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      Cheryl Hines Didn’t Expect to Be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Running Mate

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      The “Curb Your Enthusiasm” actress is beloved in Hollywood. In supporting her husband’s campaign, is she normalizing his often dangerous ideas?On a quiet Thursday in May, there was almost no indication that anyone in Cheryl Hines’s house was running for president. A hockey stick poked out from a bush in front of the Spanish colonial home in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Leaning up against a wall outside were several surfboards, caked with wax, at least one of which belonged to her husband, the 69-year-old environmental lawyer and vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who had announced his candidacy for the 2024 Democratic nomination only four weeks earlier. In the foyer, the family’s three dogs wagged their tails near a portrait of Mr. Kennedy’s famous uncle and aunt, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, by the artist Romero Britto. Over the door hung an even larger portrait, of Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy, also by Mr. Britto, a friend of the couple.Ms. Hines, 57, has been in many spotlights during her three decades as a professional actress, most famously for her role as Larry David’s wife on “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” but this new one is different. After a lifetime of not being particularly political, she finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country. (Mr. Kennedy is the son of former United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.) And it seems clear he will need Ms. Hines, who is in the unique position of being more recognizable to some voters than her candidate husband, to help soften his image for those put off by his crusade against vaccines and history of promoting conspiracy theories, such as the false narrative that Bill Gates champions vaccines for financial gain. “I support Bobby and I want to be there for him, and I want him to feel loved and supported by me,” said Ms. Hines, who is a registered Democrat. “And at the same time, I don’t feel the need to go to every political event, because I do have my own career.”Mr. Kennedy, in an interview with The New York Times a few weeks later, said that he sees his wife as crucial to his success. “I think ultimately if I get elected, Cheryl will have played a huge role in that,” he said. “She’s an enormous asset to me, and I don’t think we’ve really unveiled her in her true power yet.” He added: “She has a gift that she’s kind of mesmerizing when she’s on TV and she’s talking, because she’s so spontaneous and she has this what I would call a quick, a fast-twitch reflex when it comes to conversation.”Friends keep checking in on her. Elections can get ugly, and Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, seemingly by design, will put him in contact with many of this country’s more unconventional voters.After a lifetime of not being particularly political, Ms. Hines finds herself not only married to a man from a storied American political family, but also attached to his long-shot campaign for the highest office in the country.Sophie Park for The New York Times“I’m bracing myself for it,” said Ms. Hines of the public scrutiny that comes with campaigning, while sitting in her home office. On the bookshelf, there’s a plaque of her Hollywood Walk of Fame star and a humorous framed photo of Mr. David in a turtleneck and fake mustache, holding a pipe with a note congratulating her. “It is hard not to live in that space of, ‘Oh my gosh, what’s going to happen? And is it going to be as terrible as I think?’”In her first interview since her husband announced his candidacy, Ms. Hines initially appeared at ease. She has done hundreds of interviews throughout her career, and as a seasoned improv actress, is known to be quick on her feet and sharply funny. She cut her teeth in the Groundlings, a Los Angeles-based improv troupe; “Curb” is outlined but unscripted. In some ways, answering questions from a stranger is just another form of: “Yes, and.” With improv, “it’s challenging because you don’t know what’s coming next. You don’t know what the audience is going to shout out,” she said. “‘Where are these two people?’ ‘They’re scooping poop in the lion’s den at the zoo!’ Lights go down. Lights go up.”“You have to commit 100 percent,” she continued, “or it’s not funny or interesting.”But here’s a scenario that would challenge even an improv master: You are beloved by fans and peers, and have managed to steer clear of controversy your entire career, but fall in love with a man who touches it off regularly with his often outlandish claims — a man who was kicked off Instagram along with his anti-vaccine nonprofit, Children’s Health Defense, for spreading misinformation during the pandemic. (Instagram reinstated Mr. Kennedy’s personal account earlier this month, because of his candidacy.) Who last year drew criticism and later apologized when, at a rally against vaccine mandates in Washington, he spoke against 5G technology, surveillance and what he called “technological mechanisms for control” and said, “even in Hitler’s Germany, you could cross the Alps to Switzerland. You could hide in an attic like Anne Frank did.” Who just this week suggested “S.S.R.I.s and benzos and other drugs” might be responsible for America’s school-shooting problem. (Mr. Kennedy told The Times that assault rifles “clearly make the world more dangerous and we should figure out a way to limit that impact,” but added, “there’s something else happening.”)Now, he is running for president, and you — “a genuine ray of light,” says the producer Suzanne Todd, and whom actor Alec Baldwin has said “everybody loves” — are along for the ride. After years of being able to distance yourself from your husband’s most problematic views, you now risk being seen as at least tacitly embracing them by standing by and smiling if he says things on the campaign trail that are demonstrably untrue.A note of congratulations from Larry David for Ms. Hines’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesA plaque for Ms. Hines’s star.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesIntroduced by Larry DavidMs. Hines was raised in Tallahassee, Fla., a thousand miles away— geographically and culturally — from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis, Mass., where she and Mr. Kennedy wed in 2014. Her father, who worked in construction, and her mother, an assistant at the Department of Revenue, were private about their politics, if they even had any. “If I ever asked my mom who she voted for, she would tell me it’s nobody’s business and it was her own secret,” Ms. Hines said. “I don’t recall my dad ever once talking about politics or current events, so it was not part of my life. Really, the only thing I knew about the Kennedys was what I learned in public school, in history.”After cosmetology school and the University of Central Florida, her first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day for a live audience. It was a gig that involved standing in a flesh-colored body suit while an audience member stabbed her with a rubber knife. In her 30s — practically of a certain age in Hollywood years — Ms. Hines was still paying her dues: bartending, working as the personal assistant to the filmmaker and actor Rob Reiner and going to improv classes. Her break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” In 2002, the show won the first of its many Emmys and Golden Globes. Ms. Hines recalled being backstage at the Golden Globe Awards and running into Harrison Ford. When he stopped to congratulate her, she extended her hand and said, “I’m Cheryl Hines. Harrison Ford said, ‘I know who you are,’ and I thought, Oh my God, what?”She and Mr. Kennedy met in 2006 when Mr. David, a longtime friend of Mr. Kennedy’s, introduced them at a ski-weekend fund-raiser in Banff, Canada, for Waterkeeper Alliance, an environmental nonprofit co-founded by Mr. Kennedy. Ms. Hines had no plans to ski, “but the next thing you know, we’re in skis and we’re on a ski lift,” she said. “I was looking at Larry like, ‘What is happening?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah,’ giving an indication like, ‘That’s Bobby.’” Ms. Hines said she was aware of Mr. Kennedy’s work as an environmental lawyer, but “I still didn’t know too much about the politics of it all.”By then, Ms. Hines was well entrenched in her own philanthropic work: for the nonprofit United Cerebral Palsy, after her nephew was diagnosed, and for under-resourced schools. “Cheryl was always reachable and accessible to me,” said Jacqueline Sanderlin, a former principal and district administrator of the Compton Unified School District. “She wasn’t a mercenary person. She wasn’t doing this for herself.”Ms. Hines’s break came in 1999, when she was cast in “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” the HBO show created by Mr. David.Jason Merritt/Getty ImagesMs. Hines and Mr. Kennedy spent time together at another ski event in 2011, when they each were going through a divorce, and eventually began dating long distance. Mr. David never intended for them to connect romantically, Ms. Hines noted. (“Poor Larry,” she said, looking up at the ceiling.) Mr. David told her the relationship was a bad idea, which she said was in jest. “It’s part of the fun of Larry. You just know no matter what you say to him, he’s going to say, ‘Why would you do that? Are you crazy?’”She was attracted to Mr. Kennedy’s wit. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” she said. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.” (How about now, with him running for office? “It seems like, ‘What am I getting myself into?’ Yeah, but, scuba diving.”)Their relationship made headlines when tragedy struck: In May of 2012, Mr. Kennedy’s second wife, Mary Richardson Kennedy, died by suicide at her home in Bedford, N.Y. Ms. Hines stayed on the West Coast while Mr. Kennedy focused on his children. “I gave him the space and time to heal,” she said. “I think grief is very personal.”When Ms. Hines and Mr. Kennedy got married two years later, Mr. Kennedy gave a speech in which he repeatedly called Ms. Hines “unflappable.” “It was to the level where we joked about it afterward,” said Ms. Todd, a close friend of Ms. Hines. “But he’s actually right, because Cheryl is unflappable.”Her career had continued at a clip: “Curb” returned in 2017 after a six-year hiatus. She joined the cast of the film “A Bad Moms Christmas” along with Susan Sarandon and Christine Baranski, guest-starred in a slew of sitcoms and started a podcast about documentaries with the comedian Tig Notaro.Mr. Kennedy had also been busy. In 2016, he founded the World Mercury Project, which became the Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit that advocates against vaccines for children. He co-wrote a book on vaccines and began posting anti-vaccine propaganda on social media.During the pandemic, Mr. Kennedy became an even louder voice in the anti-vaccine movement, encouraging people to “do your own research,” even as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the World Health Organization deemed the Covid vaccines safe and effective.Mr. Kennedy has long expressed skepticism about vaccines, but his intensity grew with his platform and audience. He published another book, “Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” which has blurbs from the former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, the director Oliver Stone and the lawyer Alan Dershowitz, among others. Ms. Hines stayed out of the fray for most of the pandemic. On her Instagram, she shared images of herself wearing a mask, as well as posts about her involvement with Waterkeeper Alliance — notably never mentioning Children’s Health Defense — and didn’t comment on her husband’s vaccine rhetoric. But then Mr. Kennedy made his Holocaust remark, and claimed that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the most visible public health leader fighting Covid, was orchestrating “fascism.”“My husband’s opinions are not a reflection of my own. While we love each other, we differ on many current issues,” Ms. Hines wrote on Twitter. The next day, she tweeted again, calling the Holocaust reference “reprehensible.” “The atrocities that millions endured during the Holocaust should never be compared to anyone or anything,” she wrote.Ms. Hines’s first acting job was at Universal Studios, where she performed the shower scene from “Psycho” up to 15 times a day.Chantal Anderson for The New York TimesMr. Kennedy said it was a difficult time for them. “I saw how it was affecting her life and I said to her, ‘We should just announce that we are separated,’ so that you can have some distance from me,” he said. “We wouldn’t really be doing anything, we would just — I felt so desperate about protecting her at a time where my statements and my decisions were impacting her.” He said he even wrote up a news release, though it never went out. Ms. Hines said that was never an option, although she was upset with Mr. Kennedy for his choice of words. “It was also frustrating to hear Bobby say things that could so easily be twisted into snippets that misrepresented his meaning and didn’t represent who he is,” she said.Several months later, Mr. Kennedy approached her to say he was considering running for office. “It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’” She ultimately agreed. On June 5, Ms. Hines was pulled into a Twitter Spaces conversation with Mr. Kennedy and Elon Musk, even though she hadn’t intended to participate. After she gave a measured comment about how she feels about her husband running for office — “It’s been really interesting,” she said, slowly, “and at times exciting” — Mr. Kennedy said that, to cope with the campaign, Ms. Hines had joked she was going to “invent a new kind of margarita that had Xanax in it.”Seeing ‘Both Sides’ on VaccinesMr. Kennedy’s traction has been surprising. A recent CNN poll found that Mr. Kennedy had support from 20 percent of Democratic or Democratic-leaning voters (though not the multiple members of his own family who have publicly said they will support President Biden.) Jack Dorsey, the former chief executive of Twitter, has endorsed him. Steve Bannon has been supportive of Mr. Kennedy’s campaign, floating the idea of a Trump-Kennedy ticket; Alex Jones and other right-wing conspiracy theorists have also expressed enthusiasm. Mr. Kennedy said he has never met Mr. Jones and has “never spoken to Mr. Bannon or Mr. Jones about my presidential campaign.” When asked twice if he would reject an endorsement from Mr. Jones, who lost a $1 billion lawsuit for repeatedly saying the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn., was a government hoax, Mr. Kennedy did not respond. Mr. Kennedy said that he would “love to go on Steve Bannon’s show, but Cheryl just can’t bear that,” so he has not. Back at her home in Los Angeles, what Ms. Hines seemed most excited to talk about was Hines+Young, the eco-friendly company she recently started with her 19-year-old daughter, Catherine Young. It is mostly skin care and candles, and one scent is called Hyannis Seagrass. This — the skin care, the podcast, the film and TV projects — was her world, not whatever was happening on the campaign trail.Ms. Hines does have issues she cares about, including school safety, and “bodily autonomy,” which she said includes abortion but more broadly is the ability to “make decisions about our body with a doctor, not with a politician.” (She declined to comment on whether that includes vaccines.) She had no canned answers prepared about her husband’s political career, but unlike in her improv, seemed unsure what to say. “Bobby is very smart and funny, although a lot of people don’t see the funny side,” Ms. Hines said about her husband. “He also has this sense of adventure that will catapult me outside of my comfort zone, which I find exciting most of the time.”Krista Schlueter for The New York TimesOn potentially being first lady: “I haven’t really spent time in that space, because we’re not there yet.” On how much she has prepped for the trail: “Every day I learn a lot.” On which current issues, specifically, she was referring to when she tweeted that she and her husband “differ”: “OK. Let me think here.” There was a 49-second pause then, which didn’t resolve in a clear answer. Ms. Hines, who appeared in a 2006 public service announcement encouraging people to get a whooping cough booster vaccine — and who had her own daughter vaccinated when she was young — had not previously commented on Mr. Kennedy’s views. “I see both sides of the vaccine situation,” she said. “There’s one side that feels scared if they don’t get the vaccine, and there’s the side that feels scared if they do get the vaccine, because they’re not sure if the vaccine is safe. And I understand that.”“So if Bobby is standing up and saying, ‘Well, are we sure that they’re safe and every vaccine has been tested properly? That doesn’t seem too much to ask,” she continued. “That seems like the right question to be asking.” Ms. Hines tried to dodge several questions about her views on vaccines, including “Do you think vaccines are dangerous for children?,” eventually answering in a manner that didn’t criticize her husband or reveal much about her own opinion.And Mr. Kennedy has been asking questions about the safety of vaccines for years, his family name and work as an environmental lawyer giving credibility to his skepticism, which he spreads through Children’s Health Defense. In 2019, family members wrote an open letter in which they said, in part, that although they love Mr. Kennedy, “on vaccines he is wrong” and called him “complicit in sowing distrust of the science behind vaccines.” In 2021, the Center for Countering Digital Hate asserted that Mr. Kennedy was one of 12 people responsible for the majority of anti-vaccine content on Facebook. Mr. Kennedy’s campaign website makes no mention of vaccines. Instead, he has positioned himself as a fighter for the middle class and a crusader against corruption, in an effort to appeal to what he has called “all the homeless Republicans and Democrats and Independents who are Americans first.” He wrote in an email to The Times that “the principal villain in the war in Ukraine is Vladimir Putin” but also blamed the war on “State Department and White House Neocons.” In May, he said on Russell Brand’s “Stay Free” podcast that Ukraine is “a victim of U.S. aggression” by way of a “proxy war.” Language included on his campaign website states his intention is to “make America strong again.”Upon learning that an opinion piece in The Washington Post had recently compared her husband to former President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Hines’s eyes widened. She tried to make sense of the observation.“His skin is much thicker than mine, let’s just say that,” she said. Mr. Kennedy’s father was killed while campaigning; his uncle was assassinated in office — a horrific loss for the country, but also for a family. “He doesn’t talk about that,” Ms. Hines said. “He’s not afraid of much. I can’t think of even one thing he’s afraid of.”In an interview with Breitbart News Daily — Mr. Kennedy has appeared frequently on right-wing cable shows and podcasts — he said, in response to a question that involved the phrase “cancel culture,” that Ms. Hines’s career had already suffered because of her support for his candidacy. Ms. Hines clarified: “I haven’t lost any jobs because of my support for his candidacy, but there was a project I’m involved in where there was a pause for discussion about how his candidacy might affect what we are doing but it has been resolved.” Mr. Kennedy added that so far, “I feel a lot of support and love from most of her friends, including Larry.” (In a text, Mr. David clarified: “Yes love and support, but I’m not ‘supporting’ him.”)“It was definitely a discussion,” Ms. Hines said about Mr. Kennedy’s decision to run for president, “because he said, ‘If you don’t want me to do it, I won’t.’”Chantal Anderson for The New York Times“But I’m sure there’s people who just don’t talk to me about it, who feel uncomfortable or, you know, whatever,” Mr. Kennedy continued. Ms. Hines said she was getting used to people wanting to talk to her about “their political feelings and thoughts.” Her strategy is to deflect. She said that she responds with a version of, “This is probably something you should talk about with Bobby, although I’m happy to hear your thoughts.” (The day after Mr. Kennedy announced his candidacy, Mr. Reiner, Ms. Hines’s friend and former boss, tweeted his support for President Biden.) Her industry friends, to her relief, are also consumed with their own affairs. “I went to this poker charity tournament the other night, and I thought everybody was going to be really talking to me about politics,” she said. But instead, “everybody was talking about the writers’ strike.”Ms. Hines isn’t a stiff person. Her personality comes out most in the lighter moments: While talking about a scene she recalled from her time with the Groundlings, Ms. Hines broke out into an impersonation of Cher singing “The Hills Are Alive.” She gushed as she talked about her love for her daughter, and how (not completely unlike her character in “A Bad Moms Christmas,” who sniffs her adult daughter’s hair) one of the reasons she wanted to work with her is to keep her close. Ms. Hines is used to talking about her work, too; her upcoming projects include the 12th season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” a new season of the music game show “I Can See Your Voice,” on which she is a judge and the comedic film “Popular Theory.”But when it comes to the campaign, Ms. Hines is more guarded. “This feels different, because it feels like every word is important,” she said. “Before this, really, my world was just about comedy, so I could make light of things. But now I understand people are listening in a different way, and I know that it’s really important to them. ”As the interview wound down, she laid out several Hines+Young body creams on the coffee table to smell. “It’s all about taking care of yourself and relaxing,” she said. “So it’s hilarious that it’s launching right now.”She then walked over to a bookshelf behind the sofa, where white T-shirts with “Kennedy24” printed across the front were rolled up and stacked, like towels at a gym. “I’m going to give you a T-shirt,” she said. “I don’t know who you’re voting for, and you can do whatever you want with it.”She looked around the room again, and then toward the door. “I have all these Kennedy T-shirts.” More

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      in US Politics

      Pat Robertson obituary

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      Although the concept of separation of church and state is entrenched in the US constitution, the influence of churchmen in political affairs is an American tradition dating back to the colonial era. Indeed, modern media has made the voice of contemporary evangelists every bit as powerful as Cotton Mather’s sermons were to the early Puritans. Pat Robertson, who has died aged 93, rode the growth of cable television, and a shrewd sense of the economics of the business, to become the most overtly political, and arguably the most influential, of them all.When Robertson appeared on the front of Time magazine in 1986, the cover line read Gospel TV: Religion, Politics and Money. The melding of those three strands of his career was not always seamless, though in American fundamentalism, material wealth is usually seen as a visible sign of God’s blessing. Through his Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), he progressed from televised faith healing to a serious run at the US presidency in 1988, and made a fortune in the process.Robertson started that campaign for the Republican nomination with a petition, and contributions, from 3 million viewers, and finished second in the Iowa caucuses, ahead of the then vice-president George HW Bush. But voters gave him little support in the Republican primaries, and Bush of course went on to the presidency.Robertson, who had handed control of CBN to his son Tim, then founded the Christian Coalition of America. Having failed to take over the Republican party, his “rainbow coalition” of fundamentalists would attempt to steer the party in its ideological direction.The coalition’s lobbying exerted immense influence, helping spearhead the right’s assault on President Bill Clinton, and provided both a fundraising and ideological template for Bush. Although the coalition was censured and fined for coordinating its campaigns directly with the Republican party, and for improper aid delivered to then-House majority leader Newt Gingrich and the Virginia senatorial candidate Oliver North, its success spurred on Robertson’s indulgence in another grand tradition of American evangelical preachers, the hubris that found him courting constant controversy, and frequent financial scandal.Controversy became inevitable with the shift from mainstream politics to the Christian Coalition. Preaching to the converted meant the restraints on expressing his true beliefs were lifted. The framework for those beliefs was set out in his 1991 bestseller The New World Order, an amalgam of historical conspiracy theories, which posited an alliance of Masons and Jewish bankers who controlled the world.Robertson called feminism a “socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practise witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians”. He predicted that the staging of “gay days” at Disney World would result in God’s retribution through earthquakes, tornados, terrorist bombings or meteors.Asked to be “nice” about rival Protestant denominations, such as Episcopalians, Presbyterians or Methodists, he said: “I don’t have to be nice to the spirit of the antichrist.” He described leftwing academics as “racists, murderers, sexual deviants, and supporters of al-Qaida”.In 2005 he called for the assassination of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, and explained Ariel Sharon’s 2006 stroke as God’s retribution for giving land back to Palestinians. He later apologised to Sharon’s family and claimed to have been misquoted.That followed Robertson’s standard pattern, of making wild accusations that pleased his core audience, then claiming to have been misquoted by an anti-Christian mainstream media. Most notoriously, on his TV show The 700 Club, he agreed emphatically with his fellow evangelist Jerry Falwell’s theory that the 9/11 attacks were caused by “pagans, abortionists, feminists, gays, lesbians, the American Civil Liberties Union, and [the progressive advocacy group] People for the American Way”. After the ensuing uproar, he claimed that due to a malfunctioning earpiece he had not actually heard what Falwell was saying when he agreed with it.Robertson came by his political ambitions naturally, being related through the family of his mother, Gladys (nee Willis), to two presidents, the Harrisons, William Henry and Benjamin, while his father, Willis Robertson, was a US Senator from Virginia, one of the conservative segregationist southern Democrats dubbed “Dixiecrats”. He was born in Lexington, Virginia, and christened Marion Robertson, but was nicknamed Pat, because his older brother, Willis Jr, would say “pat, pat, pat” while patting baby Marion’s cheeks.Pat was educated at two military academies: McDonogh, near Baltimore, and McCallie, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He attended Washington and Lee University in his home town. He was commissioned as a lieutenant in the Marines, but his claims to have seen combat with the First Marine Division in Korea came back to haunt him during his run for the presidential nomination.His Republican rival, Congressman Pete McCloskey, who had served with Robertson, said Robertson’s father had used influence to keep him out of combat, and that his primary responsibility had been to keep the officers’ clubs stocked with liquor. Robertson denounced this, and allegations by fellow Marines that he had consorted with prostitutes, as attempts to discredit him.Robertson returned home to gain a law degree in 1955 from Yale, but failed the bar exam. Soon afterwards, he was converted by the Dutch missionary Cornelius Vanderbreggen. By the time he was ordained by the Southern Baptist Convention in 1961, he had bought his first television station, in Portsmouth, Virginia, and established the Christian Broadcasting Network. He gave Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker their first break, doing a children’s programme, and started the breakfast-time show The 700 Club, its title taken from a fundraising drive for 700 subscribers.Robertson’s early success was based on televised faith healing. Critics pointed out that God seemed to speak through Robertson while taking programme cues from the director. His style, with fixed smile and narrow eyes, could seem almost a caricature of a snake-oil salesman, but its appeal was unquestionable, as CBN eventually claimed an audience in 180 countries. It functioned as a network of affiliated stations subscribing to its programming, but in 1977 Robertson started his own cable channel, CBN Cable, offering mainstream entertainment bookended by The 700 Club.Renamed the Family Channel, its profits eventually threatened CBN’s religious non-profit status, so Robertson set up International Family Entertainment, with himself and Tim as its heads, and sold the Family Channel to it. In 1992 he took IFE public, making $90m on the launch. In 1997, IFE sold the Family Channel to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network for $1.9bn. Fox has since sold it on to Disney, but as a condition of the original sale, the channel, now called Freeform, is still required to broadcast The 700 Club, hosted by Pat’s son Gordon, president of CBN, twice a day.Evangelists including Oral Roberts and Bob Jones had founded their own colleges, and Robertson’s television success spawned CBN University, now called Regent University, at the CBN headquarters in Virginia Beach, the city where Robertson lived in a hilltop mansion with its own landing strip. On a number of occasions he credited his public prayers for steering hurricanes away from Virginia Beach, though he was unsuccessful with Hurricane Isabel in 2003.More controversial than Regent was his international humanitarian charity Operation Blessing. In 1994, it was claimed in his local newspaper, the Virginian-Pilot, that Robertson’s impassioned fundraising for Operation Blessing’s refugee airlift in Rwanda and Zaire was at least partly a cover for the use of his aircraft to transport diamond-mining equipment for the Robertson-owned African Development Corporation. A long investigation by Virginia’s Office of Consumer Affairs recommended Robertson be prosecuted for fraud, but the state’s attorney general, Mark Earley, brought no charges against him. The George W Bush administration made Operation Blessing the second-largest recipient of federal relief funds in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina, which was seen in some quarters as payback for Robertson’s support.In 2003, Robertson used The 700 Club as a platform to argue on behalf of the Liberian president Charles Taylor, who had been indicted by the UN for war crimes. It emerged that Robertson had an investment in a Liberian gold mine, which he claimed was intended to help pay for Operation Blessing’s humanitarian efforts in the country, but which was allowed to go bankrupt after Taylor’s departure from office.Other business enterprises included the Ice Capades, a pyramid sales scheme, and a financial services venture with the Bank of Scotland, which was cancelled after Robertson called Scotland “a dark land overrun by homosexuals”. No matter how outrageous his statements, Robertson never alienated his core audience, and could count on the committed support of born-again Christians who felt the Lord spoke through him, and rewarded him for passing on his message, as did countless politicians hungry for his endorsement.He married Dede (Adelia) Elmer in 1954. She died in 2022 and Robertson is survived by their sons, Tim and Gordon, and daughters, Elizabeth and Ann, 14 grandchildren and 24 great-grandchildren. More

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      in Elections

      Bob’s Burgers actor arrested on charges of joining January 6 mob

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      An actor known for his roles on the comedy television shows Bob’s Burgers and Mr Show with Bob and David was arrested on Wednesday on charges that he joined a mob of Donald Trump supporters in confronting police officers during the US Capitol riot, court records show.Jay Johnston, 54, of Los Angeles, faces charges including civil disorder, a felony. A federal magistrate judge agreed to free Johnston on $25,000 bond after his initial court appearance in California. A public defender who represented him at the hearing declined to comment.Video footage captured Johnston pushing against police and helping rioters who attacked officers guarding an entrance to the Capitol in a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit. Johnston held a stolen police shield over his head and passed it to other rioters during the attack on 6 January 2021, the affidavit says.Johnston “was close to the entrance to the tunnel, turned back and signaled for other rioters to come towards the entrance”, the agent wrote.Johnston was the voice of the character Jimmy Pesto on Fox’s Bob’s Burgers. The Daily Beast reported in December 2021 that Johnston was “banned” from the animated show after the January 6 attack.Johnston appeared on Mr Show with Bob and David, an HBO sketch comedy series that starred Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. His credits also include small parts on the television show Arrested Development and in the movie Anchorman, starring Will Ferrell.United Airlines records show Johnston booked a round-trip flight from Los Angeles to Washington DC, departing on 4 January 2021, and returning a day after the riot, according to the FBI. Thousands of people stormed the Capitol on 6 January after attending Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally.While the mob attacked police in the tunnel with pepper spray and other weapons, Johnston helped other rioters near the tunnel pour water on their faces and then joined in pushing against the line of officers, the FBI says.“The rioters coordinated the timing of the pushes by yelling ‘Heave! Ho!’” the affidavit says.Three current or former associates of Johnston identified him as a riot suspect from photos that the FBI published online, according to the agent. The FBI said one of those associates provided investigators with a text message in which Johnston acknowledged being at the Capitol on 6 January.“The news has presented it as an attack. It actually wasn’t. Thought it kind of turned into that. It was a mess. Got maced and tear gassed and I found it quite untastic,” Johnston wrote, according to the FBI.More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes for their conduct at the Capitol on 6 January. More than 500 of them have been sentenced, with over half getting terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years, according to an Associated Press review of court records. More

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      in Elections

      Analyzing Shiv’s Decision on ‘Succession’ With a Feminist Text

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      Still grappling with the finale of the hit HBO series? An article by a feminist theorist could be surprisingly helpful with understanding the deals that patriarchal systems offer women.Did you watch the finale of “Succession” on HBO this week? If so, did the final shot of Tom and Shiv in their car make you think of “Bargaining With Patriarchy,” Deniz Kandiyoti’s 1988 article that is a classic feminist text?Me too! And not just because “Bargaining With Patriarchy” would make an extremely literal three-word summary of the entire series. For while “Succession” was not overtly about the patriarchy, it is unquestionably about a patriarchy.“Succession,” for those unfamiliar, follows the exploits of the Roy family: literal patriarch Logan, an aging media baron in the mold of Rupert Murdoch, and his adult children. Most of the show’s plot was driven by his son Kendall’s various failed efforts to dethrone or succeed him, some of which roped in Kendall’s sister, Shiv, and/or his brother Roman.Which brings me to Kandiyoti, the feminist theorist whose groundbreaking work is surprisingly helpful for understanding today’s HBO hit.The “bargain” of her article’s title refers to the side deal that patriarchal systems offer to women: If they help protect men’s interests by serving their husbands and sons, and conforming to the conventions of propriety that protect their family’s reputation, then they can also enjoy some privileges — and even exercise limited power over other, less-fortunate women.The traditional bargain for many Indian women, for instance, was that they wouldn’t own their own property or inherit family assets, but would be supported by their husbands while young and by sons in old age.But the benefits of those bargains were always contingent on women’s relationships to men, Kandiyoti wrote. In the wake of a relevant man’s divorce, death or estrangement, the protections and power derived from him would crumble, with no guarantee that another man would take his place.(Now for the required warning: “Succession” spoilers appear below.)One way to view the events of “Succession” is as the story of Kendall’s tragic misapprehension of his position in the family under his father’s patriarchy. He thought that as a son — the “eldest boy,” as he yowled angrily (and incorrectly) in the final episode — he was set to inherit everything. But actually, in patriarchal terms of power and position though not actual gender, he was effectively as vulnerable as a wife or daughter trapped in Logan’s orbit.It’s one of the oldest political stories in the world: Someone supports an oppressive system thinking that they will one day be on top, only to discover they have played into the mechanisms of their own oppression.The Roy children’s mistake was that they failed to realize that they only enjoyed privilege through Logan. If the kids played by the rules of that patriarchy, he granted them money and sinecures and even sometimes authority over those outside the family.But it was all dependent on their relationship with him, which was horribly abusive. Over the course of four seasons, he insulted, belittled, manipulated, gaslit and even physically attacked his children. He controlled their money, undermined their relationships and demanded absolute loyalty. He cut off avenues of escape, promising them the world but never delivering it.So none of the children had independent power bases that might have come from, say, building their own companies or from doing real jobs within their father’s empire. (Tellingly, the show rarely depicted the Roy kids actually working for the Waystar Royco empire.) The patriarchal bargain was all they had.Kendall, in particular, had no skills useful to the rest of the world. As he correctly told his sister when begging her to support his bid for C.E.O. in the final episode, he was a cog that had been made to fit only one machine. Except that the machine in question was not, as he had thought, the Waystar Royco corporation. The machine was his relationship with his dad. And that died with Logan.This is the dirty secret of patriarchal systems, Kandiyoti wrote: Once women have been co-opted into giving up power, they have no ability to enforce the bargain that drew them into that situation in the first place, especially once new men take control.“For the generation of women caught in between,” she wrote, “this transformation may represent genuine personal tragedy, since they have paid the heavy price of an earlier patriarchal bargain, but are not able to cash in on its promised benefits.”For Kendall, tragedy came not only when he lost out on the corporate power he craved, but also when his siblings abandoned him.But perhaps a lifetime of ambient misogyny meant that Shiv Roy, the only actual daughter of the family, was best placed to recognize that situation for what it was. That could explain why she ultimately backed her husband as the new C.E.O.: At the last minute, she may have realized that her old patriarchal bargain was worthless, but unlike her brothers, she managed to strike a new one. More

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      in Elections

      A Peek Behind the MAGA Curtain

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      Every now and then, it’s important to watch Fox News in prime time. No, not because the programs are particularly good or because the hosts tell their audience the truth. Fox is writing Dominion Voting Systems a $787.5 million check for very good reasons, and it still faces a multibillion-dollar lawsuit from Smartmatic over the channel’s election reporting. But to watch Fox News is to begin to understand millions of your fellow Americans. And there was no better time to start understanding the 2024 Republican primary contest than Thursday night, during Donald Trump’s town hall in Iowa, hosted by Sean Hannity.To watch the town hall was to start learning the answer to a key question: After everything, how can Republicans still be so loyal to Trump? But that word, “everything,” is loaded with different meanings in different American communities.When I look back on the Trump years, I see a dark time of division, corruption and social decay. After all, when he left office, the murder rate was higher, drug overdose deaths had increased, and the abortion rate had gone up for the first time in decades. America was more bitterly divided, and deficits increased each year of his presidency. His early Covid lies helped fuel an immense amount of confusion and almost certainly cost American lives. And his entire sorry term was capped by a violent insurrection fueled by an avalanche of lies.If you watched the town hall, however, you entered an entirely different world. According to Trump’s narrative, everything he did was good. His term was a time of economic prosperity, energy independence, fiscal responsibility, a rejuvenated military, a locked-down border and fear and respect from foreign regimes. The only thing that marred his four years was a stolen election and his unjust persecution by the corrupt Democratic Party and its allies in the F.B.I.In Trumpworld, the Trump past is golden, and the Trump future bright, but the present is a time of misery and darkness. It is President Biden, not Trump, who mishandles classified documents. It is Biden’s family, not Trump’s, that corruptly profits off foreign regimes. Trump would have prevented the Ukraine war. Trump would have withdrawn from Afghanistan more smoothly. As for Biden himself, he’s an object of derision and pity — far too physically and mentally impaired to be president of the United States.False narratives are often sustained by a few kernels of truth, and so it is in MAGA America. The economy was strong before Covid, and there were fewer southern border crossings each year during Trump’s presidency than there have been during Biden’s. The ISIS caliphate fell. And I don’t know a single Republican who isn’t pleased with Trump’s judicial nominees.Moreover, not all of Trump’s opponents possess the cleanest of hands. There were, in fact, Department of Justice excesses during its investigation of his campaign’s possible ties to Russia. A special counsel is investigating Biden’s mishandling of classified documents. Hunter Biden is under criminal investigation, and his overseas business dealings are indeed unsavory, even if there is not yet proof of criminal wrongdoing. The withdrawal from Afghanistan turned into a chaotic and bloody rout of allied forces. Inflation remains too high.In short, there is enough truthful criticism of the Biden administration to make it vulnerable to an election loss. And there remains sufficient false Trump administration nostalgia to make Trump the G.O.P. nominee. Put both realities together, and the nation is facing RealClearPolitics polling averages that show Trump to be the overwhelming favorite for the G.O.P. nomination and a slight leader in a potential general election matchup against Biden.Given these facts — and Thursday night’s peek at MAGA America — my colleague Frank Bruni’s warning to Democrats on Thursday was timely and important: Democrats should not hope to face Trump in 2024. Rooting for him isn’t just dangerous; it’s based on misunderstandings. All too many Trump opponents — in both parties — have spent so long building their voluminous cases against him that they’ve forgotten how he looks to the other side. They can’t conceive of a coherent case for his candidacy.The two most telling moments on Thursday came from Trump’s audience. First, they booed Mike Pence at the very mention of his name. Second, they shouted derisively at Hannity at the mere thought that Trump should perhaps tone down his rhetoric. Both moments emphasized the ferocity of their support for Trump. When you see that public response, you can begin to see his opponents’ dilemma. Given the size of Trump’s base, a winning Republican rival will have to peel away at least some members of audiences like Thursday’s — the very people who see him as a persecuted hero.That challenge is compounded by every event like Thursday’s town hall, in which a relaxed Trump was “questioned” by a supine host in front of an adoring crowd. Hannity’s performance was quite a contrast to Kaitlan Collins’s pointed challenges to Trump during last month’s CNN town hall. Yet both events advanced Trump’s narrative. CNN’s tough questions reminded MAGA of his alleged persecution. Hannity’s coddling reminded MAGA of Trump’s alleged triumphs. Both ultimately helped Trump deepen his bond with the people who love him the most.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      in Elections

      Inside Fox’s Legal and Business Debacle

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      In August 2021, the Fox Corporation board of directors gathered on the company’s movie studio lot in Los Angeles. Among the topics on the agenda: Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against its cable news network, Fox News.The suit posed a threat to the company’s finances and reputation. But Fox’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, reassured the board: Even if the company lost at trial, it would ultimately prevail. The First Amendment was on Fox’s side, he explained, even if proving so could require going to the Supreme Court.Mr. Dinh told others inside the company that Fox’s possible legal costs, at tens of millions of dollars, could outstrip any damages the company would have to pay to Dominion.That determination informed a series of missteps and miscalculations over the next 20 months, according to a New York Times review of court and business records, and interviews with roughly a dozen people directly involved in or briefed on the company’s decision-making.The case resulted in one of the biggest legal and business debacles in the history of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire: an avalanche of embarrassing disclosures from internal messages released in court filings; the largest known settlement in a defamation suit, $787.5 million; two shareholder lawsuits; and the benching of Fox’s top prime-time star, Tucker Carlson.And for all of that, Fox still faces a lawsuit seeking even more in damages, $2.7 billion, filed by another subject of the stolen-election theory, the voting software company Smartmatic, which can now build on the evidence produced in the Dominion case to press its own considerable claims.In the month since the settlement, Fox has refused to comment in detail on the case or the many subsequent setbacks. That has left a string of unanswered questions: Why did the company not settle earlier and avoid the release of private emails and texts from executives and hosts? How did one of the most potentially prejudicial pieces of evidence — a text from Mr. Carlson about race and violence — escape high-level notice until the eve of the trial? How did Fox’s pretrial assessment so spectacularly miss the mark?Repeatedly, Fox executives overlooked warning signs about the damage they and their network would sustain, The Times found. They also failed to recognize how far their cable news networks, Fox News and Fox Business, had strayed into defamatory territory by promoting President Donald J. Trump’s election conspiracy theories — the central issue in the case. (Fox maintains it did not defame Dominion.)When pretrial rulings went against the company, Fox did not pursue a settlement in any real way. Executives were then caught flat-footed as Dominion’s court filings included internal Fox messages that made clear how the company chased a Trump-loving audience that preferred his election lies — the same lies that helped feed the Jan. 6 Capitol riots — to the truth.It was only in February, with the overwhelming negative public reaction to those disclosures, that Mr. Murdoch and his son with whom he runs the company, Lachlan Murdoch, began seriously considering settling. Yet they made no major attempt to do so until the eve of the trial in April, after still more damaging public disclosures.At the center of the action was Mr. Dinh and his overly rosy scenario.Mr. Dinh declined several requests for comment, and the company declined to respond to questions about his performance or his legal decisions. “Discussions of specific legal strategy are privileged and confidential,” a company representative said in a statement.Defenders of Mr. Dinh, a high-level Justice Department official under President George W. Bush, say his initial position was sound. Because of the strength of American free speech protections, Dominion needed to clear a high bar. And unfavorable rulings from the Delaware judge who oversaw the case hurt Fox’s chances, they argue.“I think Viet and Fox carried out just the right strategy by moving down two paths simultaneously — first, mounting a strong legal defense, one that I think would have eventually won at the appellate stage, and, second, continuously assessing settlement opportunities at every stage,” said William P. Barr, the former attorney general under Mr. Trump who worked with Mr. Dinh earlier in his career. Of course, the case would have been difficult for any lawyer. As the internal records showed, executives knew conspiracy theories about Dominion were false yet did not stop hosts and guests from airing them.That placed Fox in the ultimate danger zone, where First Amendment rights give way to the legal liability that comes from knowingly promoting false statements, referred to in legalese as “actual malice.”An Unanswered LetterMaria Bartiromo was the first Fox host to air the Dominion conspiracy theory.Roy Rochlin/Getty ImagesThe fall of 2020 brought Fox News to a crisis point. The Fox audience had come to expect favorable news about President Trump. But Fox could not provide that on election night, when its decision desk team was first to declare that Mr. Trump had lost the critical state of Arizona.In the days after, Mr. Trump’s fans switched off in droves. Ratings surged at the smaller right-wing rival Newsmax, which, unlike Fox, was refusing to recognize Joseph R. Biden’s victory.The Fox host who was the first to find a way to draw the audience back was Maria Bartiromo. Five days after the election, she invited a guest, the Trump-aligned lawyer Sidney Powell, to share details about the false accusations that Dominion, an elections technology company, had switched votes from Mr. Trump to Mr. Biden.Soon, wild claims about Dominion appeared elsewhere on Fox, including references to the election company’s supposed (but imagined) ties to the Smartmatic election software company; Hugo Chávez, the Venezuelan dictator who died in 2013; George Soros, the billionaire investor and Democratic donor; and China.On Nov. 12, a Dominion spokesman complained to the Fox News Media chief executive, Suzanne Scott, and the Fox News Media executive editor, Jay Wallace, begging them to make it stop. “We really weren’t thinking about building a litigation record as much as we were trying to stop the bleeding,” Thomas A. Clare, one of Dominion’s lawyers, said recently at a post-mortem discussion of the case held by a First Amendment advocacy group, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.As Fox noted in its court papers, its hosts did begin including company denials. But as they continued to give oxygen to the false allegations, Dominion sent a letter to the Fox News general counsel, Lily Fu Claffee, demanding that Fox cease and correct the record. “Dominion is prepared to do what is necessary to protect its reputation and the safety of its employees,” the letter warned.It came amid more than 3,600 messages that Dominion sent debunking the conspiracy theories to network hosts, producers and executives in the weeks after the election.Such letters often set off internal reviews at news organizations. Fox’s lawyers did not conduct one. Had they done so, they may have learned of an email that Ms. Bartiromo received in November about one of Ms. Powell’s original sources on Dominion.The source intimated that her information had come from a combination of dreams and time travel. (“The wind tells me I’m a ghost but I don’t believe it,” she had written Ms. Powell.)Dan Novack, a First Amendment lawyer, said that if he ever stumbled upon such an email in a client’s files, he would “physically wrest my client’s checkbook from them and settle before the police arrive.”Fox, however, did not respond to the Dominion letter or comply with its requests — now a key issue in a shareholder suit filed in April, which maintains that doing so would have “materially mitigated” Fox’s legal exposure.The CaseDominion’s chief executive, John Poulos, at a news conference in April after the company settled its defamation suit against Fox.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesThree months after the election, another voting technology company tied to the Dominion conspiracy, Smartmatic, filed its own defamation suit against Fox, seeking $2.7 billion in damages. Dominion told reporters that it was preparing to file one, too.Mr. Dinh was publicly dismissive.“The newsworthy nature of the contested presidential election deserved full and fair coverage from all journalists, Fox News did its job, and this is what the First Amendment protects,” Mr. Dinh said at the time in a rare interview with the legal writer David Lat. “I’m not at all concerned about such lawsuits, real or imagined.”Mr. Dinh was saying as much inside Fox, too, according to several people familiar with his actions at the time. His words mattered.A refugee of Vietnam who fled the Communist regime and landed with his family in the United States virtually penniless, he graduated from Harvard and Harvard Law and was a clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. As an assistant attorney general for George W. Bush, he helped draft the Patriot Act expanding government surveillance powers. He and Lachlan Murdoch later became so close that Mr. Dinh, 55, is godfather to one of Mr. Murdoch’s sons.Mr. Dinh took a hands-on approach to the Dominion case, and eventually split with a key member of the outside team, Charles L. Babcock of Jackson Walker, according to several people with knowledge of the internal discussions.After disagreement over the best way to formulate Fox’s defense, Jackson Walker and Fox parted ways. George Freeman, executive director of the Media Law Resource Center and a former assistant general counsel for The Times, said Mr. Babcock’s exit had left Fox down a seasoned defamation defense lawyer. “He’s probably the best trial lawyer in the media bar,” Mr. Freeman said.By then, Mr. Dinh was fashioning the legal team more in his own image, having brought in a longtime colleague from the Bush administration, the former solicitor general Paul Clement.Mr. Clement’s presence on the Fox team was itself an indication of Mr. Dinh’s willingness to take the case all the way to the Supreme Court — few members of the conservative legal bar had more experience there.Mr. Dinh hired Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney, for the role of lead litigator, succeeding Mr. Babcock. Mr. Webb was known for representing a beef manufacturer that sued ABC News over reports about a product sometimes referred to as “pink slime.” The case was settled in 2017 for more than $170 million.The Fox legal team based much of the defense on a doctrine known as the neutral reportage privilege. It holds that news organizations cannot be held financially liable for damages when reporting on false allegations made by major public figures as long as they don’t embrace or endorse them.“If the president of the United States is alleging that there was fraud in an election, that’s newsworthy, whether or not there’s fraud in the election,” Mr. Clement told Jim Geraghty, a writer for National Review and The Washington Post. “It’s the most newsworthy thing imaginable.”Fox remained so confident, the company said in reports to investors that it did not anticipate the suit would have “a material adverse effect.”But the neutral reportage privilege is not universally recognized. Longtime First Amendment lawyers who agree with the principle in theory had their doubts that it would work, given that judges have increasingly rejected it.“Most astute media defamation defense lawyers would not, and have not for a very long time, relied on neutral reportage — certainly as a primary line of defense, because the likelihood that a court would accept it as a matter of First Amendment law has continued to diminish over time,” said Lee Levine, a veteran media lawyer. An early warning came in late 2021. The judge in the case, Eric M. Davis, rejected Fox’s attempt to use the neutral reportage defense to get the suit thrown out altogether, determining that it was not recognized under New York law, which he was applying to the case. Even if it was recognized, Fox would have to show it reported on the allegations “accurately and dispassionately,” and Dominion had made a strong argument that Fox’s reporting was neither, the judge wrote in a ruling.That ruling meant that Dominion, in preparing its arguments, could have access to Fox’s internal communications in discovery.That was a natural time to settle. But Fox stuck with its defense and its plan, which always foresaw a potential loss at trial. “There was a strong belief that the appeal could very well be as important, or more important, than the trial itself,” Mr. Webb said at the post-mortem discussion of the case with Mr. Clare.Things Fall ApartText messages that came to light in the Dominion case included assertions by the Fox host Tucker Carlson that voter fraud could not have made a material difference in the election.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesFox executives did not foresee how daunting the discovery process would become.At nearly every step, the court overruled Fox’s attempts to limit Dominion’s access to private communications exchanged among hosts, producers and executives. The biggest blow came last summer, after a ruling stating that Dominion could review messages from the personal phones of Fox employees, including both Murdochs.The result was a treasure trove of evidence for Dominion: text messages and emails that revealed the doubts that Rupert Murdoch had about the coverage airing on his network, and assertions by many inside Fox, including Mr. Carlson, that fraud could not have made a material difference in the election.The messages led to even more damaging revelations during depositions. After Dominion’s lawyers confronted Mr. Murdoch with his own messages showing he knew Mr. Trump’s stolen election claims were false, he admitted that some Fox hosts appeared to have endorsed stolen election claims.That appeared to have undermined Fox’s defense. But Mr. Dinh told Mr. Murdoch afterward that he thought the deposition had gone well, according to a person who witnessed the exchange. Mr. Murdoch then pointed a finger in the direction of the Dominion lawyer who had just finished questioning him and said, “I think he would strongly disagree with that.”During Mr. Carlson’s deposition last year, Dominion’s lawyers asked about his use of a crude word to describe women — including a ranking Fox executive. They also mentioned a text in which he discussed watching a group of men, who he said were Trump supporters, attack “an Antifa kid.” He lamented in the text, “It’s not how white men fight,” and shared a momentary wish that the group would kill the person. He then said he regretted that instinct.Mr. Carlson felt blindsided by the extent of the questions, according to associates and confirmed by a video leaked to the left-leaning group Media Matters: “Ten hours,” he exclaimed to people on the set of his show, referring to how long he was questioned. “It was so unhealthy, the hate I felt for that guy,” he said about the Dominion lawyer who had questioned him.There is no indication that Mr. Carlson’s texts tripped alarms at the top of Fox at that point.The alarms rang in February, when reams of other internal Fox communications became public. The public’s reaction was so negative that some people at the company believed that a jury in Delaware — which was likely to be left-leaning — could award Dominion over a billion dollars. Yet the company made no serious bid to settle.With prominent First Amendment lawyers declaring that Dominion had an exceptionally strong case, a siege mentality appeared to set in.In the interview with Mr. Geraghty, Mr. Clement said Fox was being singled out for its politics. Unlike mainstream media, which tend to report on major events the same way and have power in numbers, he said, “conservative media, or somebody like Fox, is in a much more vulnerable position.” He added, “If they report it, and the underlying allegations aren’t true, they’re much more out there on an island.”Reflecting the view of Mr. Dinh’s supporters even now, Mr. Barr, the former attorney general, said the “mainstream media stupidly cheered on Dominion’s case,” which he said they would come to regret because it would weaken their First Amendment protections. (He made a similar argument in March in The Wall Street Journal.)But Judge Davis had determined that Fox had set itself apart by failing to conduct “good-faith, disinterested reporting” in the segments at issue in the suit. That was in large part why, just ahead of opening statements, he ruled that Fox could not make neutral reportage claims that the conspiracy theory was newsworthy at the trial, knocking out a pillar of Fox’s strategy. (He also ruled that Fox had, indeed, defamed the company in airing the false statements.)Mr. Webb, who had already drafted much of his opening statement and tested it with a focus group, had to remove key parts of his remarks, he said in the post-trial discussion with Mr. Clare.The Directors Step InRupert and Lachlan Murdoch. Rupert Murdoch acknowledged in a deposition that several hosts for his networks promoted the false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen from President Donald J. Trump.Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesAll along, the Fox board had been taking a wait-and-see approach.But the judge’s pretrial decisions began to change the board’s thinking. Also, in those final days before the trial, Fox was hit with new lawsuits. One, from the former Fox producer Abby Grossberg, accused Mr. Carlson of promoting a hostile work environment. Another, filed by a shareholder, accused the Murdochs and several directors of failing to stop the practices that made Fox vulnerable to legal claims.The weekend before trial was to begin, with jury selection already underway, the board asked Fox to see the internal Fox communications that were not yet public but that could still come out in the courtroom.That Sunday, the board learned for the first time of the Carlson text that referred to “how white men fight.” Mr. Dinh did not know about the message until that weekend, according to two people familiar with the matter. Fox’s lawyers believed it would not come out at trial, because it was not relevant to the legal arguments at hand. The board, however, was concerned that Dominion was prepared to use the message to further undermine the company with the jury.In an emergency meeting that Sunday evening, the board — with an eye on future lawsuits, including those from Smartmatic and Ms. Grossberg — decided to hire the law firm Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz to investigate whether any other problematic texts from Mr. Carlson or others existed.Over that same weekend, Lachlan Murdoch told his settlement negotiators to offer Dominion more than the $550 million for which he had already received board approval.In interviews, people with knowledge of the deliberations disagreed about how much Mr. Carlson’s text contributed to the final $787.5 million settlement price.By the time the board learned of the message, the Murdochs had already determined that a trial loss could be far more damaging than they were initially told to expect. A substantial jury award could weigh on the company’s stock for years as the appeals process played out.“The distraction to our company, the distraction to our growth plans — our management — would have been extraordinarily costly, which is why we decided to settle,” Lachlan Murdoch said at an investment conference this month.But there was broad agreement among people with knowledge of the discussions that the Carlson text, and the board’s initiation of an investigation, added to the pressure to avoid trial.The text also helped lead to the Murdochs’ decision a few days later to abruptly pull Mr. Carlson off the air. Their view had hardened that their top-rated star wasn’t worth all the downsides he brought with him.Fox’s trouble has not ended. In the weeks since the settlement and Mr. Carlson’s ouster, prime-time ratings have dropped (though Fox remains No. 1 in cable news), and new plaintiffs sued the network, most recently a former Homeland Security official, Nina Jankowicz.As one of Ms. Jankowicz’s lawyers said in an interview, the Dominion case “signals that there is a path.”Still pending is the Smartmatic suit. In late April, Fox agreed to hand over additional internal documents relating to several executives, including the Murdochs and Mr. Dinh. In a statement reminiscent of Mr. Dinh’s early view of the Dominion case, the network said that the $2.7 billion in damages sought by Smartmatic — operating in only one county in 2020 — were implausible and that Fox was protected by the First Amendment.“We will be ready to defend this case surrounding extremely newsworthy events when it goes to trial, likely in 2025,” the statement said. More

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      in US Politics

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

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      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

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      in Elections

      Why ‘Succession’ Is a Work of Fantasy

      by

      It was interesting, after writing last week’s newsletter on the problems of conservative media, to watch Sunday’s episode of HBO’s “Succession,” in which the show’s lightly fictionalized version of Fox News, run by its somewhat more meaningfully fictionalized version of the Fox-owning Murdoch family, takes center stage for an imagined election night. (There will be some spoilers below, fair warning.) Between the Dominion Voting Systems settlement and the Tucker Carlson firing, we’ve had a lot of real-world Fox drama lately, and the contrast between reality and fiction tells us something interesting about how art depicts our politics — and how the nature of democratic politics can resist successful dramatization.In the real world, the last presidential election night saw Fox News call Arizona early (calling it correctly, though probably earlier than was justified by the extremely narrow margin), yielding fury from Donald Trump’s campaign and backlash from the Fox audience, whose drift toward other outlets helps explain why Fox allowed election conspiracy theories to run wild on some of its shows. It was a case study in the problem I described last week, where conservative media has ended up captive to the particular expectations of a large television audience — a demand for infotainment, reality-TV drama, good guys and bad guys, nothing that doesn’t make sense within the expected nightly narrative.In the world of “Succession,” the key election-night dilemma is somewhat similar — when to call a crucial state — but the dynamics are quite different. The show’s presidential election is disrupted by a fire (arson?) at a Milwaukee precinct that destroys thousands of ballots, leaving the right-wing candidate ahead pending litigation, and his campaign wants ATN (the show’s Fox News) to call Wisconsin for him immediately. The decision gets punted up to the Roy siblings, the would-be heirs to their recently deceased father’s corporate empire, and though there are references to what the ATN audience wants, the Roys end up making a very bad, republic-undermining decision for reasons internal to their family dynamics. The brothers, Kendall and Roman, want to keep the company rather than go through with a planned sale to a Scandinavian tech billionaire, the right-wing candidate has promised to block the deal for them if he’s elected, and their sister, Shiv, the liberal of the group, is playing her own double game that blows up in her face.A key question throughout the show’s seasons has been whether “Succession” is ultimately the drama of, well, succession promised by the title — a story in the style of “The Godfather,” where one of the main characters emerges as the (corrupted) heir to the father’s empire — or whether it’s headed for a version of the “Hamlet” ending, where everybody stabs or poisons everybody else and some outsider shows up to claim the throne. With two episodes left, the dice seem loaded for the second outcome: Failsons and a faildaughter lose their company and, oops, bring down the American republic along the way.But as a political drama, which “Succession” is at least secondarily, both of these narratives are essentially elite-driven and family-driven, suggesting a world where to understand what happens in American politics, you mostly need to understand the pressures and pathologies afflicting a narrow group of power brokers.Which is, certainly, part of the truth. I write a lot about elites, everybody writes a lot about elites, because as the word suggests they’re pretty important to figuring out what’s going on in society — and also because when you write about politics for a living, you’re often writing for an audience that thinks of itself as at least elite-adjacent, part of the professional class, the overclass, the meritocracy.Thus a lot of arguments about the Republican Party in the age of Trump necessarily revolve around what some segment of this overclass is getting wrong. Is it liberal elites whose failures and ideological fixations keep giving oxygen to populism? Or media elites who keep covering Trump the wrong way (with vast disagreements about what the right way would be)? Or conservative elites who just need to summon moral courage and stand up against demagogy? Or the entire elite that needs replacement by a better one, ideally forged by classically minded finishing schools and papal encyclicals? The answer varies but the narrative endures because “affecting some change in elite behavior” is the biggest lever that seems within a pundit’s reach.When I watch “Succession” with this mind-set, my main complaint about the show’s political vision is that it mostly leaves out a kind of Republican elite who would be connected to any Fox News-like enterprise. The show obviously has no trouble scripting the amoral cynics getting rich off a conservative base they secretly despise, and it does a decent job channeling the voice of the very-online right (the far-right presidential candidate has a weird patois that sounds like Robert Nisbet crossed with a Nietzschean edgelord). But it doesn’t have much representation for the more normal Republicans who definitely exist inside Fox World, the kind of people who believe in conventional conservative principles and end up compromising with populists they dislike because of liberals they fear more. The show can only imagine weird fanatics on the one hand, and on the other hand pure cynics who secretly know the liberals are right and they themselves are bad guys.But what’s really missing from the political drama on “Succession” isn’t just sincere, non-edgelord Republicans. It’s the crucial role of non-elites — mass opinion, “the people,” anything from a national majority to a primary-season electorate or just a particularly large television audience — as a force unto themselves, a gravity well that every elite stratagem has to work with or around.Sure, the people don’t rule in some naïve or simplistic sense; some kind of elite power is always fundamental. But from a dramatic point of view, the mass American public is as important a “character” in the story of right-wing populism as Rupert Murdoch or for that matter Trump himself. The people, in the form of the mass Fox News audience, drove what happened around and after the 2020 election more than any sibling rivalry inside the House of Murdoch. They’re why the alleged election fraud fiasco went down the way it went down. They’re why Carlson became a cable news ratings king. They’re why, since his firing, a lot fewer people have been watching Fox and Newsmax has been pulling in about as many viewers in its 8 p.m. time slot as CNN.The same point applies to democratic politics writ large. People in rooms talking drive a lot of political action, but if they drove all of it, Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have been the Republican nominee in 2016 (when Murdoch’s network was surprised and overwhelmed by Trumpism), Elizabeth Warren probably would have been the Democratic nominee in 2020 and Trump definitely wouldn’t be a leading candidate for the Republican nomination in 2024. Our elites can work to tame mass opinion, to master it or redirect it or find some means of resistance — but it’s always there, always doing something in the story.And if that’s a somewhat difficult thing for punditry to reckon with, at least we can write and talk about it in terms of opinion polling and television ratings and the like. Dramatizing the force of mass opinion artistically is much harder. It’s a big part of why there aren’t that many great novels or great movies about the workings of American democracy, relative to the monarchical systems of the past; one of the democratic age’s central characters, the mass public, is just really hard to realize on the page or on the screen.Likewise, a significant part of the contemporary appeal of both historical fiction and my own favored genre of fantasy is that they return politics to a period where the personal encompasses more of the political — where family rivalries and court intrigues loom larger, and mass politics means the occasional mob or the rampaging army but not the daily poll or the nightly ratings, the force of public opinion that lacks embodiment but constantly drives political action nonetheless.The elite world of “Succession,” where the patriarch Logan Roy was both a corporate king and a political kingmaker, is thus ultimately a kind of fantasy fiction, a George R.R. Martin-ish gloss on contemporary American politics: entertaining and smart and on point in some ways, hopefully headed for a more successful wrap than “Game of Thrones,” but finally inadequate to actual political reality, because it always leaves a protagonist offstage.Programming NotesFirst, a reminder that I’m part of a new Times podcast, “Matter of Opinion,” that comes out every Thursday; find the latest episodes here.Second, The Times has just introduced a new iOS app for audio journalism called New York Times Audio, featuring all our podcasts as well as narrated articles from across all our sections, from Opinion and Politics to Food and Sports. It includes the archive of “This American Life” and read-aloud stories from a range of national magazines. It’s available to Times news subscribers, and you can download it here.BreviaryNathan Pinkoski on the evolution of Francis Fukuyama.Scott Alexander compares Francis Galton and Paul Ehrlich.Alex de Waal on the war for Khartoum.Richard Rushfield and Matt Stoller on the Hollywood writers’ strike.Damon Linker tries to stabilize social liberalism. More