity and respect for the winner. But not Trump, and not his most delusional supporters in the right-wing media--especially Fox News, which knows it will not have that ratings boost of having Trump calling in or his sycophants spewing nonsense during guest appearances. Sean Hannity will have to come to terms that he will no longer be the “unofficial” presidential chief policy adviser.
Fox News finds itself in a conundrum of its own making. When it discovered that there was a “market” and big profits in unashamedly peddling racial and anti-immigrant bigotry, ludicrous conspiracy theories about “liberals,” feeding into white grievance and nationalist isolationism, it went whole hog into it. The non-stop attacks on the Obama administration was just the set-up to become for all intents and purposes the Trump News Network. Only in the past few months has there been any real push back by a few of Fox News’ anchors and reporters for whom their own credibility and reputations were on the line, who have found it difficult to keep pushing what they know are obvious lies and misrepresentations. Now that the handwriting is on the wall, and Trump has lost the election, they feel no more need to push the “party” line--at least for now.
Nevertheless, the nonsense continues. While those like Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity continue to darkly hint at election “fraud,” they are not suggesting that we won’t see Joe Biden in office on January 20--they are just “suggesting” that he will be there “illegitimately.” Rupert Murdoch can stop all of this, but he won’t, because as Peter Kafka in Vox noted the other day, he enjoys power and making Fox News the “disloyal opposition.” With the brief interruption during the afternoon when the “real” journalists are working--as well as most working Americans--we are still getting a “taste” of what we can expect when Biden takes office officially, with the likes of Fox Business News' Maria Bartiromo. You think FBN is actually about “business”? Well, fool you; it’s just where Fox News unloads its most crackpot personalities.
It’s amazing how people like Bartiromo receive awards for journalistic “excellence” before they are exposed as far-right wing-nuts. Last week she defended giving credence to the most ridiculous conspiracy and fraud theories of the Trump campaign by claiming that “It’s not about Trump, it’s about fairness.” Oh, sure it is. Actually, it isn’t about “fairness” to Trump, it’s about being “fair” to Bartiromo personally from attacks on her own wing-nutness. Fox News has never made any bones about being “fair.” Its alleged “fair and balanced” approach was never about that, but about being a right-wing “counterweight” to the alleged “liberal bias” of network news programs. That’s not being “fair” or “balanced,” and at least Hannity had the honesty to admit that his show is neither. With Bartiromo, anyone who suggests that she might be “wrong” about something is sure to incur immediate wrath and insults, which of course indicates an egotistical tar baby for whom anywhere you touch her credibility is likely to elicit a ‘a “painful” response.
The New York Post noted the other day that Bartiromo is convinced, without evidence, that “Trump was the victim of an attempted coup that began even before his election, based on what she said was careful study of documents and other information provided to her by members of Congress and government officials. She also said she believes the Democrats may have committed voter fraud and says the courts, not the media, should decide who won the 2020 presidential.” Of course being a fanatical “protege” of Lou Dobbs and thus by extension a fanatical Trump supporter, Bartiromo has only her “gut feelings” to go on, and what any other fellow far-right wing-nut she can dig-up to lend any shred of “credence” to alleviate the painful reality that her hater-in-chief lost the election.
Speaking to Rudy Giuliani, Bartiromo exclaimed “One source says that the key point to understand is that the Smartmatic system has a back door, that allows it to be or that allows the votes to be mirrored and monitored allowing an intervening party a realtime understanding of how many votes will be needed to gain an electoral advantage. Are you saying the states that use that software did that?” Then came Sidney Powell, who claimed that the Dominion ballot tabulating machines were “designed to rig elections” and prevented Trump from winning by “millions of votes.”
Powell told a completely credulous Bartiromo that “we have so much evidence I feel like it’s coming in through a fire hose.” Bartiromo asked her if she had the “software” and “hardware” in her possession to prove her claims. Not surprisingly Powell was not “prepared” to offer such evidence: “Well, I’ve got lots of ways to prove it, Maria but I’m not going to tell on national TV what all we have. I just can’t do that.” In other words, she was lying, but is Bartiromo the kind of “journalist” for whom “facts” and “evidence” matter? Of course not. The only “facts” she know are the ones that she invents in her own feverish mind.
Naturally Trump was watching and was very happy about this “performance.” He also retweeted a “news” report from his current favorite “news” source, One America News--a misnomer if ever:
Election systems across the country are found to have deleted millions of votes cast for President Trump. According to an unaudited analysis of data obtained from Edison Research, states using Dominion Voting Systems may have switched as many as 435,000 votes from President Trump to Joe Biden, and the author also finds another 2.7 million Trump votes appear to have been deleted by Dominion including almost one million truckloads in Pennsylvania alone.
Edison Research immediately refuted the claim: "Edison Research created no such report and we are not aware of any voter fraud." Dominion responded that “Claims that 941,000 votes for President Trump in Pennsylvania were deleted are impossible, as Dominion only serves 14 Commonwealth counties. Collectively, those Counties produced 1.3 million votes representing a voter turnout of 76%. Fifty-two percent of those votes went to President Trump, which amounts to 676,000 votes the company's system processed for the President in Pennsylvania.” Dominion also denied it had any relationships with private individuals, firms or countries, and defended its business as “nonpartisan.”
This and Bartiromo’s hour of peddling outrageous election fraud conspiracies was finally just too much for at least two Fox News anchors. Eric Shawn followed a few hours later declaring that “Well, let’s clarify the election facts as we know them right now. Rigged election or your own government election officials across the country and voting experts say it’s not true? Baseless claims that are inflammatory, designed to undermine your faith in American democracy.”
Shawn noted that election officials from both parties had declared the election free of fraud, and that the Election Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council had released a statement asserting that “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. Right now, across the country, election officials are reviewing and double checking the entire election process prior to finalizing the result” and that “There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
Shawn went on to say that “Prosecutors say any voter or election fraud allegation will be thoroughly investigated and if a fix were in, if there was wrongdoing, we will know about it. But election officials across the country insist, as of today, there is no evidence of any widespread fraud affecting the outcome the presidential election, that our precious democracy was not tampered with and that such baseless and false claims are an insult to the thousands of election officials and workers across the country who we have seen dedicating themselves 24/7 to ensure a fair and free election for all of us.”
But who was listening when we see all those Trump supporters out on the street demanding that Trump be handed the election just to satisfy people like the one carrying a sign that read “Coming For Blacks & Indians First Welcome To The New World Order”?
We also saw Neil Cavuto cutting away from Kayleigh McEnany’s campaign press briefing after she began attacking anyone who didn’t believe the election was “stolen” from Trump, and Leland Vittert actually laughing at Trump campaign spokesperson Erin Perrine as she refused to answer his question about where she expects the votes to come from that will propel Trump to “victory.” At one point Perrine became so discombobulated by Vittert’s facial expressions that she misspoke about how “We are taking every legal avenue that exists in these states to make sure that legal votes are counted and illegal votes are counted. For every Democrat and every talking head on the news, how much fraud is OK? How many dead people can vote and you’re OK with that?” Vittert denied that it was “OK” with him, and cut off the conversation with “So now you just attack everybody if they don’t agree with you? Not much else to say. Erin, we understand where you want to go with this.”
But despite all the push back by the afternoon crew from all the lies and misinformation, the network was still hawking the debunked claims being made by their “big three” in the evening, which only proves that Fox News knows where its bread is buttered. “Fair and balanced” reporting was always just an empty slogan, and it is "understandable" that the hate-filled fanatics who make up Fox News' audience just cannot stand the truth after being fed lies, misinformation and conspiracy theories for decades and on autopilot for the past four years; they just don’t know anything else to believe. For the “adults” in the room at Fox, it is a battle that was lost long ago.
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