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      Is Fox News finally falling out of love with Trump? It’s complicated

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      Is Fox News finally falling out of love with Trump? It’s complicatedCourt revelations of the network’s private views about the former president suggest no love lost – but experts suggest each needs the other“He’s a demonic force, a destroyer. But he’s not going to destroy us … We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait … I hate him passionately.”These were not the text messages of a liberal journalist feeling their spirit crushed by the Donald Trump era. They were, according to US court papers, the words of Tucker Carlson, one of the former US president’s biggest cheerleaders on the rightwing Fox News network.‘Lachlan’s in the mire’: Fox News case spells trouble for Murdoch heirRead moreA $1.6bn defamation lawsuit, brought by a voting machine maker that claims it was wrongly maligned, has pulled back the curtain on one of the most consequential relationships in modern political history: Trump and Fox News.The private venting of Fox News’s primetime stars, expressing contempt for Trump and his election lies even as they told millions of viewers the opposite, has fueled perceptions that the long-running affair between America’s 45th president and most watched cable news network is on the rocks.However, a glance at Fox News’s output over the last week suggests that, like love, it’s complicated. While Carlson and other primetime hosts may quietly be rooting for the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, to beat Trump to the 2024 Republican primary nomination, they are already dropping hints about a readiness to jump back onboard the Trump train.“It’s a toxic relationship,” said Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC). “They are good and bad for each other at the same time. You’ve got to look at it through that prism to understand what’s going on here. Fox can’t do without Trump and Trump ultimately can’t do without Fox because he knows, at the end of the day, that’s the media vehicle through which he will be able to reach the widest audience of his supporters.”The lawsuit has plunged Fox News, the dominant media force among conservatives, into one of the biggest crises in its 26-year history. Dominion Voting Systems argues that the network knowingly broadcast false claims that the election technology company was responsible for fraud in the 2020 presidential election.Publicly released internal documents and depositions have revealed that, while Fox News hosts were promulgating Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election, off air they were messaging their colleagues to say they did not believe a word of it.In one text message exchange, Carlson, who hosts one of the most watched shows on cable news, said Trump has a talent to “destroy things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Later, addressing Trump’s four years as president, Carlson texted: “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There really isn’t an upside to Trump.”Yet for years Carlson had been an enthusiastic champion of Trump. In a 2017 conversation with colleague Greg Gutfeld on the network, Carlson agreed that Trump was “the greatest president that ever will be”.The paper trail goes all the way to the top. Rupert Murdoch, chair of Fox Corp, told the Fox News chief executive, Suzanne Scott, that hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in pushing Trump’s election fraud claims on the network. Murdoch also called the voter fraud claims “really crazy stuff” in a text message.The documents also paint a portrait of Fox News living in fear of bleeding its audience to even more extreme rivals such as Newsmax and the One America News Network. Bill Sammon, a Fox Washington news executive, is quoted as saying: “It’s remarkable how weak ratings make good journalists do bad things.”On election night the network called – correctly – that Democrat Joe Biden had beaten Trump in the battleground state of Arizona, prompting a furious backlash from Trump’s supporters. One internal email said: “Holy cow, our audience is mad at the network.” Another noted: “They’re FURIOUS.”Fox News dropped from first to third in the news network ratings between the 3 November 2020 election and Biden’s inauguration on 20 January 2021, according to Nielsen. Thousands of its viewers flocked to the more conservative Newsmax, where primetime viewership shot from 58,000 the week before the election to 568,000 the week after.Carlson wrote to a producer: “Do the executives understand how much credibility and trust we’ve lost with our audience? We’re playing with fire, for real … an alternative like Newsmax could be devastating to us.”Dominion argues that Fox executives decided to push false narratives to entice their audience back. It points to outlandish conspiracy theories promoted by Trump allies such as lawyer Sidney Powell on programs hosted by Maria Bartiromo and Lou Dobbs.Matt Gertz, a senior fellow at the watchdog group Media Matters, said: “You can see the hosts worried that the network they had helped to build for years was basically going to collapse, that their viewers were turning on them, that executives were scrambling for a way to get the viewers back.”There had effectively been a revolving door between the Trump White House and Fox News; his last press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, is a regular on the network. But as the dust settled after the January 6 insurrection and Biden’s inauguration, the relationship cooled. Trump no longer called in to Fox & Friends to ramble at will. The network dropped his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a contributor, ostensibly because of a ban on political activity.It was a potentially serious blow to the man looking to win back the White House in 2024. Frank Luntz, a consultant and pollster, said: “Donald Trump needs Fox News more than Fox needs Donald Trump because Trump doesn’t have easy access to an uncritical media like he did in 2016. There is no alternative for him. He can’t go to CNN or MSNBC. He does have to go to Newsmax, and that just does not have the reach of these other cable news channels.”Worse still for Trump, Fox News found a new Chosen One. It reportedly asked DeSantis to appear on air 113 times, or nearly once a day, during one four-month spell and was given exclusive access to his signing of a contentious election law. Reelected in a landslide last November, DeSantis is a culture warrior with a flair for “owning the libs”. The attraction was obvious.Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman, explained: “Fox News knows exactly what their audience wants. Their audience wants a guy like Trump. They want a bully. They want a son of a bitch. They want somebody who will go after woke. They want an authoritarian. So Fox is going to give them what they want.“Fox has made the determination that they don’t think Trump can win in ‘24, which is why they’re pushing DeSantis. Once they realise that Trump is going to be the nominee, then everybody will fall in line like they did last time.”When Trump supporters gathered at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Oxon Hill, Maryland, both DeSantis and Fox News’s big names stayed away. Instead the Newsmax and other fringe rightwing media held sway. Trump ally Steve Bannon accused Fox News of disrespecting the former president, stating: “You’ve deemed Trump’s not going to be president. Well, we deem you’re not going to have a network.”It was, perhaps, the equivalent of a cathartic marital row. A day later, something changed: Fox News carried the whole of Trump’s one hour, 45 minute address to CPAC, a departure from its distinctly tepid response to his 2024 campaign events. “I hope Fox doesn’t turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016,” he said pointedly.Then, on Monday, Carlson presented selective excerpts of security footage from the US Capitol attack to spin the false narrative that January 6 was in fact a peaceful protest. He was widely condemned by both Democrats and Republicans – but Trump said on his social media platform, “congratulations to Tucker Carlson on one of the biggest ‘scoops’ as a reporter in US history”.As the week wore on, Carlson praised Trump’s “bold plans” for 2024, telling viewers: “He is saying things that are really interesting, not rehashes at all.” Host Sean Hannity, “privately disgusted” with Trump according to court documents, played clips of an interview Trump had done on his radio show.To observers, it was a sign that the on-off Trump-Fox affair could soon be on again, especially if, as opinion polls currently suggest, the former reality TV star surges ahead the Republican primary.Walsh observed: “If you did a private poll of every conservative media talker and conservative network and every Republican elected official, 80 to 90% of them privately would want Trump gone and want DeSantis to be the guy. Tucker Carlson doesn’t want Trump to run again. Hannity, Trump’s cheerleader, doesn’t want Trump to run again.“That’s how they all feel privately and they’re all hoping that somebody does their dirty work. Fox News is hoping that Trump will implode or get indicted or die or whatever but Fox News, we know, will follow their audience and, if Trump stays in and he’s the man, Fox News will be right there, his biggest cheerleader again.”The bottom line is ratings or, to put it another way, dollars.Tara Setmayer, a senior adviser to the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group, said: “Fox have already demonstrated that they will move and calibrate their news coverage based on what the audience demands and, as of right now, the demand still overwhelmingly is for Donald Trump.”Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, added: “This an example of a dysfunctional co-dependent relationship. They need each other, whether they want to admit it or not.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS television industryRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?

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      Republicans try to reframe January 6 as a sightseeing tour – will it work?Now in control of the House, Republicans are making light of the violence of the day and assailing the investigation into the Capitol attackIt might be thought that Republicans would prefer not to remind Americans of the day their president nearly destroyed US democracy.But the party’s right wing is going all in to rewrite the history of the 6 January 2021 storming of the Capitol by Donald Trump’s supporters, and to make political martyrs of those imprisoned for assaulting police officers and sending politicians fleeing as the mob attempted to stop Congress from endorsing Joe Biden’s election victory.Fox News produced ‘zero’ evidence to back election lie, defamation case hearsRead moreTrump himself has waded in by appearing on a song sung by the “J6 Prison Choir” of men locked up for their part in the insurrection while Republican supporters in Congress are setting up a delegation to visit the prisoners in what will be seen as an act of solidarity.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation into the then Democratic-led original congressional investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the riot.But leading the charge in the Orwellian attempt to control the past in the hope that it will lead Republicans to control the future is the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who pressured Kevin McCarthy, the speaker of the House of Representatives, into releasing to him thousands of hours of video of Trump supporters swarming the Capitol.Carlson presented selected snippets on his nightly show that he claimed proved the rioters were really no more than tourists who “obviously revered the Capitol”.“These were not insurrectionists. They were sightseers,” he said.Carlson, who has claimed that the January 6 attack was a “false flag” operation by the Washington establishment to discredit Trump’s supporters, said the video shows “mostly peaceful chaos”.“Taken as a whole the video record does not support the claim that January 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim,” he said.Republicans in Washington are not universally happy with this revisionism. Senator Kevin Cramer said that the attack “was not just some rowdy protest of Boy Scouts” and that the Fox News interpretation was “a lie”. Senator Thom Tillis called Carlson’s description of events “bullshit”.Asked if it was a mistake for McCarthy to hand the footage over to Fox News, Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the US Senate, distanced himself from the consequences.“My concern is how it was depicted,” he said.McCarthy defended the release of the video in the name of transparency although that did not explain why he gave it only to Fox.Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, said McCarthy was driven principally by thirst for power as the Republican right made release of the video a condition of support for his election as speaker in January.“Everybody knows that McCarthy, who was once very upset about what happened on January 6 and said so, is just using this for his own purposes. This was simply an action designed to get him the final few votes needed to become speaker. He sold out his country. It was absolutely spineless,” Sabato said.“Carlson and McCarthy have given the crazies, the far-right extremists, the neo-Nazi white supremacists who are obsessed with January 6, the counter reality they’ve been looking for of a bunch of patriots taking a tour in the Capitol.”Sabato said Carlson, who is working to shore up his own credibility with Trump’s followers amid revelations that the Fox News host regularly derided the then president and said “I hate him passionately”, was a driving force behind the move.“Tucker Carlson on his own show said that if McCarthy wants these votes to become speaker then show us by releasing all of the information on the film. Everybody knew from the instant Carlson got it he was going to put together snippets that were very misleading, and which excluded all of the real action that day, all of the criminal action that day. It was totally predictable,” he said.While Carlson’s selective interpretation of the video was rapidly derided by some Republicans, as well as by the Capitol police chief and the family of an officer who died after being assaulted as “unscrupulous and outright sleazy”, plenty of others were onboard.The House Republicans’ Twitter account said that Carlson’s take on the footage was a “MUST WATCH”.Congressman Mike Collins of Georgia said the clips were proof of the innocence of the more than 1,000 people charged with crimes as the mob stormed the Capitol. Hundreds have already been convicted including some jailed for violence.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I’ve seen enough. Release all J6 political prisoners now,” Collins tweeted to considerable derision.The attempt to turn the imprisoned rioters into martyrs gained steam after Trump appeared in a song by a choir of men jailed over their involvement in the January 6 attack. They sing the national anthem as the former president recites the pledge of allegiance. Trump has praised the insurrectionists and said that if he were to win the presidency again he would “very, very seriously” consider giving them all pardons.The prisoners’ cause has been taken up by other Republicans.The far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was among those pressing McCarthy to release the January 6 video as a condition for her support for his election as speaker. She is expected to lead a congressional delegation to a Washington DC federal prison where some of the rioters are being held, ostensibly to check on their welfare, as the result of another of her conditions for supporting McCarthy.Meanwhile, after taking control of the House of Representatives in January, the Republicans have launched an investigation of Congress’s original investigation into the events of 6 January 2021, which recommended Trump’s prosecution for inciting the assault.The latest committee to look into the riot will be led by Congressman Barry Loudermilk, who contested Biden’s victory and likened Trump’s impeachment to the crucifixion of Jesus.Loudermilk was found by the earlier House investigation to have a given tours of the Capitol to a group of people the day before the insurrection even though it was closed to visitors. They included at least one man seen photographing corridors and staircases who was later identified outside the Capitol on 6 January making threats against members of Congress.Loudermilk tweeted that he intends to revisit the January 6 investigation because, he said, the earlier inquiry was politicised.“The J6 committee chose to ignore the facts and pursue a particular political narrative. I will not do this. As chairman of the subcommittee on oversight, I’m focused on finding out what really happened on J6 to ensure it never happens again,” he said.Former congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of only two Republicans who served on the January 6 committee, and who then lost a primary race against a Trump-backed rival, challenged Loudermilk, who declined to testify at the hearings she helped chair.“If @HouseGOP wants new Jan 6 hearings, bring it on. Let’s replay every witness & all the evidence from last year. But this time, those members who sought pardons and/or hid from subpoenas should sit on the dais so they can be confronted on live TV with the unassailable evidence,” tweeted Cheney, who was hired by Sabato earlier this month as a professor at the Center for Politics.Whether revisiting what many Americans regard as a shameful day for democracy will work in the Republicans’ favor remains to be seen.Opinion polls show that views about what happened on 6 January 2021 have not shifted dramatically in the intervening two years. According to a Quinnipiac university poll in December, 45% of Americans said that Trump bears “a lot” of responsibility for the storming of the Capitol. Just 21% did not blame him at all. The country was almost evenly split over whether the former president committed a crime that day.Polls also show a deep divide over the significance of the January 6 Capitol attack, with 50% of Americans saying it represented an assault on democracy that should not be forgotten while 44% say events are being overstated.Sabato said that while the reimagining of events will play well with hardcore Republicans, it may ultimately not be good for the party as a whole.“This will stir some of the base. But it’s not all positive for Republicans because it helps Trump, the one guy who probably will lose to Biden if it turns out to be Biden versus Trump again,” he said.TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansJanuary 6 hearingsUS politicsHouse of RepresentativesLiz CheneyKevin McCarthyfeaturesReuse this content More

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      So Tucker Carlson secretly hates Donald Trump … is anybody surprised? | Arwa Mahdawi

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      So Tucker Carlson secretly hates Donald Trump … is anybody surprised? Arwa MahdawiCarlson has been caught out of character. Is it over for him? Somehow, I don’t think so“I hate him passionately.”Thanks to new court filings in a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit against Fox News we now know exactly how the network’s star host, Tucker Carlson, really feels about Donald Trump. Two days before the insurrection at the Capitol, around the same time that Carlson was publicly singing Trump’s praises to his audience of millions, he was also sending private texts to members of his staff about how much despised the guy. It’s almost like Carlson doesn’t believe a single word he says on TV.That text message wasn’t some one-off: the court documents are full of juicy little examples of Carlson bashing Trump. During the 2020 presidential election, for example, Carlson told his producer that Trump was a terrible businessman. “All of [his businesses] fail,” he texted. “What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that.” In another text, sent the day after the Capitol riots, Carlson described Trump as a “demonic force, a destroyer.” And in yet another text he called Trump’s presidency a “disaster.” Weirdly none of those opinions made it onto his show.While these text messages may only have been exposed recently, it’s hardly a revelation that Carlson’s public and private views frequently diverge. Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s prodigal son, for example, is a frequent subject of ridicule and ire on Fox News. In the real world, however, Carlson seems to have rather different views towards Hunter. While Tucker Carlson has admitted he was close to Hunter in the past, he hasn’t exactly been enthusiastic about publicizing how cosy their relationship was. Last year it was revealed that, back in 2014, Carlson and his wife asked for Hunter’s help in getting their son, Buckley, into Georgetown University. Hunter graciously agreed to write a letter of recommendation.Buckley didn’t end up at Georgetown. However, as the Washington Post noted at the time, Carlson’s emails with Hunter show “how Carlson once sought to benefit from the elite political circles in Washington that he now regularly rails against as the ‘ruling class.’” Carlson, let’s also remember, also likes to rail against “affirmative action” in university admissions, saying that “a meritocracy is the only fair way to run a society.” I’m not sure that asking the (then) vice-president’s son to help get your spawn into university is ‘meritocracy.’Who is Carlson really? What, if anything, does he actually believe? It seems unlikely, but I would hope that the news about his feelings towards Trump might make Carlson’s viewers start asking those questions – and start questioning his credibility. After all, the court filings don’t just make Carlson’s opinions about Trump clear, they demonstrate that he has zero respect for his viewers. As the journalism professor Jay Rosen tweeted: “When you feel you have to conceal a view like this from your viewers, night after night, you develop a deep contempt for them because, night after night, they fall for what you in your heart know is an act.”Once upon a time, Carlson was publicly disgusted by journalists who put on an act for their viewers. The internet has a very long memory and, in light of the new court documents, a 2003 video of Carlson criticizing Bill O’Reilly, then a massive name on Fox News, has resurfaced. “Bill O’Reilly is really talented,” a fresh-faced Carlson said in the clip. “…[But] O’Reilly success is built on the perception that he really is who he claims to be. If he ever gets caught out of character, it’s over. There’s a deep phoniness at the center of his shtik.”Carlson has been caught out of character. Is it over for him? Somehow, I don’t think so. The world is a very different place than it was in 2003; the increase in political tribalism means that hypocrisy is more rampant and more easily forgiven. New York University Professor Jay Van Bavel, an expert on the “partisan brain” has noted that presenting people with examples of someone on ‘their side’ being hypocritical rarely changes behaviour.Rather people often “double down on their beliefs or ignore evidence that their behavior is inconsistent with the past.” In other words, Carlson’s viewers will probably just ignore the court filings. Which won’t be very difficult as they’re unlikely to be heavily showcased on Fox News.
      Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
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      White House calls Tucker Carlson ‘shameful’ for misrepresenting January 6 footage – as it happened

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      The White House has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, criticized the security footage of the riot at the Capitol that Carlson has played on his show for the last two nights heavily edited so that it gives the impression of depicting what he described as “peaceful chaos”.Many hours of footage was handed over to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.“To have said what he said when we saw police officers lose their lives is just shameful,” Jean-Pierre just said at the daily briefing in the west wing, when asked about Carlson’s latest actions.00:47She said that the White House agrees with the chief of the Capitol police, Tom Manger (who said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions) and the “rage of bipartisan lawmakers”.“We have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives…on a very dark day in our democracy,” Jean-Pierre said.She added that in various legal battles, the White House agrees with Fox’s own attorneys and executives who “have repeatedly stressed in courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular”.She cited this September 2020 piece from National Public Radio (NPR) on which the headline was: “You literally can’t believe the facts Tucker Carlson tells you. So say Fox’s lawyers.”This blog is wrapping up for the day but will be back with all the US politics news tomorrow, covering developments as they happen.Here’s how the day went:
      Top US intelligence official Avril Haines said that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
      House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
      Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
      The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
      Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
      The top intelligence official in the US said earlier today that American intelligence does not believe Russia can make “major territorial gains” in Ukraine this year because of heavy casualties and the Kremlin’s inability to replenish weapons and ammunition.Speaking to a Senate committee, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines also cited other constraints on the Russian military, including dysfunction in leadership and declining troop morale, the Associated Press reports.Meanwhile, despite recent sharp criticism of the US by Chinese president Xi Jinping, Haines said: “We assess that Beijing still believes it benefits most by preventing a spiraling of tensions and by preserving stability in its relationship with the United States.”China is challenging the US around the world economically, technologically, politically and militarily around the world and “remains our unparalleled priority,” Haines said and NBC reported.Georgia extremist congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene took the gavel today as the temporary speaker of the House of Representatives.For a long time, the hard-right Republican prone to conspiracy theories could be kept at arm’s length as a fringe character but her influence has grown since she shimmied up to Kevin McCarthy as a crucial ally during his extraordinary multi-round effort to finally get voted into the speakership in January, after the GOP scraped into control of the House during the 2022 midterm elections.McCarthy not only sold his soul for the speakership, he sold the House, too.Shameful day: Today, Kevin McCarthy appointed Marjorie Taylor Greene to act as speaker pro tempore https://t.co/Wa5utLYuXq— Linus Fan 💉💉💉💉💉 (@LinusAlso) March 8, 2023
      She’s very pleased about it.The House will be in order. pic.twitter.com/8154CGMQqQ— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) March 8, 2023
      Others less so.Kevin McCarthy has announced Marjorie Taylor Greene as Speaker Pro Tempore….meaning she will fill the role of presiding officer of the House in the absence of the Speaker of the House. Absolutely insane.— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) March 8, 2023
      As my colleague Adam Gabbatt reminds us, Greene has suggested Jewish space lasers are responsible for wildfires, speculated whether 9/11 was a hoax and supported the QAnon conspiracy theory, was part of a new wave of Trumpian Republicans and was mocked, ridiculed and reviled in equal measure – including by some in her own party.The Atlantic’s “Why is Marjorie Taylor Greene like this?” is also an illuminating read, describing how prosperous but aimless suburbanites can fall down the rabbit hole.Last month, Greene again proposed a “national divorce” so that states can secede along political lines, something that is unequivocally unconstitutional in the United States.The testimony in today’s House hearing on the Afghanistan withdrawal has brought witnesses, lawmakers and audience members to tears.In another gripping account, Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant grievously injured in a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport, was asked to tell the panel about the girl he saved during the evacuation.Stationed at the airport, Vargas-Andrews said he was helping to push back the crowds outside of the airport, he noticed a little girl, roughly about 7 or 8 years old, who had managed to squeeze past, holding the hand of her younger brother and a baby in her arms.“In this chaos, I had tunnel-vision and saw her and I was like, I need to help them,” Vargas-Andrews said, recalling that their faces were “dirty and bruised” and streaked with tears.When he reached the children, he noticed that the baby’s face was blue and didn’t appear to be breathing. He took the youngest children in his arms and together they fought their way through the crush of people. Not knowing if the baby was alive, they searched frantically for a medic who could perform CPR on the baby.They found one, administered aid, and the baby’s face “flushed pink” and the infant began to breathe, as the little girl sobbed. She tugged on his uniform and begged for abba, father.He climbed onto an SUV overlooking the razor wire fence erected around the airport and hoisted the girl into the air to survey the scene below. After a few minutes, amid the hundreds of people desperately waving documents and flinging luggage, she pointed to a man with his hands on his head staring back at her, tears streaming down his face.“I was like that is her dad,” Vargas-Andrews said. He quickly reunited the family and together they were able to leave the country.“For me, that was a moment that my personal injury was worth it,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has since undergone 44 surgeries for the extensive injuries he suffered during the bombing. “I know those three little kids will have a life of freedom and opportunity now because of that.”The former Maryland governor Larry Hogan has ruled out a run for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 – but not ruled out a third-party tilt.Hogan told ABC on Tuesday: “I haven’t ruled that out. But it’s not something I’m really working toward or thinking about” even though “the question keeps popping up more and more”.Hogan flirted with a run for the nomination as a moderate but pulled back on Sunday, saying: “To once again be a successful governing party, we must move on from Donald Trump.“There are several competent Republican leaders who have the potential to step up and lead. But the stakes are too high for me to risk being part of another multi-car pile-up that could potentially help Mr Trump recapture the nomination.”Polling has shown the potential for opponents to Trump (including the former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley and most likely the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis) to divide the vote and give him the nomination without needing a majority, as happened in 2016.Polling has also shown vanishingly small interest in Hogan among voters in a party dominated by Trump and DeSantis.Hogan told ABC: “Trump has to stumble, which is hard. And he’s been diminishing. But still, he’s the 800lb gorilla. And then if he doesn’t make it, it goes to DeSantis, and then DeSantis has to stumble. And then you have to consolidate everyone else and overcome that.”He said No Labels, a centrist group of which he is an honorary co-chair, had “raised about $50m to get [ballot] access in all 50 states as kind of an insurance policy” for an “in case of emergency break glass” scenario.“They’re not trying to start a third party,” he said. “They’re not committed to doing that. But in case the country is burning down, you may have to have an alternative.”Hogan said a Biden-Trump matchup would be such a scenario.“I think that would be the trigger. I think that’s what they’re talking about. I’m not sure we’re gonna get to that point … Frankly, I’m hopeful that Donald Trump is not going to be the Republican nominee. And I’m going to work toward that goal. And I’m assuming Joe Biden may be the nominee, but who knows? I mean, he’s 80 years old. And we got a long ways to go.”Biden, who would be 86 a the end of a second term, has not confirmed a run for re-election. All signs, however, suggest he will soon take the plunge.Hogan said he was “not sure if it’s feasible” he could be a No Labels candidate.“And it’s also just not something I’m working toward. But, I mean, look, if you got to an election when the nominees were Biden and Trump and 70% of America didn’t want that, you wouldn’t rule it out, right?”The White House chimed in on the Department of Justice finding racist, unlawful conduct by the Memphis Police Department as a result of its investigation following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot dead almost three years ago during a botched raid.First noting that the DoJ is independent from the White House, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre added that: “The president has said repeatedly that a key part of building trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve is ensuring there is accountability when we see an officer violate the law.”Jean-Pierre noted Joe Biden’s executive order last spring that sought to rein in police excesses and improve safety and trust, and once again lamented that Congress has failed to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.“The president has said himself, Breonna Taylor’s death was a tragedy, a blow to her family, to her community and also to America more broadly.”She added that Biden notes that “Black women experience a disproportionate share of violence in this country and he will continue to fight for legislation that advances police reform and makes sure that we keep the Black community safe.”KJP, who is the first Black woman to be White House press secretary, was wearing white in a nod to the battle for women’s suffrage, pointing out to the assembled journalists that it is International Women’s Day. She is also the first openly gay White House press sec.She also spent quality minutes at the briefing today excoriating Tucker Carlson.00:47In his forthcoming budget proposal, Joe Biden will propose to cut the US deficit by nearly $3tn, the Associated Press reports.The AP adds:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}That deficit reduction goal is significantly higher than the $2tn Biden had promised in his State of the Union address last month. It also is a sharp contrast with House Republicans, who have called for a path to a balanced budget but have yet to offer a blueprint.White House officials have been briefing on the proposal, which Biden is due to discuss in Philadelphia tomorrow, Thursday.A proposal it will almost certainly remain, of course, given Congress has the power of the purse, and given that control of Congress is shared between Democrats who hold the Senate and Republicans who hold the House.It’s been a lively day in US politics so far and there is much more to come. The White House has just called Fox’s Tucker Carlson shameful and the Department of Justice is looking into special police divisions across the country, especially in the wake of high-profile killings of Black Americans amid accusations of racial bias in incidents of brutality and misconduct.Here where things stand:
      White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.
      House Republicans convened their first hearing on what the committee chairman called the Biden’s administration’s “disastrous” withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021.
      Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Department of Justice (DoJ) will conduct a federal review of the Memphis police department after the killing of Tyre Nichols earlier this year and also look into the use of specialized police units nationwide.
      The Department of Justice has issued its review, concluding that it found racist and unlawful conduct by police officers in Louisville, Kentucky, following their investigation into the city’s law enforcement after the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched police raid in 2020.
      Fox News has been broadsided by the latest court motions revealing that people from top executives down to reporters knew that Donald Trump’s claims that victory in the 2020 election had been stolen from him because of fraud were bogus – but star commentary hosts boosted those claims anyway.
      The White House has just slammed Fox News show host Tucker Carlson, calling the right-wing television star “shameful” for the way he is misrepresenting the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol as extremist supporters of Donald Trump tried to overturn his defeat in the presidential election.The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, criticized the security footage of the riot at the Capitol that Carlson has played on his show for the last two nights heavily edited so that it gives the impression of depicting what he described as “peaceful chaos”.Many hours of footage was handed over to him by the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy.“To have said what he said when we saw police officers lose their lives is just shameful,” Jean-Pierre just said at the daily briefing in the west wing, when asked about Carlson’s latest actions.00:47She said that the White House agrees with the chief of the Capitol police, Tom Manger (who said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions) and the “rage of bipartisan lawmakers”.“We have condemned this false depiction of the unprecedented, violent attack on our constitution and the rule of law, which cost police officers their lives…on a very dark day in our democracy,” Jean-Pierre said.She added that in various legal battles, the White House agrees with Fox’s own attorneys and executives who “have repeatedly stressed in courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular”.She cited this September 2020 piece from National Public Radio (NPR) on which the headline was: “You literally can’t believe the facts Tucker Carlson tells you. So say Fox’s lawyers.”In emotional testimony to the House foreign affairs committee this morning, two US service members recounted harrowing scenes at the Kabul airport, where they were stationed when a suicide bomber attacked on 26 August 2021.“It was complete chaos,” said Aidan Gunderson, a former army specialist who left active duty in July.Tyler Vargas-Andrews, a US Marines sergeant who lost an organ and two limbs in the attack, offered some of the most startling testimony of the morning, recalling mothers desperately handing over children while some Afghans chose to take their own lives rather than face the brutality of the Taliban.Speaking under oath, Vargas-Andrews told the panel he identified the suicide bomber among the crush trying to enter the airport but was not given approval to shoot the suspect dead.The attack killed 13 US service members and injured at least 20.“My body was catastrophically wounded with 100 to 150 ball bearings,” Vargas-Andrews said, pausing to fight tears. “Almost immediately we started taking fire from the neighborhood and I saw how injured I was with my right arm completely shredded and unusable. I saw my lower abdomen soaked in blood.”“The withdrawal was a catastrophe in my opinion and there was an inexcusable lack of accountability and negligence,” said Vargas-Andrews, who has undergone 44 surgeries.Vargas-Andrews stated that he was appearing in his personal capacity. His account, detailed in the Washington Post, disputes aspects of the Pentagon’s account of the incident.“This is not the story of a Biden failure or a Trump failure. This is the story of an American failure and the effect it has had and continues to have on Afghans who served alongside myself and so many others,” Peter Lucier, a veteran of the Afghanistan war who helped evacuate allied Afghans with Team America Relief, told the panel.“The failures that led to this point are owned and shared by four administrations, by Congress and by 320,000,000 Americans. This was our war.” More

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      Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson 'not credible' after Jan 6 coverage, says White House – video

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      White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson was ‘not credible’ given his misrepresentation of the January riots after obtaining footage from Republican house speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Carlson aired his first segment on the riots on Tuesday, where he described the mob that attacked Capitol Hill as ‘peaceful sightseers’. Jean-Pierre told reporters: ‘As it relates to the Tucker Carlson question, we agree with the Fox Nation’s own attorneys and executives who have repeatedly stressed in multiple courts of law that Tucker Carlson is not credible when it comes to this issue in particular’

      White House calls Tucker Carlson ‘shameful’ for misrepresenting January 6 footage – live More

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      What did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?

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      ExplainerWhat did Fox News really think of Trump and the 2020 election?Revelations stem from evidence in $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems against the networkFox News’s reputation as an unyielding backer of Donald Trump is in tatters after revelations that many of its top executives and on-air personalities never believed his lies about the 2020 election, and even personally disliked the former US president.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreThe details stem from documents released as part of a $1.6bn defamation lawsuit brought against the network by Dominion Voting Systems, a voting machine firm Trump and Fox News singled out for unfounded allegations of rigging in the aftermath of the presidential race two years ago.The case is viewed as potentially the biggest financial threat to Fox News since it came on the air in 1996, but the details that have trickled out have already reshaped views of the network and shown a broad gulf between what its top personalities tell their viewers in public and what they privately believe.Here are the key things to know:When did the lawsuit begin?Dominion sells voting machines and tabulators and has headquarters in Denver, Colorado and Toronto, Ontario. It filed its lawsuit in March 2021, claiming Fox News spread lies about the 2020 election in an effort to stop viewers from switching to other networks.The firm’s complaint singled out some of Fox’s biggest personalities, such as Maria Bartiromo, Tucker Carlson, Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro “and their chosen guests”, saying they plucked “defamatory falsehoods” from obscure far-right websites and broadcast them to their tens of millions of viewers. “Fox took a small flame and turned it into a forest fire,” Dominion said.When will the case go to trial?The trial is scheduled to begin on 17 April, and expected to last five weeks.Why do we know so much about behind-the-scenes happenings at Fox News?Dominion began making evidence in the case public in mid-February as part of court filings, which included emails and text messages exchanged between Fox News personalities and executives, as well as depositions made as part of the suit.What did Fox News hosts really think about the 2020 election?Even as they went on the air to cast doubt about whether the vote went off fairly, many Fox News personalities privately doubted Trump’s claims. “He’s acting like an insane person,” Hannity, one of the network’s best-known personalities, allegedly said of Trump, according to a Dominion court filing.They also released messages from the Fox News owner, Rupert Murdoch, in which he wrote that it was “very hard to credibly claim foul everywhere”, and the then president’s insistence on doing so was “terrible stuff damaging everybody”.Carlson, Fox’s most popular commentator, took aim at Sidney Powell, a top lawyer for Trump who repeatedly claimed on air that Dominion’s machines changed votes from Trump to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden. “Sidney Powell is lying,” Carlson wrote to a producer, later calling her “dangerous as hell”.Murdoch also said that several of the network’s top stars “endorsed” Trump’s false claims, and “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it in hindsight,” according to a deposition in the case.What do we now know about their views of Donald Trump?Publicly, Trump has few friends like the personalities on Fox News. Privately, some of them loathe him. The case’s filings reveal that Carlson, for instance, wrote of Trump: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Murdoch felt that Trump and his attorney Rudy Giuliani were “both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.” And on 4 January, two days before Trump riled up a crowd of supporters who went on to attack the US Capitol, Carlson wrote in a text, “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights.“I truly can’t wait.”Why did Fox News continue promoting election lies?With competitors like Newsmax and One America News Network waiting in the wings, Fox executives apparently feared losing their dominant place among America’s conservative viewership if they broke with Trump over the 2020 election.“We need to be careful about using the shows and pissing off the viewers,” Fox News’s chief executive, Suzanne Scott, told Murdoch the day before the January 6 attack.The network’s concern with maintaining advertising revenue also comes through in the documents. “It is not red or blue, it is green,” Murdoch said in his deposition, when asked why Fox allowed the conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell to run ads for his MyPillow product on the network.Fox has released its own evidence to argue against some of Dominion’s assertions, including comments from the Fox Corp co-chairman and CEO, Lachlan Murdoch, who said he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by a dip in the network’s ratings after the 2020 vote.TopicsFox NewsUS elections 2020TV newsTelevision industryUS politicsDonald TrumpexplainersReuse this content More

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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files show

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      Murdoch feared Fox News hosts went ‘too far’ on Trump election lie, files showEmail from billionaire mogul among reams of new evidence unsealed in defamation suit brought by Dominion Voting SystemsRupert Murdoch said Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham maybe “went too far” in their coverage of Donald Trump’s voter fraud lie, according to an email submitted as evidence in a defamation lawsuit brought by an election operations company.Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageRead moreDominion Voting Systems is suing Fox News for $1.6bn, accusing the cable TV network of amplifying debunked allegations that their voting machines were used to rig the 2020 US presidential election against Trump, in favour of Joe Biden.Documents that became public on Tuesday offered a window into Fox’s internal deliberations. They show executives, producers and hosts discussing concerns about the network’s reputation and casting doubt on the plausibility of Trump’s claims.More than 6,500 pages were released. The full extent of the evidence is not clear as many filings are heavily redacted.In one exhibit, Murdoch, now 91 and chairman of Fox Corporation, emailed the Fox News president, Suzanne Scott, the day after Biden’s inauguration, asking: “Is it ‘unarguable that high-profile Fox voices fed the story that the election was stolen and that January 6th an important chance to have the result overturned’? Maybe Sean and Laura went too far. All very well for Sean to tell you he was in despair about Trump, but what did he tell his viewers?”In an earlier exchange, Murdoch wrote that it had been suggested that primetime hosts say something like “the election is over and Joe Biden won”. Murdoch told Scott some version of this would “go a long way to stop the Trump myth that the election stolen” and reasoned that Trump would “concede eventually”.According to the Dominion filings, Murdoch emailed a friend that the notion state legislators could change the election outcome – an idea gaining traction on the right – “sound[s] ridiculous. There’d be riots like never before.”“Stupid and damaging,” Murdoch continues, referring to a news conference by the then Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani. “The only one encouraging Trump and misleading him. Both increasingly mad. The real danger is what he might do as president.”In a text, Murdoch described the claims of election fraud as “really crazy stuff”.These exhibits and other material included in Dominion’s summary judgment motion are part of the company’s effort to prove Fox News either knew the statements it aired were false or recklessly disregarded their accuracy. That is the standard of “actual malice”, which public figures must prove in defamation cases.Federal and state election officials and Trump’s own attorney general found no fraud that could have changed the outcome of the election. Trump’s allegations have been rejected by dozens of courts, including by judges he appointed.The lawsuit has given a stunning insight into the gap between what Fox News presented to millions of viewers and what its top stars thought and said in private, as well as their dread of losing audience to competitors.Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the host Tucker Carlson texted a producer to say: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait. I hate him passionately.”In an exchange more than a month earlier, Carlson said what Trump “is good at is destroy[ing] things. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Fox News argues claims by Trump and his lawyers were inherently newsworthy and protected by the constitution. The network said in a statement the newly released documents show Dominion using “distortions and misinformation” to “smear Fox News and trample on free speech”.Fox News has said that Dominion’s “extreme” interpretation of defamation law would chill press freedom.Its evidence includes more context of testimony and messages that it says Dominion “cherry-picked” and “misrepresented”.For example, Fox News cites additional testimony by the Fox Corp chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch, who said under oath he was “concerned” but “not overly concerned” by declining ratings after the election.In a reply brief, Dominion pushes back: “The charges Fox broadcast against Dominion are false. Fox does not spend a word of its brief arguing the truth of any accused statement.”“Finally, Fox has conceded what it knew all along,” the brief reads.The exhibits released on Tuesday had several references to accusations against Dominion made by the Trump lawyer Sidney Powell. In one email, the Fox News host Dana Perino referenced a Powell interview with another host, Maria Bartiromo, saying “this is nuts”. Carlson said in a text message: “Sidney Powell is lying.”In another exhibit, Hannity said he was giving Powell time to produce evidence but stopped having her appear on-air after she failed to deliver. Hannity has been quoted by Dominion during a deposition as saying he “did not believe” claims by Powell “for one second”.In his own deposition in January, Murdoch was asked by a lawyer for Dominion, “Do you believe that the 2020 presidential election was free and fair?”The media mogul replied: “Yes.”He added later: “The election was not stolen.”A Dominion spokesperson said the “emails, texts, and deposition testimony speak for themselves. We welcome all scrutiny of our evidence because it all leads to the same place – Fox knowingly spread lies causing enormous damage to an American company.”The trial, set to begin on 17 April, is slated to last five weeks. But there is little sign of it making an impact on the tone and tenor of Fox News coverage. Carlson has this week used footage of the deadly January 6 attack to falsely portray it as a largely peaceful gathering, earning rebukes from Democrats and Republicans in Congress.Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee, said: “It wasn’t about the country, it was about the ratings. It wasn’t about objective, honest journalism. It was about Maga [Make America great again, Trump’s slogan] propagandism.“It’s about further ingratiation of Fox and its cohorts, the folks on TV, being loyal to Trump to the point that they were so afraid of losing him. It is like the worst, most dependent relationship in history because the consequences go beyond Fox and Trump.”Reuters contributed reportingTopicsRupert MurdochUS politicsFox NewsUS television industrySean HannityUS elections 2020Joe BidennewsReuse this content More

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      Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footage

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      Tucker Carlson, who ‘passionately hates’ Trump, shows more Capitol footageFox News continues to claim January 6 was peaceful while legal filings show him saying Trump is good at ‘destroying things’The Fox News host Tucker Carlson told an associate he “hated” Donald Trump “passionately”, new filings in a $1.6bn defamation suit against Fox News by Dominion Voter Systems revealed.Rupert Murdoch feared Fox hosts may have gone ‘too far’ on 2020 voter fraud claims, court files showRead moreEven as the filings were reported on Tuesday, Carlson continued to broadcast January 6 security footage in his attempt to cast the deadly attack on Congress as “peaceful chaos” arising from a protest of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.“We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights,” Carlson said in a text on 4 January 2021, two days before the riot. “I truly can’t wait.”He also wrote: “I hate him passionately … What he’s good at is destroying things. He’s the undisputed world champion of that. He could easily destroy us if we play it wrong.”Many observers think the Dominion suit, over the broadcast of lies about electoral fraud by Trump and his allies, could prove seriously costly to Fox News.Hosts and executives up to and including Rupert Murdoch have been shown to have said Trump was lying, and to have ridiculed surrogates including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell but to have broadcast their claims regardless.In one message newly revealed on Tuesday, the host Laura Ingraham called Powell a “complete nut” and said “no one will work with her. Ditto with Rudy.”In a statement, Fox News said Dominion was “using further distortion and misinformation in its PR campaign to smear Fox News and trample on freedom of speech and freedom of the press”.Carlson is Fox News’ premier primetime host. Last month, over protests from Democrats and Fox News’ rivals, the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, chose to give Carlson more than 40,000 hours of security footage from the Capitol on January 6.After Carlson’s first broadcast on Monday, Democrats, Senate Republicans, the chief of Capitol police and the family of an officer who died the day after the riot were among those to condemn him.The police chief, Tom Manger, said in an internal memo Carlson’s broadcast was “filled with offensive and misleading conclusions”, “conveniently cherry-picked from the calmer moments of our 41,000 hours of video” and “fail[ed] to provide context about the chaos and violence … before or during these less tense moments”.Manger also said Carlson’s staff did not reach out to “provide accurate context”.The family of Brian Sicknick, who was 42 when he suffered two strokes and died a day after battling rioters and being sprayed with chemicals, decried “the ongoing attack on our family by the unscrupulous and outright sleazy so-called news network”.Nine deaths have been linked to the Capitol attack, including law enforcement suicides. More than 1,000 people have been charged and hundreds convicted of offences including seditious conspiracy.Trump escaped conviction in an impeachment trial and has not been criminally charged. A House committee made four referrals to the Department of Justice.On air on Tuesday, Carlson claimed Democrats had shown “hysteria, overstatement, crazed hyperbole, red-in-the-face anger” over his use of the January 6 footage. It was “not outrage”, he said, but “fear. It’s panic.”He then focused on Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, saying footage would show the January 6 security failure was her fault.The media continued to pore over the filings in the Dominion suit.In another text, Carlson said of “the last four years” under Trump, “We’re all pretending we’ve got a lot to show for it, because admitting what a disaster it’s been is too tough to digest. But come on. There isn’t really an upside to Trump.”TopicsFox NewsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS politicsnewsReuse this content More