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Fox News‘Did Donald Trump lose?’ Fox News host won’t answer Texas DemocratIn interview James Talarico challenges Fox News host Pete Hegseth to say Trump lost the 2020 presidential election00:52Martin Pengelly in Washington@ More
BooksRupert Murdoch approved Fox News Arizona call that signaled Trump defeat, book says
Loss of Arizona signalled Donald Trump’s 2020 election defeat
Murdoch reportedly said: ‘Fuck him’
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Martin Pengelly in Washington@ More
US politicsExtremist rhetoric from rightwing media and officials is ‘intensifying’, experts sayComparisons of Democrats to Nazis and suggestions thousands should be executed spark fears of violence Adam Gabbatt@ More
The Fox News anchor Chris Wallace made headlines of his own on Sunday, by pointing out to a senior Republican that he and the rest of his party recently voted against $350bn in funding for law enforcement.“Can’t you make the argument that it’s you and the Republicans who are defunding the police?” Wallace asked Jim Banks, the head of the House Republican study committee.The congressman was the author of a Fox News column in which he said Democrats were responsible for spikes in violent crime.“There is overwhelming evidence,” Banks wrote, “connecting the rise in murders to the violent riots last summer” – a reference to protests over the murder of George Floyd which sometimes produced looting and violence – “and the defund the police movement. Both of which were supported, financially and rhetorically, by the Democratic party and the Biden administration.”Joe Biden does not support any attempt to “defund the police”, a slogan adopted by some on the left but which remains controversial and which the president has said Republicans have used to “beat the living hell” out of Democrats.On Fox News Sunday, Banks repeatedly attacked the so-called “Squad” of young progressive women in the House and said Democrats “stigmatised” law enforcement and helped criminals.“Let me push back on that a little bit,” Wallace said. “Because [this week] the president said that the central part in his anti-crime package is the $350bn in the American Rescue Plan, the Covid relief plan that was passed.”Covid relief passed through Congress in March, under rules that meant it did not require Republican votes. It did not get a single one.Asked if that meant it was “you and the Republicans who are defunding the police”, Banks dodged the question.Wallace said: “No, no, sir, respectfully – wait, sir, respectfully … I’m asking you, there’s $350bn in this package the president says can be used for policing …“Congressman Banks, let me finish and I promise I will give you a chance to answer. The president is saying cities and states can use this money to hire more police officers, invest in new technologies and develop summer job training and recreation programs for young people. Respectfully, I’ve heard your point about the last year, but you and every other Republican voted against this $350bn.”Turning a blind eye to Wallace’s question, Banks said: “If we turn a blind eye to law and order, and a blind eye to riots that occurred in cities last summer, and we take police officers off the street, we’re inevitably going to see crime rise.”Wallace asked if Banks could support any gun control legislation. Banks said that if Biden was “serious about reducing violent crime in America”, he should “admonish the radical voices in the Democrat [sic] party that have stigmatised police officers and law enforcement”.Despite working for Republicans’ favoured broadcaster, Wallace is happy to hold their feet to the fire, as grillings of Donald Trump and Kevin McCarthy have shown.He has also attracted criticism, for example for failing to control Trump during a chaotic presidential debate last year which one network rival called “a hot mess, inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck”.Last year, Wallace told the Guardian: “I do what I do and I’m sitting there during the week trying to come up with the best guests and the best show I possibly can and I’m not sitting there thinking about how do we fit in some media commentary.“We’re not there to try to one-up the president or any politician.” More
Tucker Carlson of Fox News is a “go-to source” for the US political media he claims to “hate” and has called “cowards” and “cringing animals not worthy of respect” – according to a columnist for the New York Times.Ben Smith, a former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, outed Carlson as “the go-to guy for sometimes-unflattering stories about Donald J Trump and for coverage of the internal politics of Fox News (not to mention stories about Mr Carlson himself)”.Carlson has become a star of the pro-Trump right – even figuring in polls regarding the next Republican presidential nomination, although he told a podcast last week he will not run – and a hate figure on the US left.Referring to Carlson’s role stoking culture wars over Covid-19, Smith wrote that he dodged the question of whether he has been vaccinated himself.Carlson reportedly replied: “When was the last time you had sex with your wife and in what position? … We can trade intimate details.”Smith wrote: “Then we argued back and forth about vaccines and he ended the conversation with a friendly invitation to return to his show.”Smith also quoted a leading recycler of Washington gossip, Michael Wolff, who has written two Trumpworld tell-alls and last week announced a third.“In Trump’s Washington, Tucker Carlson is a primary supersecret source,” Smith quoted Wolff as writing in a new book of essays. “I know this because I know what he has told me, and I can track his exquisite, too-good-not-to-be-true gossip through unsourced reports and as it often emerges into accepted wisdom.”Smith also quoted a heavily trailed book by Michael Bender, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, entitled Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost.According to Smith, Bender recounts a call between Trump and Carlson after the first debate last year, when Trump interrupted and hectored Joe Biden. Carlson is shown letting Trump go to voicemail, then telling him he did not do a good job onstage.“Mr Bender declined to comment on the sourcing that allowed him to so precisely reconstruct a conversation only two people were privy to,” Smith wrote.According to publicity material, Bender spoke to Trump. So have many other authors. Jonathan Karl of ABC News, author of Front Row at the Trump Show, told Axios on Monday: “If you thought there was no more to know, it’s been mind-blowing.”Brian Stelter of CNN, author of Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of the Truth, told Smith “you can see Tucker’s fingerprints all over the hardcover”.But in a week when Carlson pushed conspiracy theories about the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Stelter told Smith they had not spoken for his paperback.Carlson called mainstream US reporters “animals” and “cowards” in April.“I just can’t overstate how disgusted I am,” he told Outkick, “not simply by the details of the lying of the medium, but disgusted by the emphasis. The media is basically Praetorian Guard for the ruling class … I really hate them for it, I’ll be honest.”Detailing the collapse of Times and Politico stories critical of Carlson under attack from the host, Smith compared Carlson to Trump and Joe McCarthy. The senator from Wisconsin fueled anti-communist hysteria in the 1950s and was recently the subject of a biography entitled Demagogue.Carlson told Smith: “I don’t know any gossip.”But Smith said he spoke to 16 journalists from publications other than the Times.One “reporter for a prominent publication who speaks to Mr Carlson regularly” said: “It’s so unknown in the general public how much he plays both sides.”Another said: “If you open yourself up as a resource to mainstream media reporters, you don’t even have to ask them to go soft on you.”Smith said he would not reveal the contents of his own off-record chats with Carlson. More
The White House press secretary turned Fox News contributor Kayleigh McEnany has claimed she “never lied” while speaking for Donald Trump.Addressing a conservative group on Sunday, McEnany said of her first steps in the role: “And then there was the question, ‘Will you ever lie to us?’, and I said without hesitation, ‘No’, and I never did, as a woman of faith.“As a mother of baby Blake, as a person who meticulously prepared at some of the world’s hardest institutions, I never lied. I sourced my information, but that will never stop the press from calling you a liar.”The press has questioned the veracity of McEnany’s claims. So have political factchecking sites. For instance, Politifact gave McEnany a “pants on fire” rating last September after she told reporters: “The president never downplayed the virus.”She was responding to questions about reporting by Bob Woodward of the Washington Post, to whom Trump said in March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic took hold: “To be honest with you, I wanted to always play it down. I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”Politifact said: “The record shows she’s wrong.”McEnany restarted White House briefings after more than 400 days without one under Stephanie Grisham. Sean Spicer and Sarah Sanders also presided over a deterioration in relations between the press and the White House and, critics said, the relationship between the White House and truth.Reporting McEnany’s first appearance, on 1 May 2020, the Guardian said that “even on an assured debut, McEnany skated close to peddling dodgy information about Trump’s responses to the coronavirus pandemic (‘This president has always sided on the side of data’) and allegations of sexual misconduct (‘He has always told the truth’).”The Washington Post’s factcheckers put Trump’s final tally of false or misleading claims at 30,573.At the Turning Point USA Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas, McEnany said she came up with a motto for her press operation: “Offense only.”“Because I knew what we were up against. Republicans always get the bad headlines, always get the false stories, always get the lies, if I can use that word, told by the press. There is one standard for Democrats and another for Republicans, and we must be on offense, confident, bold and willing to call it out. We cannot be silent.”Regarding supposed lying by the press, McEnany cited coverage of the clearing of Lafayette Square, intelligence on Russian bounties on US troops and the theory the coronavirus escaped a laboratory in China – all stories subject to evolving reporting.McEnany is one of a number of veterans of the Trump White House to have found roles at Fox News, where she is a commentator and co-hosts Outnumbered.But when she was press secretary, even Fox News cut away from her remarks when she advanced Trump’s lie that his defeat by Biden was the result of electoral fraud.In March, responding to news of McEnany’s new job, an anonymous Fox News staffer quoted by the Daily Beast referred to the 6 January attack on the US Capitol in calling McEnany “a mini-Goebbels” who “helped incite an insurrection on our democracy”.On Sunday, amid uproar over her claim never to have lied in service of Trump, she tweeted: “Haters will hate!” More
Joe Biden’s White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, has likened reporters from Fox News and other rightwing outlets to “representatives of the Russian and Chinese media asking questions directed by their government … propaganda pushers” to be treated with extreme caution.Psaki was speaking to CNN’s Reliable Sources in an interview broadcast on Sunday. Her relations with the media have been smoother – and her briefings more frequent – than any predecessor in the Trump administration. But clashes with reporters including Peter Doocy of Fox News have made headlines.Last week, one such interaction involved questions about Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser. Republicans and rightwing reporters have seized on the publication of emails sent by Fauci at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic.Asked by Doocy if Fauci should be “held accountable” for “saying one thing in email and then coming to this microphone and saying something else”, Psaki called Fauci “a renowned public servant” who has “overseen management of multiple global health crises”.“Attacks launched on him are certainly something we wouldn’t stand by,” she said, adding: “I am going to let Dr Fauci speak to his own defence about his emails from 17 months ago before this president even took office.”Doocy asked about US funding for Chinese research laboratories, a key part of Republican attacks on Fauci as the theory that Covid-19 escaped such a lab gains renewed attention.Psaki deflected the question.Doocy asked: “Can you imagine any circumstance where the president would ever fire him?”“No,” said Psaki, turning to another reporter, who she told: “Go ahead.”On CNN, Psaki said: “The things that get under my skin are when the premise of a question is based on inaccurate information, misleading information. That can be frustrating. I try not to show it too much, try not to let people see me sweat too much. But occasionally I have a moment of humanity.”Host Brian Stelter pointed out that most questions “based on falsehoods come from brands like Newsmax, which does sometimes get called on the briefing room. I know a lot of liberals don’t want Fox News to get called on. I think they should be, but … why do you call on Fox News and Newsmax?”Psaki said: “My point of view and more importantly, the president’s point of view, is that the story is not about me or a debate with news outlets. The story is about the plans of the administration and what we’re trying to project to the American people.“And when he pledged to govern for all Americans, that means talking to a range of outlets – liberal, conservative, people who have different areas of interest. So that’s exactly what I try to do every day.”Stelter asked why some viewers celebrate when the press secretary is seen to “shut down” a questioner such as Doocy.“I also have a responsibility not to allow the briefing room to become a forum for propaganda or a forum for pushing forward falsehoods or inaccurate information,” Psaki said.“My best preparation for that was actually serving as the state department spokesperson when there were representatives of the Russian and the Chinese media in the briefing room asking me questions that were directed by their government.“So we see that from time to time in the briefing room, not every single day at all, but I have a responsibility to the public to make sure they’re getting accurate information and the premises of questions that are propaganda-pushing are not giving them inaccurate information.”Psaki also defended the administration against criticism for holding only one presidential press conference – “That may be driven more by the media than it is by the American public” – and suggest some reporters’ “muscles have atrophied a little bit” when it comes to understanding the realities of governance.Fox News gleefully rounded up conservative criticism of the interview. Verdicts included “subservient, obsequious” and “bootlicking”.In his Reliable Sources email, Stelter said his goal had been “to talk big-picture … and to get personal, beyond the news-of-day questions that get asked at the briefings.” More
The Fox News host Sean Hannity was criticised for appearing at a Trump rally in 2018 but according to a new book he was involved again with Trump’s campaign in 2020, helping write an ad that aired on his primetime show.Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost, by Mike Bender, senior White House reporter for the Wall Street Journal, will be published in August.News of its contents, including “some amazingly hilarious revelations” about Mike Pence, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone, Tucker Carlson, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump “and the rest of the Trump posse”, was reported by Punchbowl News.According to the news site, the ad known to Trump insiders as “the Hannity ad” and “the one Hannity wrote” ran only during Hannity’s show.An anonymous Trump aide is reported as saying “Hannity said this is our best spot yet” but Bender reports: “Inside the campaign, the spot was mocked mercilessly – mostly because of the dramatic, over-the-top language and a message that seemed to value quantity over quality.“Donald Trump himself, in a post-election interview with Bender, did not dispute that Hannity wrote the ad, which called [Joe] Biden a ‘47-year swamp creature’ who had ‘accomplished nothing’ and supported a ‘radical, socialist Green New Deal’.”Such language attacking Biden’s long career in the Senate and as vice-president to Barack Obama was used by Trump advisers.In October, for example, senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters: “The contrast between a 47-year swamp creature in Joe Biden and a businessman in President Trump has been a major theme of this campaign and I would expect it to be so through election day.”Bender reports that the Trump campaign thought the Hannity ad “so useless that they limited it to exactly one show: Hannity … If Trump and Hannity watched the spot on television – and were satisfied enough to stop asking about the commercial – that seemed to be the best result of the ad. The cost of that investment: $1.5m.”Hannity denied writing the ad, telling Bender: “The world knows that Sean Hannity supports Donald Trump. But my involvement specifically in the campaign – no. I was not involved that much. Anybody who said that is full of shit.”But Hannity has form. In 2016, he was reprimanded by Fox News after he endorsed Trump in a campaign video. In 2018, he appeared with Trump at a rally in Missouri – and was reprimanded again.Before the event, shortly before the November midterm elections, Hannity tweeted: “To be clear, I will not be on stage campaigning with the president. I am covering the final rally for the show.” He then presented his show from the venue, telling viewers to vote Republican and echoing party slogans.On stage, Trump praised his allies at Fox News, saying: “They’re very special. They’ve done an incredible job for us. They’ve been with us from the beginning.”He then called Hannity up to join him. As reported by the Associated Press, Hannity “hugged the president … and, after echoing Trump’s traditional epithets about the media, recited some economic statistics”.Another host, Jeanine Pirro, also appeared on stage.Amid a storm of criticism, Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, a liberal watchdog, said Hannity’s behaviour was “dangerous for democracy and a threat to a free press”.Hannity said he had been surprised to be invited on stage.Fox News said it did not “condone any talent participating in campaign events … This was an unfortunate distraction and has been addressed.” More
