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      Fox hosts accuse media of ‘gushing’ over Biden – after four years of fawning over Trump

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      The hosts at Fox News have been furious in recent days. The mainstream media, they say, has been “gushing” over Joe Biden, offering “nauseating” coverage of the new president and “not hiding their excitement”.Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham are some of the rightwing commentators at the conservative channel getting good mileage from the alleged Biden-fawning – but their accusations have raised eyebrows among those who watched Fox News’s hosts spend four years largely functioning as an extension of Donald Trump’s White House.Fox News, however, is not known as a place for self-reflection, or irony, which meant Hannity – who has literally campaigned with Trump – was able to chide other journalists’ coverage of Biden.“The tingling sensation up and down the media mobs’ legs,” Hannity noted last week, “Well they are throbbing like never before.”Hannity’s comments will have struck many observers as hypocritical, given Hannity’s own unbridled passion for the previous president.“Promises made, promises kept,” Hannity told the crowd at a Trump rally in 2018. “Mr President, thank you.”The sight of a journalist campaigning for a political candidate would have been strange, had it not been for Hannity’s long-running fascination with the twice-impeached president. The host has spent years lauding Trump, and has repeatedly contorted himself to support the ex-president when praise barely seemed possible.“You were very strong at the end of that press conference,” Hannity assured Trump during a Fox News interview in July 2018. The press conference Hannity was referring to was the infamous, widely condemned, Helsinki joint press conference by Trump and the Russia president, Vladimir Putin, where Trump sided with the Kremlin over its denial of election meddling.A couple of months earlier, Hannity had kicked off a segment on his show with the words: “President Trump has already accumulated an amazing record of accomplishments.” According to Hannity, those accomplishments included Trump’s approval ratings. At the time, 42% of Americans approved of Trump, and 52% disapproved.More recently, Hannity approvingly compared Trump – then stricken by coronavirus – to Winston Churchill. Hannity, however, was far from alone in his fawning attitude towards Trump – as a “Then and now” video montage by the Daily Show illustrated on Tuesday.“Well get ready, it’s gonna be four years of nauseating, gauzy coverage,” thundered Laura Ingraham on Fox News this week. “The watchdogs? Well, they’re just lapdogs.”Ingraham, host of the Ingraham Angle Fox News show, is something of an expert in this field.“I don’t see anybody else on the horizon that’s fighting for the American people like he is,” Ingraham said of Trump in 2017, while she has also suggested Trump will be viewed similarly to Ronald Reagan, which in Republican circles is considered a compliment. In December 2020, Ingraham even dedicated a segment to Trump’s “triumphs”, while when granted an interview with Trump, in 2017, she posed questions that brought a new meaning to the term softball.“Are you having fun in this job?” Ingraham asked Trump, later asking the president: “Look at the economy. Are you getting credit for this economic revival?”Two years later, Ingraham used an interview with Trump to praise his “incredible trip” to France and to criticize Nancy Pelosi, asking Trump: “How do you work with someone like that?”Another Daily Show clip captured Jesse Watters as he used his show on Fox News to lay out accusations of media bias. “They continue to fawn over this guy like he’s Jesus Christ!” said Watters, who outside the rightwing media world is mostly known for presenting a segment in New York City’s Chinatown which was widely condemned as racist.Like his hosts, Watters has done his fair share of fawning, including over Trump’s botched coronavirus response and the ex-president’s warmth towards North Korea.Tucker Carlson, whose professionally enraged shtick – and closeness to Trump – has made his show the highest-rated cable news program in the US, was also upset at the treatment of Biden, as the TV host laid out in a heavily sarcastic segment on 20 January.“He will fill the yawning void where our empathy should be. He is medicine,” was Carlson’s recap of inauguration day, after he played a selection of clips of people on TV suggesting Biden might be a healing presence in the White House.In recent days Steve Doocy, a host on the show Fox and Friends, also got in on the act and proclaimed “the mainstream media loves him!” of Biden. Doocy had previously used an interview with Trump to praise the then president’s “beautiful hotel”.Doocy’s colleague Jeanine Pirro was also upset with Biden’s treatment, in contrast to her own interactions with Trump. “Given your ability, your successes,” Pirro told Trump in an interview during his presidency that functioned more as a campaign huddle, “How are we going to get that across to the American people?” More

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      Trump attempted a coup: he must be removed while those who aided him pay | Robert Reich

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      A swift impeachment is imperative but from Rudy Giuliani and Don Jr to Fox News and Twitter, the president did not act aloneInsurrection: the day terror came to the US CapitolCall me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup. Related: Saving Justice review: how Trump’s Eye of Sauron burned everything – including James Comey Continue reading… More

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      in Elections

      Josh Hawley dodges question during Fox News grilling on election challenge

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      A prominent Republican senator has declined to clearly answer a question about whether he is involved in a bid to reverse the result of the 2020 presidential election that Democrat Joe Biden won convincingly in November.Asked if he was trying to “overturn the election” and keep Donald Trump in power, Missouri senator Josh Hawley told Fox News: “That depends what happens on Wednesday.”That is when Congress will meet to count Joe Biden’s 306-232 electoral college victory, which has been certified by all 50 states. Formal objections due to be raised by Hawley, around a dozen other senators and more than 100 Republicans in the House will not overturn the result – as Trump and his supporters hope they will.Democrats hold the House, guaranteeing defeat there, and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and other senior Republicans in that chamber also oppose the objections.Speaking on Monday night, Hawley at first avoided questions about whether he was trying to overturn an election and thereby disenfranchise millions of Americans, insisting he was objecting to the handling of the presidential election in states including Pennsylvania.“I just want to pin you down,” anchor Bret Baier said, eventually, “on on what you’re trying to do. Are you trying to say that as of 20 January [inauguration day] that President Trump will be president?”“Well,” said Hawley, “that depends on what happens on Wednesday. I mean, this is why we have to debate.”Baier answered: “No it doesn’t. The states, by the constitution, they certify the election, they did certify it by the constitution. Congress doesn’t have the right to overturn the certification, at least as most experts read it.”“Well,” Hawley said, “Congress is directed under the 12th amendment to count the electoral votes, there’s a statute that dates back to the 1800s, 19th century, that says there is a right to object, there’s a right to be heard, and there’s also [the] certification right.”Baier countered: “It’s from 1876, senator, and it’s the Tilden-Hayes race, in which there were three states that did not certify their electors. So Congress was left to come up with this system this commission that eventually got to negotiate a grand bargain.”That bargain left a Republican president, Rutherford Hayes, in power in return for an end to Reconstruction after the civil war. In August, the historian Eric Foner told the Guardian: “Part of the deal was the surrender of the rights of African Americans. I’m not sure that’s a precedent we want to reinvigorate, you know?”Baeir continued: “But now all of the states have certified their elections. As of 14 December. So it doesn’t by constitutional ways, open a door to Congress to overturn that, does it?”“My point,” Hawley said, “is this is my only opportunity during this process to raise an objection and to be heard. I don’t have standing to file lawsuits.”Trump’s campaign has filed more than 50 lawsuits challenging electoral results, losing the vast majority and being dismissed by the supreme court.Hawley dodged a subsequent question about whether his own White House ambitions are the real motivation for his objection – as they seem to be for other senators looking to appease the Trumpist base of the party.Also on Monday night, activists from the group ShutDownDC held what they called an “hour-long vigil” at Hawley’s Washington home. Demanding he drop his objection, they said they sang, lit candles and delivered a copy of the US constitution.Hawley, in Missouri at the time, complained that “Antifa scumbags” had “threatened my wife and newborn daughter, who can’t travel. They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door.” More

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      in Elections

      As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

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      When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
      After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
      All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
      The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
      “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
      “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
      That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
      Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
      “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
      “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
      Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
      Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
      Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
      Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
      “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
      “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

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      Fox News retracts Smartmatic voting machine fraud claim in staged video

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      Fox News has taken a further step back from Donald Trump’s baseless allegations of election fraud with a bizarre apparent legal retraction aired during shows hosted by some of the president’s most fervent supporters.First broadcast on Fox Business on Friday, on Lou Dobbs Tonight, and repeated over the weekend on shows hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro, the segment was presented as a news interview with election technology expert Eddie Perez.In the three-minute video, described as “a closer look at claims about Smartmatic”, Perez answers questions posed by an unidentified interviewer about a Florida company that provided voting systems for the November election.Perez is asked questions such as “Have you seen any evidence that Smartmatic software was used to flip votes anywhere in the US in this election?” and “Have you seen any evidence of Smartmatic sending US votes to be tabulated in foreign countries?”He says he has not seen any such evidence.Earlier this week, Antonio Mugica, chief executive of Smartmatic, sent legal notices to Fox News and two other networks promoted by Trump, One America News Network (OANN) and Newsmax, assailing them for spreading “false and defamatory claims” in a “disinformation campaign”.“They have no evidence to support their attacks on Smartmatic because there is no evidence,” Mugica said in a statement. “This campaign was designed to defame Smartmatic and undermine legitimately conducted elections.”Trump lost the election to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and trails by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. But his false claims of voter fraud and irregularities in voting systems and technology have received sympathetic hearings on the three rightwing networks.The Fox News interview with Perez was described by a network source as “a fact-checking segment aired in the same format” as original reporting about Smartmatic.Speaking to CNN, Perez said: “My reaction was to observe, as many others have, how kind of strange and unique that particular way at presenting the facts was.“There was nothing in any of the preliminary conversations that I had with Fox News that gave me any indication that Smartmatic would be a matter of conversation. It was never mentioned that this was going to be a discussion about Smartmatic or even claims about private vendors. I was anticipating a broader discussion about the debate around the election [and] election integrity.”Perez said Fox News’ coverage of the election was “speculative and not based in fact” and conspiracy theories peddled by hosts were “harmful to enhancing public confidence in the legitimacy of election outcomes”.“I am not accustomed to seeing Lou Dobbs air very straightforward factual evidence,” he said.A Fox News spokesperson declined comment. Earlier, the network referred CNN back to the video.Erik Connolly, an attorney for Smartmatic, said the company would not comment “due to potential litigation”.In a statement to CNN, Newsmax denied making direct claims of impropriety against Smartmatic and said questions about the company and its software were based on “legal documents or previously published reports”.“As any major media outlet,” Newsmax said, “we provide a forum for public concerns and discussion. In the past we have welcomed Smartmatic and its representatives to counter such claims they believe to be inaccurate and will continue to do so.” More

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      in Elections

      Fox News' Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson distance themselves from Trump

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      Donald Trump continued to gravitate towards his new rightwing media allies at TV channels One America News Network and Newsmax on Tuesday, even as heavyweight supporters Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Rush Limbaugh distanced themselves from the president’s attempts to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.On Fox News on Monday, Ingraham said: “Unless the legal situation changes in a dramatic and unlikely manner, Joe Biden will be inaugurated on 20 January.”Carlson claimed “the 2020 election was not fair”, but admitted Trump had lost it.On his radio show, Limbaugh attacked Trump’s lawyers in Pennsylvania, led by Rudy Giuliani, for failing to provide any evidence to back claims of voter fraud in the state.“You announce massive bombshells,” he said, “then you better have some bombshells.”On Tuesday morning, Trump pinned Carlson’s monologue to his Twitter page. But he also retweeted a string of messages by Randy Quaid. In one, the actor echoed Carlson’s claims about trust in election infrastructure, demanding “an in-person-only-paper ballot re-vote”.“Are you listening, Republicans?” Trump tweeted.But in another message, shot in extreme close-up and flashing light and spoken in bizarrely hammy tones, Quaid quoted an old Trump tweet: “Fox News daytime ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime, even worse. Very sad to watch this happen.“But they forgot … they forgot what made them successful. What got them there. They forgot the golden goose. The only difference between the 2016 election and 2020 is Fox News.”Trump has made many such claims about Fox News’ failings. Fox News has disputed his claims about ratings. On Tuesday, a spokeswoman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.One America News and Newsmax are devoted to supporting Trump. With a move into television among Trump’s possible post-White House plans, both are increasingly under the spotlight.Newsmax has enjoyed ratings growth and mainstream attention, including a Wall Street Journal report which said Trump allies had considered a buyout.OAN remains a fringe operator but on Monday, the Daily Beast reported that one host, Christina Bobb, had been working on the Trump team’s legal challenges.“Christina is an attorney and has helped with some legal work in her personal capacity and not on behalf of OAN,” Jenna Ellis, a Trump adviser, told the Beast.Ellis made her own headlines on Monday. Speaking to MSNBC, she said: “President Trump won by a landslide.”“Take a pause,” host Ari Melber interjected. “If you make false statements, you don’t run roughshod. You made a false accusation.”Trump lost Georgia by around 12,000 votes, Pennsylvania by around 80,000 and Michigan by more than 150,000. Biden won the national popular vote by 6m and the electoral college by 306-232. On Monday, Trump allowed the transition to proceed but continued to make baseless claims of fraud and insist he would be proved the winner.Trump is certainly suffering one landslide defeat: in election-related lawsuits. According to the Democratic elections lawyer Marc Elias, the president has won one such case – and lost 35. More

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      ‘Walked a fine line’: how Fox News found itself in an existential crisis

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      It was about 11.20pm on election night when Fox News made the call. The Democratic candidate had clinched a key swing state, a win that could set them on a path to be president of the United States.In the Fox News studio, Karl Rove, conservative panelist and longtime Republican strategist, was apoplectic. Around the country, Republican supporters were bereft. Fox News launched an immediate inquisition into its own decision, but the network stood by the call.Barack Obama had won Ohio, defeating Mitt Romney. Obama would be sworn in as president, for the second time, on 20 January 2013.Fast forward eight years, and Fox News found itself in a strikingly similar position on 3 November 2020. The rightwing news channel was the first to call Arizona, which has gone blue once in the past 72 years, for Joe Biden.Donald Trump and his campaign were furious, barraging the network with a series of phone calls in an attempt to get the decision overturned. The president’s supporters were upset too.At protests outside a vote counting center in Phoenix, Arizona, a crowd chanted: “Fox News sucks!”, turning their ire on a channel whose hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have spent the past four years praising Trump’s almost every move or utterance.Now, in the tumultuous week following that Arizona call, Fox News, the most-watched cable news channel in America, has found itself in a sort of existential crisis. More

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      'Can we have America back?' Fox News video echoes Trump election claims

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      Fox News has come in for criticism over a promotional video in which opinion hosts echo Donald Trump’s baseless claims about the presidential election, which he lost to Joe Biden but which he refuses to concede.
      “Oh my god,” Andrew Laurence of Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog, wrote on Twitter. “Fox is running a promo of their ‘opinion’ hosts casting doubt on the election results and I guess trying to keep their rabid viewers sated.”
      Oliver Darcy, a media reporter for CNN, said the video showed executives at the Rupert Murdoch-owned channel “really have no shame”.
      In the short video, an announcer introduces a montage of “the voices America trusts”. Laura Ingraham is shown first, saying: “These legal efforts are critical.”
      That is a reference to cases Trump has mounted in key battleground states, alleging without evidence that voter fraud and ballot irregularities occurred, and seeking to overturn results via recounts.

      Such quixotic efforts have met with little success and experts say they are almost guaranteed to fail. More than 5m votes down in the popular vote, Trump lost the electoral college to Biden by 306-232, the score by which he beat Hillary Clinton in 2016 in what he claimed was a landslide.
      On the Fox News video, Tucker Carlson appears next, saying: “There are apparent irregularities.”
      “The media mob, and the Democrats, they lie,” says Sean Hannity.
      “Speaking up for you, and the issues that matter most to the people,” says the announcer.
      “They thought there would be a blue wave, not the case,” says Steve Doocy of Fox & Friends, a morning show favoured by Trump. In fact Doocy’s comment points to an electoral truth: that Trump attracted the most votes of any sitting president, staving off an expected landslide defeat, and that Republicans made gains at state level and in the US House and look set to retain control of the Senate.
      “You’re gonna see something even bigger than Trump in 2022 and 2024,” says Greg Gutfeld, referring to the next two election years.
      “The truth does need to come out,” says Ingraham.
      “Can we speak freely, again, can we have America back?” asks Carlson.
      “We the people deserve better,” says Hannity.
      “Fox News,” the announcer says. “America is watching.”
      Trump has attacked Fox News since the election, in which it was quick to call Arizona, a key state, for Biden, then joined other media organisations in calling the whole race for the Democrat last Saturday.
      “Fox News daytime ratings have completely collapsed,” Trump tweeted on Thursday. “Weekend daytime even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen, but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose. The biggest difference between the 2016 Election, and 2020, was Fox News!”
      Darcy, of CNN, wrote that the Fox News video “appears to be part of a bid to hold on to its bleeding audience – an audience that refuses to believe reality, in large part because Fox has primed millions to distrust credible news sources”.
      Fox News has countered that its ratings remain strong, saying in a recent release it “finished the month of October as the most-watched cable network in both total day and primetime total viewers … notching 52 months in a row in the top spot”.
      According to Media Matters, Trump’s conspiracy theories have crossed into Fox News’ “straight” news operation.
      In the four days after the result was called, the watchdog said, Fox News “cast doubt on or pushed conspiracy theories about the election results at least 255 times. A review by Media Matters found 111 such claims on Fox’s ‘straight news’ shows and 144 claims on the network’s opinion shows”.
      “Where are the adults at Fox?” Darcy asked. “Why aren’t they getting their talent under control? Well, this ad makes it clear: The executives approve their talent behaving the way they have. In fact, they’re so proud of the undemocratic commentary, they’re happy to showcase it in an ad. They really have no shame.”
      Fox News did not offer comment on its promotional video. More