Am I the only Democrat who doesn’t get too worked up during periods of Republican infighting? I find the infighting ridiculous, because inevitably the fights are about “how many children can we punish through enforced poverty” or “who among us hates communities of color more?” The fights are never really about the soul of the party, they’re internecine battles about who deserves to be oppressed more and how. Well, for a while now, there’s been a politics-media story on the back burner. I haven’t cared much because, again, internecine horsesh-t. But there’s a fight brewing between Trumpers/MAGA peeps versus… Fox News. Yes, Trump is mad at and about Fox News these days. And he tweeted this last night:
.@FoxNews is no longer the same. We miss the great Roger Ailes. You have more anti-Trump people, by far, than ever before. Looking for a new outlet! https://t.co/jXxsF0flUM
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 19, 2020
“We miss the great Roger Ailes,” the same guy who sexually abused and harassed dozens of women at Fox News in what became the first big media “Me Too” takedown. Of course Trump misses Roger Ailes. They were kindred predator spirits, with Trump being accused of harassing and assaulting dozens of women too.
But the point is that Trump is mad about Fox News because he would prefer to sit in the Lincoln Bedroom, eating cheeseburgers and French fries and binge-watching Fox News as they tell him that everything he’s doing is brilliant. Instead, Neil Cavuto (!!!) went on air last night and said Trump is a bigly moron for claiming to take hydroxychloroquine for coronavirus prevention. Trump was so upset he ended up retweeting a video posted by The Hoarse Whisperer, one of Trump’s biggest critics on Twitter. The cheeseburgers must have been especially juicy last night.
Fox News on hydroxychloroquine in the last two days:
Neil Cavuto: It’ll kill you!!!
Laura Ingraham: Take it! Take it! Take it!
— The Hoarse Whisperer (@HoarseWisperer) May 18, 2020
So what will Trump’s fight with Fox News bring, long-term? The thing is, Rupert Murdoch isn’t running everything at Fox News at this point. He left his sons in charge, and the Murdoch sons are not AS all-in with Trump. So if Trump starts a fight with the Murdochs, I have no idea what will happen. Nor do I particularly care?
Photos courtesy of Backgird, Avalon Red.
I’d only care to know if I could somehow help to maximize the damage to the GOP and Trump. Otherside I’m with you, cackling on the sidelines, not really invested.
Lip service is pointless. Show me some action.
Is there any other outlet comparable to Fox News which would “do the job”?
OANN is trying to set itself up as a competitor and Junior is an investor.
Yes – THIS. Unfortunately there are even zanier, more far-right “news” sources than Fox out there.
Faux News is screwed and they know it. There were little signs in the beginning (the Sky News merger falling though after the election in 2016) and now the UK has announced that they will not play the network at all effective immediately.
Niel does not want his name in the lawsuits that are gonna be coming. Laura will be the first to go and then they will flip a coin between Nazi Carlson and Ham fisted Hannity to see which one of them will no next as their ad revenue is next to nothing now.
The Hoarse Whisperer tweet sent me to sleep laughing.
“Looking for a new outlet!” There’s a lot to unpack there and a great deal of it is unethical and unconstitutional. First, he’s acknowledging that he uses Fox as state media, which is the constitutional issue. The second is the unethical one. He has a new outlet. Junior has supposedly invested heavily in the parent company of OANN, which is setting itself up as a conservative competitor to Fox and the owner in donating to the Trump campaign. OANN is even more truth challenged than Fox and he calls on its reporters at every press conference.
Yikes! I had never heard of OANN (and I hope I didn’t just mess up my search cookies by finding out, LOL). From the looks of things, they’ll need to hire more nearly identical blond women if they want to keep his attention.
Trump TV is on the way once he loses this year’s election. And he will lose.
Good luck poppin that hydrochloroquine, Trump! I’m sure it won’t backfire on you.
At this point if they put taped announcements inside blow-up dolls (blonde of course) and put them on camera Trump and the MAGATs would love it.
It was OANN’s reporter that caused some kerfuffles within the White House press corps. The press corps determines seating assignments and the more prominent outlets get to sit more towards the front of the room. Post Covid they have limited the seating/number of people in the room. The reporters from less prominent outlets rotate in. You’ll notice that during the press briefings reporters will periodically ask questions on behalf of a reporter who couldn’t be in the room.
Chanel Rion, the OANN press corps reporter, was kicked out of the rotation for violating social distancing guidelines. She came back in as a “guest” of Stephanie Grisham . Another time the Trump people insisted that Rion and the CNN reporter switch seats on a day when CNN was assigned to sit in the front row and Rion was in the very back. The CNN reporter refused to move and the Trump people threatened to sic the Secret Service on her. Eventually the Trump people gave up.
As for Rion, she is a brown haired Barbie. She attended Harvard EXTENSION which has open enrollment and did not receive a degree. This is her Wikipedia profile:
Chanel Rion, (born Chanel Nmi Dayn-Ryan) is an American journalist, conspiracy theory political cartoonist, and anti-feminist children’s book author. She is the current White House correspondent for One America News Network (OAN). Rion changed her name in 2019, prior to applying for a White House press pass.
John Oliver did a piece on them. Watch it.
OANN is terrifying. It’s literally deep state, Orwellian nightmare shit. Everybody should be VERY worried about Trump giving them more attention.
It’s mildly funny at best.
He still has plenty of water carriers at Fox, so it is a temporary diversion at best. All of those folks are still shilling racist talking points and they’re still bad people.
And honestly, this just means he’s going to spend more time parroting the BS from sites like OANN, which will further legitimize it in the minds of his cult members, which is going to continue to give it a voice and none of us are going to benefit from that.
I have zero tears for anyone at Fox – they helped create this monster and they’re just the latest group who are surprised when that blind loyalty isn’t returned. They’ll keep crawling back for his crumbs, though.
I still want to poke ping-pong balls down that gob of his. God, he’s a rancid twat. (Apologies to Tim Armstrong.)
Thank you for the Rancid reference!
This is probably to set up the purchase of OANN and turn it into Dump TV, which is what the original plan was in 2016, but the Russian interference worked a little too well and let him win.
Yeah exactly.
Yep
Junior has already invested heavily
At some point, likely in the next week, rapist in chief will probably claim he never took hydroxychloroquine and the fake news media is making it up even though there is proof he said it. Fox reporting on this and taking his words at their fat and ugly face value just puts all of them in a corner. Of course none of that matters because the lies of this week will get buried by the ones of next week and on and on and on…
I bet you’re right.
I’m worried about a few possibilities: One is that he gets corona and recovers, ‘proving’ that it’s nothing more than the flu. The other is that he doesn’t and attributes his immunity to the drug and continues to crow about its effectiveness. A third is that he experiences the psychological side effects, melts down and fucks things up even more than he already has, and then says that he never said to take it. “I just said *I* was taking it, I never said anyone else had to,” would be his line.
I don’t think that he would ever admit that he has corona as he would perceive that as showing weakness. I think that your other possibilities I think that #2 is probable and #3 is possible.
@sparky: good point! Also true. But he and his supporters have a habit of turning attacks on them around, so that they appear to be turning a negative into a positive. Example: They took the term keyboard warriors and embraced it, as if it weren’t a pejorative. It’s like an I’m rubber, you’re glue kind of thing. I could absolutely see him admitting it and using it as an opportunity to boast about how strong and healthy (and manly!) he is.
He will again claim that he was just being sarcastic to see how the media would react. Whenever he takes his statements too far into crazytown even for Fox News, he denies that he ever said/did/meant it. And that OANN White House correspondent is creepy af.