Fox News

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Fox News and Succession: could the show’s dysfunctional election fantasy become reality?

      by

      The episode is called “America Decides”. But fans of HBO’s widely watched satire, Succession, will not have been shocked to see scions of the eminently dislikable Roy dynasty showing little respect for who Americans elect as president when it collides with the family’s financial and political interests.It’s also no secret that Succession’s story of a domineering father and the cutthroat rivalries of his offspring draws heavily on Rupert Murdoch’s family, his media empire and its ugliest creation, Fox News.In Succession, the Fox News stand-in, ATN, declares the probable loser – the Republican neo-fascist Jeryd Mencken – as the winner of a presidential election in an attempt to overturn the vote. Parts of the storyline mirror the turmoil of several American elections, from what many regard as George W Bush’s daylight robbery of the Florida vote in 2000 to Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat two decades later. But Succession veers from history at a crucial juncture.Clearly, the series writers drew inspiration from Fox News’s nightly ventures into what an ATN executive calls its “unique perspective” on the news, not least the recently departed Tucker Carlson’s campaign to paint the 2020 election as rigged against Trump.But what if Fox News starts taking inspiration from Succession? Could the news channel that cared so little for the truth it was forced to pay $787.5m over false accusations of rigged voting machines go all the way and declare Trump the winner of next year’s election – even if he loses – just to keep its viewers happy? And, if it did, what would be the consequences?Succession has yet to reveal whether ATN and Mencken pull off their coup. But Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, is sceptical that reality would prove so straightforward.“I can believe that Fox would cheat. I can believe that Fox would try to miscall an election or insist that these four, five, six states are just too close to call, and that means the election is up in the air when others are saying it’s over. I can see all kinds of things like that. I just don’t think it would produce a crisis as serious as [Succession] is trying to suggest, because we’re on to Fox. We know what they’re up to,” he said.“And while there’s a tiny chance that some weird scenario could develop because we’ve had weird scenarios develop before, it’s difficult to create a crisis of legitimacy unless there are several other factors besides Fox.”In Succession, we see Mencken facing, but not accepting, defeat.“If I lose, I want it correctly characterised as a huge victory,” he tells Roman Roy, the ruthless, snarky chief executive of ATN’s parent company. “I want to be the president.”The tone of ATN’s coverage is already set. In an echo of revelations about Fox News, the character overseeing election night on ATN, Tom Wambsgans, is worried about losing viewers to other rightwing broadcasters. He pushes to report anything that will call into question the legitimacy of votes for Mencken’s Democratic opponent, Daniel Jimenez.“Did you see the viral thing about the woman who voted, like, 40 times for Jimenez under her dead mom’s name?” Wambsgans asks the station’s news manager.The manager says the woman making the claim is “not a well person”.“You’re not a doctor,” Wambsgans responds. “Until you qualify, why don’t you get her on the air?”Shortly afterwards, a report comes in of a fire at a vote-counting centre in a heavily Democratic part of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 100,000 destroyed ballots look almost certain to decide the election.Roman Roy characterises the blaze as an “antifa firebombing”, even though it advantages Mencken. On air, ATN’s version of Tucker Carlson pushes that line.“Maybe some of the crazies heard they were underperforming, and decided to stop the counting and destroy the evidence,” he says.Roman Roy seizes the chance to declare Wisconsin for Mencken in a move that swings the entire election in his favour.“We’re not waiting for burned votes, so call it,” Roy demands of ATN’s editors.Mencken gives a victory speech in which he declares his win has been called “by an authority of known integrity” and that, in effect, there is no need to wait for the official results.There are reasons to doubt that such a move would be successful in reality. As cumbersome and compromised as the US’s electoral machinery may be at times, it can also prove resilient.Trump’s repeated efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, governor and other officials to “find” the extra votes to overturn Biden’s victory in 2020 met with a wall of refusal, despite Fox News’s backing. The courts wouldn’t play ball, either. The system held, and the former president may well be on his way to prison for his efforts, along with some of his cronies.In fact, some key events in 2020 played out in a mirror image of the Succession scenario in which ATN calls Wisconsin for Mencken.Fox News’s data team actually played it straight in 2020 and infuriated Trump by going out on a limb and calling Arizona for Joe Biden on election night before other news organisations. It turned out to be the right call, even if it was based on unreliable exit polls, and the outcome proved to be a lot closer than they suggested.But Succession did capture one consequence of the Fox News call.Once Fox gave Arizona to Biden, the numbers meant the network could not call another state for him without also declaring that he had therefore won the presidency and, more importantly to Fox News viewers, that Trump had lost. When Fox News’s Washington team was ready to call Nevada for Biden, it was blocked by some presenters and the network held off on a result until every other network had declared more than 14 hours later.In Succession, Roman Roy understands that with Wisconsin as a win for Mencken, he can use the result from one of two remaining states in play to declare total victory for the Republican even if the votes aren’t really there.That scenario requires that the election come down to a single state, a rare occurrence. Even if Fox News had called Arizona for Trump in 2020, he would still have had to take two or three of the other closely run states to win the electoral college.But Craig Harrington, research director at Media Matters for America, which tracks misinformation in the conservative media, said the election did come down to a single state two decades ago in Florida and Fox News was instrumental in determining the outcome.“Succession was uncomfortable to watch because we have already lived an entire lifetime in a world where Fox News’s decision to pre-emptively call an election on behalf of their political ally arguably changed the course of history. So “Could this happen again?” is the question rather than “Could this happen at all?” he said.Harrington sees the fictional burning of the ballots in Wisconsin as modeled on the wiping out of thousands of votes in Florida in 2000 which delivered the state and the presidency to George W Bush.On the night, the TV networks, including Fox, initially called Florida for Al Gore. But then Bush’s team began calling. As it happened, the head of Fox News election night decision desk was George W Bush’s cousin, John Ellis.Before long, George W and his brother, Jeb, who was Florida’s governor, were on the phone to Ellis telling him that the election was much tighter than the polls said and urging him to rescind the declaration for Gore. Ellis obliged. Then Fox News called the state for Bush. The other networks rapidly followed. Gore called Bush to concede.Fox News had got it wrong. The vote was still too close to call and the networks reversed themselves a couple of hours later. Gore withdrew his concession. But by then a large number of Americans thought Bush had won the presidency, and it had consequences.Hundreds of Republican party staffers and lawyers led what became known as the Brooks Brothers riot, named after shop selling suits, that shut down a recount of votes and froze Bush’s claim to victory in place until the US supreme court handed him the keys to the White House.“Because of Fox News’s decision to make the call when they did not have the data to back it up, the whole nation was informed that George W Bush had won the presidency,” said Harrington. “He started to become the president in waiting. The government began to transition. It set a tone in public that changed the course of history.”Sabato regards 2000 as a “terrible breakdown in the system” but thinks a repeat remains unlikely.Harrington agrees and said that without other factors at play, Fox News could only get so far in trying to push any particular candidate into the White House.“In order to actually rig an outcome, you have to have processes in place or individuals in place to interdict operations and to slow things down intentionally,” he said.In the Succession story, Harrington said it’s quite likely that ATN’s guns would have been spiked in real life by Milwaukee election officials finding a way to fix the issue of the burned ballots. But he added that might be different if the Trump camp had succeeded in its attempt to place supporters in strategic roles.“We saw this effort in 2022 to get election deniers elected to key roles in local government, state government, county governments all around the country during the midterm elections. We saw election deniers run and overwhelmingly they lost. And so we kind of dodged this attempt to infiltrate the election system,” said Harrington.Still, as Fox News attempts to paint the 2020 election as stolen from Trump showed, its ability to stir up trouble should not be underestimated. The network’s persistent pushing of vote fraud claims played an important part in rallying support for Trump after the election, and in fuelling the myths and anger that drove the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol.Sabato said that Fox News may not decide the winner but it can still stir up “small numbers who can cause great tumult in free societies”.“Fox could easily be the match that started a prairie fire, at least in deeply red states or in places where white nationalists or supremacists are prominent,” he said.“I do believe that the democratic process would win out but there are other points in American history where it’s gotten very messy. That’s what I’m worried about.” More

    • 188 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Fox News’s ‘vitriolic lies’ present clear threat to US democracy, says woman suing rightwing network

      by

      The woman suing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News for defamation in the wake of the $787m settlement with the voting machine company Dominion has accused the media giant of waging a campaign of “vitriolic lies” against her that amounts to a threat to democracy.Nina Jankowicz sued Fox News and its parent company Fox Corporation for allegedly damaging her reputation as a specialist in conspiracy theories and disinformation campaigns. The lawsuit was lodged in a Delaware state court exactly a year after she resigned as executive director of a new Department of Homeland Security unit combatting online disinformation.The Disinformation Governance Board was abruptly shut down in the wake of a storm of virulent rightwing criticism, allegedly fueled by Fox News. Jankowicz and the new DHS division she led were attacked as being part of a conspiracy to censor rightwing comment spearheaded by Joe Biden.Jankowicz resigned from the federal post on 18 May 2022, barely three weeks into the job.In an interview with the Guardian, she said her motive in suing Fox was to ensure accountability for what she alleged was a campaign of lies against her that undermined American democracy. “There needs to be consequences,” she said.“It was lies, very personal and very vitriolic lies. And I don’t think that is democratic.”She added that what she claimed was Fox’s reckless disregard for the truth had implications for the future of the country. “If we can’t agree on statements of fact, how can you live in a democracy?”Jankowicz was announced as the head of the new disinformation board on 27 April last year and was instantly engulfed in a tempest of rightwing anger. In the lawsuit, Jankowicz’s lawyers allege that the attacks skyrocketed the following day, after Fox News hosts began fuelling the hatred with unfounded claims about her desire to censor rightwing voices.One of the most vociferous critics, the complaint says, was Tucker Carlson, the news channel’s then primetime star who was fired by Fox last month in the wake of the Dominion settlement. In his opening monologue on 28 April, Carlson called Jankowicz a “moron”, said that what she was doing amounted to a “full-scale attack on free speech” and dubbed the disinformation board “the new Soviet America”.Other Fox hosts, including Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, followed suit, labelling her a “useful idiot”, “janko-half-witz” and “insane”. Hannity went so far as to depict her as “one of the biggest perpetrators and purveyors of disinformation in the entire country”.The Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade wondered why President Biden would give a pregnant woman such an “important job” – Jankowicz was eight months pregnant at the time.“I was weeks away from giving birth to my first kid when this was all happening,” Jankowicz told the Guardian. “That’s a time I will never get back.”The attacks continued long after she had resigned her federal position. As recently as last month, Ingraham returned to the fray; the Fox News host played a clip of Jankowicz describing the harassment she had endured and commented: “She’s just upset that she didn’t get to censor everybody”.As an authority on disinformation campaigns, Jankowicz said she could predict the cycle of events that unfolded. Whenever Fox hosts attacked her on air, a swarm of online hate would be directed at her culminating in multiple death threats.“Every time they talked about me on Fox, a new wave of harassment would start. I would get a spike especially when Carlson and Hannity mentioned me.”Many of the Fox attacks made a point of her gender, she said. “They were focused on belittling me, cutting me down to size – disregarding my serious work and the fact that I had been called as a Republican witness in Senate hearings – just to make me look like a silly little girl.”The new lawsuit adds to several legal actions piling up on Fox’s plate.In addition to Dominion’s $1.6bn suit, which alleged Fox had spread the lie that its voting machines helped steal the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump, the media company is facing a separate action brought by another voting machine firm, Smartmatic.Carlson’s former booker, Abby Grossberg, is also suing Fox alleging its one-time star fostered an abusive workplace culture.Jankowicz faces a daunting mountain to climb in taking on the Murdoch empire. As a public figure holding an important federal role at the time of the alleged defamation, she must clear a very high legal standard.She must show that the broadcaster acted with “actual malice” in disseminating false statements about her that it knew were untrue, or that it showed “reckless disregard” in airing those statements without checking their veracity.The complaint claims that the channel mentioned more than 150 times that Jankowicz intended to monitor and censor free speech. In fact, the disinformation board had no powers to censor or surveil anyone, it was merely designed to co-ordinate the efforts of other government entities.“They depicted me as a fascist who didn’t stand up for free speech, when precisely standing up for free speech had been the purpose of my entire career,” she said.The lawsuit also points to Fox hosts saying she was fired from the board when she in fact resigned.The Guardian invited Fox to respond to the claim that it knowingly or recklessly broadcast untruths about Jankowicz. A Fox spokesperson said the company has moved to have the case relocated from the Delaware state court to a federal court, but did not respond to any of the specific allegations.Jankowicz is bringing the action with the help of a gofundme page which has so far raised almost $60,000 towards her legal fees. She said she was heartened by that support, but stressed that money was not her motive.“I’ve been cautioned time and time again that this might not be ‘worth it’ financially,” she said. “That’s not why I’m pursuing this.”Her aim she said was partly to show that individuals could also confront the powerful, not just businesses like Dominion and Smartmatic. “These companies have venture capital firms behind them, they can afford fancy lawyers and years-long trials to hold Fox to account. For individuals like me, it’s much harder – and I don’t believe that is something that our system can sustain.”By bringing the lawsuit, she runs the risk of potentially opening herself up to a renewed wave of criticism that she is attempting to limit free speech protected under the first amendment. The Guardian asked her whether suing for defamation was the best way to counter Fox’s alleged disinformation.Jankowicz stressed that she didn’t pursue the lawsuit lightly. “I don’t think anybody should pursue a lawsuit just because someone said something mean about them – I have a thick skin. But I believe Fox’s continued lies about individuals are a greater threat to free speech and democracy than a carefully considered, narrow lawsuit like mine.”She said her main aim was to force Fox to answer for what she called its false statements of facts. “That sort of coverage is not protected speech,” she said. “If Fox isn’t brought to account, they will not stop.” More

    • 138 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Roger Ailes’s widow says Murdochs have ‘wreaked havoc’ on Fox News

      by

      Rupert Murdoch’s family has “wreaked havoc” on Fox News, said the widow of Roger Ailes, the network’s former chief executive, adding that the 92-year-old media baron would “never come close” to her late husband’s “genius”.Ailes died on 18 May 2017 at the age of 77. The former Republican operative built Fox News into a rightwing media giant but died less than a year after he was forced out over allegations of extensive sexual harassment.On Monday his widow, Elizabeth Ailes, a former producer and executive at NBC, issued a tweet to mark what would have been his 83rd birthday.“Happy Heavenly Birthday Roger Ailes,” she wrote. “It took you 20 years to build Fox News into the powerhouse that it was and only six years for the Murdochs to wreak havoc. Rupert thought he could do your job. What a joke. He has the checkbook but could never come close to your genius. RIP.”Rupert Murdoch’s chequebook has been strained of late. Fox agreed to pay $787.5m to settle a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems over the broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about voter fraud in his 2020 presidential election defeat.The network faces other potentially costly lawsuits.Another voting machine company, Smartmatic, has lodged a $2.7bn defamation suit, which Fox has called “a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs”. Another defamation suit was filed by Nina Jankowicz, a former head of a federal government group meant to combat misinformation.Last week, Fox reported a $54m loss for the first three months of the year.Elizabeth Ailes spoke to the Daily Beast after her tweet on Monday.“Roger never had his hand off the wheel when it came to Fox,” she said, adding that the Murdoch family, from Australia, “weren’t born here and don’t have the same pedigree”.She also mocked Rupert Murdoch’s sons, saying her husband used to call James and Lachlan Murdoch “Tweedle Dumb” and “Tweedle Dumber”.Of Lachlan Murdoch, the chief executive of his father’s News Corp, Ailes said: “I was told he’s a spear fisherman – I don’t know if he spends time in the office.”Ailes likened her husband’s fate to that of other big names at Fox News, saying the Murdochs “figured out how to chop off his head”.“That’s what the Murdochs did to Roger,” she told the Daily Beast, “Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling, and they did it to Tucker.”Bill O’Reilly and Eric Bolling were hosts forced out over alleged sexual misconduct. Tucker Carlson was the top-rated primetime host until he was fired in the aftermath of the Dominion settlement.The reason for Carlson’s firing remains unknown. Among Fox’s legal difficulties is a suit from Abby Grossberg, a former producer who alleges a hostile and misogynistic working environment, claims Fox has called “unmeritorious” and “riddled with false allegations”.In video leaked last week, referring to liberal attacks on Fox News, Carlson said Roger Ailes “would never put up with this shit”. Carlson has also said he now plans to broadcast on Twitter.Fox News did not comment on Elizabeth Ailes’s remarks.When Ailes died, Rupert Murdoch called him a “brilliant broadcaster”.He also said: “Roger and I shared a big idea which he executed in a way no one else could have. In addition, Roger was a great patriot who never ceased fighting for his beliefs … We will always be enormously grateful for the great business he built. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife, Elizabeth, and son, Zachary.”Elizabeth Ailes told the Beast: “As one empire falls, maybe another will rise.” More

    • 113 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      Fox News sued for defamation by ex-government disinformation chief

      by

      The former head of a disinformation group created by the US Department of Homeland Security has sued Fox News for defamation, saying its attacks threatened her safety.In the lawsuit filed on Wednesday, Nina Jankowicz alleged that multiple Fox News hosts spread lies about her work, fueling an internet campaign against her that ultimately led to her resignation and the disbandment of the group.Jankowicz was executive director of the Disinformation Governance Board, created to coordinate efforts to combat disinformation posing a threat to US security.The group was created in April 2022 but paused just three weeks later, after a barrage of conservative attacks. Jankowicz resigned and in August the group was shut down.Jankowicz’s lawsuit focuses on three claims she says Fox levied against her: that she intended to censor speech, that she was fired, and that she wanted to give verified Twitter users, including herself, the power to edit others’ tweets, a claim taken from a video clip used out of context.“Several of these falsehoods stand out as especially destructive – and directly contrary to available, verifiable evidence,” the lawsuit says.The lawsuit also says Fox hosts continuously attacked Jankowicz, calling her a “wicked witch”, a “disinformation czaress” and a “lunatic”, among other things.The suit adds: “Fox’s defamatory coverage has caused Jankowicz and her family immense suffering. Jankowicz has been doxxed, threatened, harassed and even cyber-stalked.“Threatening and harassing messages and social media posts are usually linked to Fox’s coverage of Jankowicz and nearly always premised on Fox’s false statement that Jankowicz intends to police online speech.”Speaking to the New York Times, Jankowicz, 34, said Fox News used her as a “punching bag” even after her resignation and the closure of the Disinformation Governance Board.“It shouldn’t be something we just accept,” she said, “that the most powerful cable network in the world can attack individuals willy-nilly and not face any consequences after they ruin their lives.”Fox did not comment to the Times or immediately respond to Guardian inquiries.Jankowicz’s lawsuit references the recently settled $1.6bn defamation suit between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, saying the network’s “commitment to stay the course even as readily available information contracted statements of fact made on Fox’s platform” can be seen in both cases.Before the Dominion case was settled, internal communications in court filings revealed that Fox hosts and executives knew Donald Trump’s claims about a stolen election were false but did not stop their broadcast.Last month, Fox and Dominion reached a $787.5m settlement. Fox did not air an apology, though it did acknowledge “court rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false”.Fox faces other lawsuits, including a $2.7bn claim from another voting machine company, Smartmatic, and a suit filed by a former producer for the now fired host Tucker Carlson, who accuses the network of sexism and trying to use her as a scapegoat in the Dominion case.Fox has said the former producer’s claims are “riddled with false allegations”. It has called the Smartmatic suit “outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis”. More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson makes insinuating remarks on women in new leaked video

      by

      In the latest leaked behind-the-scenes video of Tucker Carlson, the now fired rightwing Fox News host makes insinuating comments about a makeup artist, about what women do in the bathroom and if they ever have pillow fights.The footage was published on Thursday by the progressive watchdog Media Matters for America.In the video, Carlson asks the unnamed staffer, “When they go to the ladies room and ‘powder their noses’, is there actually nose-powdering going on?”The woman says: “Sometimes.”Carlson says: “Oooh. I like the sound of that.”The footage follows the leak to the same outlet of video of Carlson making coarse remarks about a woman and Fox News viewers; a discussion of sexual technique with the British TV host Piers Morgan; disparaging remarks about the Fox Nation streaming service; and comments about a lawyer who deposed Carlson in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation suit, who the host calls a “slimy little motherfucker”.That $1.6bn suit, over Fox News’s broadcast of Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 US election, was settled last month for $787.5m. Shortly after that, in a surprise development, Carlson was summarily fired.Why Fox News decided to remove its star prime-time anchor is the subject of widespread reporting.Earlier this week, the New York Times published a racially inflammatory text message Carlson sent after the Capitol attack. That message was redacted in Dominion filings but other messages, including abusive comments about Trump advisers and allies, were released.Comments about Fox News executives were also reportedly linked to Carlson’s firing, including one in which he is reported to have called a female executive a “cunt”. A former booker on Carlson’s show also filed suit, alleging a misogynistic working atmosphere.Fox News has not commented on why Carlson was fired. It has called the suit from the former booker, Abby Grossberg, “unmeritorious” and “riddled with false allegations against the network and our employees”.Last week, a person close to Carlson told the Guardian the firing was not over abusive messages or crude comments.“An elderly Australian man” – the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, 92 – “fired his top anchor with no warning because he was so offended by a dirty word? Stupidest explanation ever. Please. A big decision requires a powerful motive. Naughty words in text messages don’t qualify.”In the footage released on Thursday, Carlson is seen on-set, having makeup applied by an unidentified woman. He says: “Can I ask you a question? You don’t have to answer, it’s personal.”The woman indicates assent.Carlson says: “I’m not speaking of you, but more in general with ladies, when they go to the ladies room and ‘powder their noses’, is there actually nose-powdering going on?”The woman says: “Sometimes.”Carlson says: “Oooh. I like the sound of that.”The woman says: “Most of the time, it’s lipstick.”Carlson says: “Do pillow fights ever break out? You don’t have to, you don’t have to –”The woman says: “Not in the bathroom.”Carlson says: “OK. Not in the bathroom. That’d be more a dorm activity.”After an unintelligible remark off camera, Carlson apologises.“I’m sorry,” he says. “You are such a good sport. Such a good person. Thank you. I know you do, but you do not deserve that. And I mean it with great affection.” More

    • 138 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson said Fox Nation streaming service ‘sucks’, leaked video shows

      by

      Before he was fired by Fox News, rightwing TV host Tucker Carlson said the Fox Nation streaming service for which he produced content “sucks”, leaked video showed on Monday.The news follows widespread reporting that comments about his employer, including “highly offensive” remarks about executives, contributed to Carlson’s shock firing last week.In the new footage published by Media Matters for America, a progressive watchdog, Carlson discussed an interview with the controversial rightwing social media star Andrew Tate.Carlson spoke to Tate in August 2022. Some of the footage was shown on Fox News, trailing a longer broadcast on Fox Nation.In December 2022, Tate was arrested in Romania over allegations of rape, people trafficking and organised crime, which he denies.In the leaked video, Carlson sat on his Fox News set, talking by phone to an unidentified male Briton and gave an unflattering opinion of the Fox Nation website and the size of its audience.“I don’t want to be a slave to Fox Nation, which I don’t think that people watch anyway,” Carlson said.Discussing what he would wear for the interview, Carlson said: “I want it to look official. I don’t want it to be like bro talk … But nobody’s going to watch it on Fox Nation. Nobody watches Fox Nation because the site sucks. So I’d really like to just … dump the whole thing on YouTube.“But anyway, that’s just my view. OK. I’m just frustrated with it. It’s hard to use that site. I don’t know why they’re not fixing it. It’s driving me insane. And they’re like making, like, Lifetime movies but they don’t … work on the infrastructure of the site.“Like what? It’s crazy. And it drives me crazy because it’s like we’re doing all this extra work and no one can find it. It’s unbelievable, actually.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionContent produced by Carlson for Fox Nation included Patriot Purge, a conspiracy-laced documentary series about the deadly January 6 attack on the US Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and The End of Men, which included a discussion of testicle tanning.On the footage leaked to Media Matters, Carlson said: “We’re like working like animals to produce all this content, and the people in charge of [Fox Nation] … like, they’re ignoring the fact that the site doesn’t work. And I think it’s like a betrayal of our efforts. That’s how I feel. So I, of course, I resent it.”Fox News declined to comment. It has been bullish about its streaming service.The New York Times has also said it obtained video of Carlson speaking off-air.In its footage, the paper said, Carlson discusses “‘postmenopausal fans’ and whether they will approve of how he looks on the air. In another video, he is overheard describing a woman he finds ‘yummy’.” More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Not a chance’: Fox News viewers reject Tucker Carlson’s replacement

      by

      There were a lot of questions floating around after Fox News unceremoniously dumped rightwing firebrand Tucker Carlson on Monday morning.Among them: can the conservative news channel effectively replace its most popular host, a grievance-filled firebrand who drew in more than 3 million viewers every night?The answer, on this week’s evidence, is no.Every night this week it has filled Carlson’s slot with Brian Kilmeade, an eager substitute who, in his regular role on the Fox and Friends morning show, serves as an excitable, unthreatening everyman.Every night viewers have given an unforgiving verdict on Kilmeade’s efforts: by turning off in their droves.It’s a shame for Kilmeade, but a clue as to how he might be received had already come early on Monday.“Join me tonight at 8 pm!” he tweeted an hour before his show started a now Tucker-free Fox News line-up. It turned out that not only did people not want to join Kilmeade, they were furious that he was going to be on air in place of their fallen hero.“Not a chance in hell ya sellout,” was one of the more polite online responses, while someone else noted: “I’d rather watch grass grow.”Undeterred, Kilmeade kicked things off on Monday with the briefest of references to the man he was temporarily replacing.“As you probably have heard, Fox News and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. I wish Tucker the best, I’m great friends with Tucker and always will be,” Kilmeade said.“But right now, it’s time for Fox News Tonight, so let’s get started!”For some people, it was time to get started on switching channels. On Monday the audience for Kilmeade, a less angry, less charismatic, apparently less race-obsessed host, was 47% of the number Carlson had attracted a week earlier, according to the Los Angeles Times.It isn’t just that Carlson’s departure has turned off viewers. The hastily renamed Fox News Tonight show appears to have actively driven people to Fox News’ competitors, with Newsmax in particular, seeing record ratings.Watching Kilmeade’s shows this week, it is clear that he is rather one-note. That note is attacking Joe Biden, which he has done enthusiastically, but with none of the vitriol of his predecessor.“Let’s get started!” Kilmeade declared (again) on Tuesday evening.“80-year-old Joe Biden is officially running for president again,” he said.“Big surprise. This morning he released the single most divisive campaign ad we’ll see in a long time, I hope ever.”When Biden ran in 2020, Kilmeade said he “campaigned on the idea that police are racist”. This was news to this observer, but never mind, because according to Kilmeade: “He’s not talking about that anymore.”Kilmeade pointed out – accurately – that the number of police officers in Seattle had declined. Crime has not gotten significantly worse: “The violent crime rate for the city of Seattle increased from 729 per 100,000 in 2021 to 736 per 100,000 in 2022,” but drug deaths, in common with the rest of the nation, have increased.Kilmeade said that the state of Washington is struggling to pass new drug laws, after a previous law was ruled unconstitutional by the state supreme court. As it stands drug possession will become legal in the state on 1 July.“The result of all that is that fentanyl is flowing into Washington state big time,” Kilmeade said, ignoring the fact that he’d just told us the law was in place through the end of June, and offering no source for the big-time increase.With Carlson, this would have been read as a deliberate misdirection. With Kilmeade, it’s not clear if he just got confused.After some more stuff on fentanyl – inevitably the blame was laid at Biden’s door, despite the Washington law being state, not federal – Kilmeade returned to Biden’s announcement.“Joe Biden announced today that he’s running for president, again. If he wins, he’ll be 82, when he’s done at the end of his term he’ll be 86,” Kilmeade said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In his announcement video today Joe Biden was as divisive, in my view, as he possibly could be. He said if you don’t vote for him, you are not interested in protecting democracy,” Kilmeade said of Biden’s ad.He apparently hadn’t seen Donald Trump’s ad, from earlier in April, in which the former president said he was running against “radical left lunatics”. In an ad from August 2022, three months before he announced his bid for the presidency, Trump talked ominously about “the tyrants we are fighting”.Kilmeade invited Marianne Williamson, the health guru and sometime vaccine skeptic who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020, to take a pop at Biden.Instead he effectively gave Williamson four minutes of airtime to give a campaign speech, in which she touted universal healthcare and free college tuition. It’s hard to imagine Carlson doing the same.By Wednesday, there was a distinct sense that Kilmeade and his writers were running out of ideas.“Good evening and welcome to Fox News Tonight,” Kilmeade chirped at the top of the show.“Glad you’re here. You know, we told you last night about Joe Biden’s big 2024 campaign announcement video.”Kilmeade did not add: “Well giddy up, because we’re going to tell you all about it again,” but he might as well have done. He told viewers they should go on YouTube – “like I did today” – and look at the comments under Biden’s video.The comments were not kind, Kilmeade said, and he excitedly read a few out, after announcing that “the Democrats have embraced totalitarianism”.There followed a sort of whip-around, tick-the-boxes analysis of Biden’s presidency so far, featuring China, inflation, fentanyl, immigration and the government’s efforts to attract and retain women to engineering jobs.“It’s social engineering, not real engineering,” Kilmeade quipped.In sticking to his attacks on Biden, Kilmeade is on safe ground. But it isn’t going to excite a Fox News audience who Carlson has filled with a lust for blood.The appeal of Carlson wasn’t just that he didn’t like Biden. It was that there were loads of other things that upset him too: trans people, people of color, immigrants, many women, and the idea that white people may no longer rule the US with impunity.Perhaps Kilmeade just isn’t as angry as Carlson.He certainly doesn’t seem it. He isn’t as good a performer either – throughout the week the extent to which he was obviously reading the autocue became distracting, and viewers may have missed Carlson’s patented angry eyes, open-mouthed look.With Kilmeade, so far, proving unable or unwilling to plumb the same depths as Carlson, it’s hard to see him becoming a permanent replacement.Carlson’s great skill was giving the audience a wide variety of things to hate and fear. By contrast Kilmeade, with his comparatively milquetoast focus on Biden, is stuck in first gear. More

    • 188 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Tucker Carlson is not an antiwar populist rebel. He is a fascist | Jason Stanley

      by

      Fox News has finally broken ties with its most popular star, Tucker Carlson. His ousting has been bemoaned by some commentators, who have taken Carlson to be a rebellious anti-war populist, evading easy political characterization. But is it really so complicated to classify Carlson’s political ideology?In late February 2022, then Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, in the face of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, began a pro-Russia monologue urging his audience to ask themselves the question: “Why do I hate Putin so much?” The gist of Carlson’s comments about Russia’s leader is that Putin should not be regarded as an enemy. Instead, the real enemies of America are those who call white Americans racist, those who teach so-called critical race theory in schools, business elites who ship jobs abroad, and those who imposed Covid lockdowns on the United States.In short, Carlson urged, the real enemies of America are internal – racial minorities, doctors and politicians, professors and educators, and large corporations who shift jobs to other countries. Carlson has been resolutely against US support for Ukraine. Insofar as Carlson has since that point gone to war, it has rather been against these supposed internal enemies.So, is Tucker Carlson hard to classify? On the one hand, he spreads tropes central to neo-Nazi propaganda, such as “white replacement” theory, suggesting that leftist elites seek to replace “legacy Americans” by foreign non-white immigrants. On the other hand, he denounces media, intellectual and political elites, as well as US intervention in Ukraine, platforming those who identify as the “anti-war left”, such as Jimmy Dore. How should we best understand this set of views? If Carlson has fascist sympathies, as do, quite inarguably, many of those who applaud him, how do we understand his firm stance against US military and financial support for Ukraine? Surely, historically speaking, fascism is not compatible with the isolationist position Carlson has urged.We should look to history as our guide here. But the history that best informs us in this case is not European history, but American history. Before the beginning of the second world war, all of America’s pro-fascist parties opposed US intervention on the side of its allies against Nazi Germany. Often, the opposition to the US supporting Britain against Nazi Germany was represented as “isolationism”.There were openly fascist organizations during this time, such as the German American Bund. Somewhat more ambiguous was the America First movement. As the historian Bradley Hart recounts, in a packed America First rally in Madison Square Garden in 1941, the Montana senator Burton K Wheeler denounced “jingoistic journalists and saber-rattling bankers” who were pushing the nation into war against Germany.While the agenda of some members of the America First movement at the time might have genuinely been pacifist, it’s quite clear that the main agenda was in fact support for Hitler. The America First movement had strong support from American fascist movements of various stripes. Its most prominent spokesperson, Charles Lindbergh, published the following words in support of his anti-war position in an essay entitled “Geography, Aviation, and Race” in Reader’s Digest in 1939:
      … It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us. It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea. Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on strength too great for foreign enemies to challenge; on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood; on an English fleet, a German air force, a French army, an American nation, standing together as guardians of our common heritage, sharing strength, dividing influence.
      It is simply inarguable fact that American racial fascism has a clear isolationist tradition, especially when the wars in question are against fascist opponents.But is Putin’s Russia fascist? In Russia, opposition politicians and journalists are regularly imprisoned or murdered. Russia has passed harsh laws against LGBTQ+ communities. Russia’s ideology is based on a militarized Russian nationalism, and its war against Ukraine is quite clearly genocidal in nature. Just as Nazi Germany represented itself as the defender of Christianity and Europe’s classic traditions against an existential threat posed by leftist atheist Jews, Putin represents Russia as the sole defender of the European Christian traditions against similar existential threats, such as “gender ideology”.Putin’s Russia is the international leader of the global far right, promoting ultra-nationalism, religious traditionalism and anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment across the world. If Russia is not fascist, then even Nazi Germany in the 1930s was not fascist. As the historian Timothy Snyder has urged, “we should finally say it”: Russia is fascist.Just as claims to be isolationists by American inter-war fascists were quite rightly taken to be expressions of support for Nazi ideology, there is good reason to take Carlson’s similar claims not as denunciations of American militarism but as expressions of support for Putinism, which he seems largely to share.What about Carlson’s scorn for the media, intellectual, financial and political elite, which he lacerates with regularity on his show? Here too there is little ambiguity. Carlson does not scorn all elites – after all, he himself was making as much as $20m a year from Fox news. He only targets certain elites. In the ideology of American fascism, the elites he targets are associated with liberal democracy and Jewish control.American fascists have always denounced the media, intellectuals and politicians. Carlson is careful to avoid explicitly antisemitic statements. But his show is the home of anti-Soros conspiracy theories. The antisemitism in his programming is clearly dog-whistled, and Jewish organizations have been among the first to cheer his ousting. Indeed, if Carlson did not regularly denounce media, intellectual, financial and political elites, regular targets of Nazi ideology, the case for calling him an American fascist would be much less clear.Nazi ideology supported strict gender roles – one of the central targets of the first mass Nazi book burning on 10 May 1933 was Magnus Hirschfeld’s collection of LGBTQ+ literature, the largest in the world and the largest documentation of gender fluidity (Hirschfeld coined the term “transsexual”). Carlson has used his platform to denounce transgender Americans as existential threats to Christianity. Fascists target cosmopolitan ways as existential threats to masculinity – a viewpoint Carlson also clearly shares.Finally, fascism praises violence against democracy, valorizing violent street mobs attacking democratic processes and institutions as martyrs to the nation. Here too Tucker Carlson fits perfectly into the tradition.It is not difficult at all to classify Tucker Carlson’s political ideology. He is an American fascist, only the latest in a long historical line. More