Previously:
Fox News was literally created by a Nixon devotee to protect future Republican Presidents and officials from being held accountable for their actions. In other words Fox News is designed to lie and deceive and even promote domestic terrorism, anything necessary to support their leader. This is the very opposite of what the Constitution and Democracy stands for and that means that Fox News is an organization designed to support authoritarianism and rules that put their leaders above the rest of the people seeking to make them above the law so they can't be prosecuted for their numerous criminal activities. Whats interesting is that these criminal activities with their associated goals have changed over time but I'm just going to focus on proving that Fox News lies to protect its leaders even if it has to attack and destroy democracy and the constitution and rule of law to do it. I'm using extracts of carefully researched material from media matters to make this point.
Fox News exists to lie to protect its leaders from accountability so their crimes can go unpunished making them above the law like kings and queens. They support authoritarianism over democracy.
Media Matters: This is why Fox News exists
Nixon didn’t have Fox. Trump does. And that may make all the difference.
Forty-five years ago, President Richard Nixon resigned. His impeachment at the time seemed almost certain, as key Republican senators had signaled they would no longer support him. But Nixon’s acolytes did not blame their president for his gross corruption and mind-boggling criminality. Instead, they blamed the press -- the “enemy,” as Nixon had described it -- for hounding him out of office.
Over two decades later, Roger Ailes, one of those Nixon retainers, founded Fox News. As the network has gained power and influence, it has played many roles -- an attack dog that savages progressive policies and individuals, a counterweight to a media that conservatives consider unbearably liberal, a radicalization engine that brings a bigoted ideology from the fringes into the homes of millions of Americans, and a propaganda machine that champions conservative politicians.
Over the past week, we’ve seen another one of Fox’s roles. As it has become clear that President Donald Trump used the office of the presidency to suborn a foreign government to investigate one of his political opponents -- triggering a formal impeachment inquiry -- Fox has been serving as a bulwark against the repetition of Nixon’s fall.
The network -- “news” and “opinion” sides alike -- is relentlessly lying to its viewers. Its personalities have: offered a response to the release of a memorandum chronicling Trump’s demands that was indistinguishable from the White House’s talking points, mocked Democrats for focusing on the story, claimed that they are exaggerating in a rush to impeachment, suggested that Trump was “duty-bound” to ask the Ukrainian president to investigate his political opponent, and sought to redirect attention to the purported corruption of Democrats. They’ve sought to smear the whistleblower -- whose complaint brought the scandal to light -- as a “partisan hack” who has endangered the country with his “snitching” and is part of a “coup.”
On the rare occasions when Fox employees attempt to tell their audience the truth, they have been publicly condemned by the president’s followers at the network.
Fox’s propaganda has not gone unnoticed at the White House -- Trump has frequently incorporated the network’s commentary into his response to the burgeoning crisis. The president sent 51 tweets or retweets lifting up Fox’s programming or the comments of its employees about the story between its emergence last week and 9 a.m. EST Thursday morning.
The network’s effort to create a fantasy world for its viewers has serious implications. “If Fox chooses to lie to its audience about what’s happening that makes it challenging for GOP members to respond to reality rather than to Foxality,” Vox.com’s Matt Yglesias noted. “And if most Republicans embrace a complete false version of events, most non-Fox television news will embrace a ‘partisans arguing’ frame that naturally dulls the impact on non-Fox viewers who just generally disagree with Democrats about stuff.”
Indeed, Fox’s disinformation campaign has effectively mobilized its audience against impeachment. As The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent noted in a post on the results of a poll from the Public Religion Research Institute, “98 percent of Fox-citing Republicans oppose impeaching and removing Trump -- opposition that’s ‘essentially unanimous,’ as PRRI puts it. By contrast, 90 percent of non-Fox-citing Republicans oppose impeaching and removing him -- which is overwhelmingly high, but suggests that among this group, at least, Trump could suffer losses on the margins as the inquiry turns up worse revelations.” Sargent concluded that the study shows Fox is “having a real impact, and could even help Trump survive.”
Richard Nixon didn’t have Fox. Donald Trump does. And that may make all the difference. That’s no coincidence -- it’s what the network was created to do.
Moment Of Zen
Fox News likes to pretend other leaders are exhibiting the behavior their own leaders do. Here is a great example by the daily show of how Fox News likes to present a mirror reality to its viewers as part of their decades long political deceptions & outright lies. Demonizing everyone but themselves and their leaders.
Fox News Talking About Joe Biden But Make The Footage Trump | The Daily Show
31 Jul 2022 These Fox News attacks against Joe Biden sound eerily familiar.
When Fox News can't use facts it uses terrorism to get what it wants. Trump and Fox News attacked the press, have pushed white supremacist talking points that have led to mass shootings, etc. all supporting domestic terrorism in the name of supporting their party or leader and scaring the opposition into silence. At least, that is clearly their goal.
Media Matters: The right-wing media built the pretext for January 6. What it’s doing now is scarier.
Fox News’ Mar-a-Lago spin presents a justification for political violence
Right-wing news outlets have a rage-based business model, converting unhinged rants to readers and revenues. But there are few precedents, in intensity or duration, for the frenzy that has consumed Fox News and other bastions of the MAGA media since the FBI carried out a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence on Monday. Their incendiary commentary, which posits that a criminal probe into the former president is intrinsically corrupt and part of an attack on his voters, is courting a paroxysm of political violence.
The FBI executed a warrant signed by a federal magistrate judge, reportedly seeking classified material that Trump illegally removed from the White House at the end of his term. Pundits on the right could be trying to lower the temperature by telling their audiences that there’s much we don’t know yet; a legal process is playing out; and Trump, like any American, is subject to the rule of law.
Instead, Fox and other right-wing outlets describe the search as “the worst attack on this republic in modern history,” part of a “preemptive coup” to prevent Trump’s reelection, and a sign the country is now a “tyranny.” They say the FBI is acting like “the East German Stasi in the Cold War” and the Nazi “Gestapo,” and call its agents part of a “lawless criminal organization” that “planted evidence,” bugged Trump’s bedroom, and may be planning his “assassination.”
And they are quick to tell their viewers that they should fear their own persecution in the wake of the search. According to right-wing outlets, “the real target of this investigation is you” and its perpetrators are “trying to show all of us that we'll be destroyed if we fight them” because they are “at war with the American people.”
“If this is what they're able to do to the former president of the United States, think about what they could do to you, to anybody in America,” warned Lara Trump, Fox contributor and Trump’s daughter-in-law.
That paranoia is everywhere within the right-wing bubble, and some are calling for direct action in response. On Fox, Jesse Watters suggested that “honest Americans” would respond to the search by getting “out on the streets” against the “corrupt government.” According to the network’s Will Cain, a “permanent national split” – in other words, another civil war – may be needed to rectify the situation. The militia-linked radio host Pete Santilli, meanwhile, argued that it may be necessary for MAGA supporters to “arm up and surround Mar-a-Lago to protect it, to protect life, liberty, and property.”
What might someone do if they are ensconced in the right-wing media bubble, trust these personalities, take their views seriously, and come to believe their claims that federal agents are Nazis waging war on the American public and threatening their own safety and the safety of their families? How far might they go?
This is not an idle question – extremism researchers are sounding the alarm about the prospect of pro-Trump violence. On Wednesday, Vice reported that “far-right extremists on pro-Donald Trump message boards and social networks are making violent, antisemitic threats” against the judge who reportedly signed off on the search warrant. FoxNews.com reported the same day that “FBI agents, as well as U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray, are experiencing an uptick in death threats” following the search.
“The posts on these pro-Trump forums tonight are as violent as I've seen them since before January 6th. Maybe even moreso,” NBC News’ Ben Collins reported on Monday night.
Collins’ comment in particular points to the risks Fox and its brethren are courting. We’ve seen over the years that when the right-wing media riles up its audience enough, the consequences can be dire. When they spent weeks after the 2020 election championing Trump’s false claims of voter fraud and warning their audiences that they would lose their country if his lies were not vindicated, the result was a violent mob of thousands Trump had summoned to Washington, D.C., storming the U.S. Capitol, assaulting scores of law enforcement officers, and threatening the continuation of our democratic system.
What conservative pundits appear to have learned from that deadly debacle is that they will face no consequences for inciting mob violence. No one seems to have lost their job or their audience for unduly inflaming their viewers. They correctly assume that they are under no restraints as they stoke fear and rage to turn profits and bolster the political power of the Republican Party so it can carry out its goals of cutting taxes for rich people and banning abortion. And that means that they may be pushing the country once more toward the precipice.
Another Moment Of Zen
Fox News On Hillary But Make The Footage Trump | The Daily Show
Fox News talking about Hillary but make the footage the Trump raid
Fox News will kill even their own viewers with misinformation, so killing is like a fun past time for them at this point.
I went on parental leave. Three months later, Fox is still killing its viewers.
COVID-19 killed roughly 130,000 Americans during my parental leave, which began in mid-October. With the omicron wave cresting as I returned on Monday, the seven-day rolling average exceeded 2,000 deaths a day. Those deaths are largely preventable: Death rates are staggeringly higher among those who have not taken the safe, free, remarkably effective vaccines against the virus that have been widely available to most people for months.
Fox News has been pushing white supremacist theories to make thier, mostly white, base feel afraid!
Fox News spent 2021 mainstreaming the white supremacist “great replacement” theory
While Tucker Carlson has been flirting with white nationalism for years, 2021 was the year he went full-tilt and repeatedly said the quiet part aloud, explicitly referencing the white supremacist “great replacement” conspiracy theory – and earning praise from infamous former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. And Carlson’s status as the most-watched Fox prime-time star seemingly encouraged his fellow hosts to follow suit; Laura Ingraham warned her viewers that Democrats “will import new voters to offset and eventually replace all you old people.”
Carlson has long pushed white supremacist talking points with full corporate support from Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch. In the process, he has gained praise from white nationalists, while the Anti-Defamation League has repeatedly called for his firing. White nationalism is now a pillar of Fox’s prime-time platform, and the Murdochs are willing to fund and defend their hosts’ hatred.
Stephen Miller – former White House senior policy adviser, chief architect of former President Donald Trump's Muslim ban, and noted white nationalist – was a habitual guest on Fox News during 2021. An equal opportunity racist, Miller espoused textbook “great replacement” talking points whether the topic at hand was the refugee crisis in Afghanistan or at the U.S. southern border. Miller repeated the lie that migrants coming to the U.S were spreading COVID-19, a common anti-immigrant trope among white nationalists.
By repeatedly launching nativist attacks with warnings of an “invasion of your neighborhood” and migrants “coming to our backyard,” Fox News’ goal here is clear: to scare its audience into buying the fantasy of “white genocide.”
This promotion of white supremacist theories is leading to mass shootings of people the theories target, surprise surprise! Everynight is an opportunity for Fox News to spread hate to its viewers of other races, policies etc. as supported by the "evil liberals". Demonizing everyone but themselves and their leaders.
Media Matters: Watch Nicolle Wallace explain Fox News and Tucker Carlson’s role in spreading the racist conspiracy theory motivating mass shootings
Wallace: “The biggest evangelist for this racist conspiracy theory is Fox News’ own Tucker Carlson”
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): What is arguably one of the most alarming developments in our politics in these past few years is that despite warnings from national security officials, people like Donald Trump's appointee to lead the FBI, Christopher Wray, who said in 2020 that white supremacist terrorism is the largest threat within the country's domestic extremism problem. Despite that warning from him, one of our country's two political parties has brought the baseless and dangerous conspiracy that white people are being replaced out of the dark, dank corners of the internet.
As The New York Times puts it, “Replacement theory once confined to the digital fever swamps of Reddit message boards and semi-obscure white nationalist sites, has gone mainstream. In sometimes more muted forms, the fear it crystallizes -- of a future America in which white people are no longer the numerical majority -- has become a potent force in conservative media and politics where the theory has been borrowed and remixed to attract audience, retweets and small-dollar donations."
The Washington Post is reporting that replacement theory has become gospel for parts of the Republican Party. From The Post, “Representative Elise Stefanik, the No. 3 House Republican, and other GOP lawmakers, came under scrutiny Sunday for previously echoing the racist 'great replacement' theory that apparently inspired an 18-year-old who allegedly killed 10 people while targeting Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo. While Stefanik has not pushed the theory by name, she and other conservatives have echoed the tenets of the far-right ideology as part of anti-immigrant rhetoric that has fired up the Republican base ahead of the midterm elections."
But by far, and you all know this already, the biggest evangelist for this racist conspiracy theory is Fox News' own Tucker Carlson. And here's just a little bit of what he's been saying day after day after day on his broadcast, thanks to our friends at the Mehdi Hasan program.
...
It really happens every night.
More examples of Fox lies & deceptions supporting party/leader/winning-elections over country
Fox News lies in various ways to deceive its viewers and create a base of misinformed supporters to push their lies on.
Media Matters: The Fox News Lie
How Fox's supposed “straight news” division subjects viewers to a constant torrent of lies, misleading statements, and half-truths
Fox News viewers are subjected to a constant torrent of lies, misleading statements, and half-truths as the network's hosts, guests, and on-air personalities weave a comprehensive web of misinformation imbuing virtually all aspects of the outlet's supposed “news” operations. Media Matters has compiled a list of lies and false statements told and retold every single weekday during Fox's purported “straight news” programming throughout the first four full months of 2022.
Fox News is linked to the spread of misinformation through studies;
Media Matters: New poll shows a vicious cycle of COVID-19 misinformation — and Fox News’ part in it
Media Matters: Fox News is simply lying about the state of the economy after a strong July jobs report
Fox personalities are hyping the threat of “recession,” complaining about wage growth, and falsely claiming workers left the labor force to chase too-generous welfare benefits
Fox News is scrambling to respond to yet another positive economic indicator after the Bureau of Labor Statistics published a jobs report for July that far exceeded expert forecasts. In response to data showing that the American labor market is even stronger than expected, Fox quickly pivoted to hyping inflation and the looming threat of recession, lying about gas prices, and complaining that more workers haven’t reentered the job market.
Here is another example of Fox News lying to push its own political agenda using another country's tragedy
Media Matters: Fox News has repeatedly used Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to push the same old talking points
As the crisis in Ukraine escalates, Fox News has used the situation to push their favorite pet issues. Fox News has covered the invasion of Ukraine in ways that are deceptive and opportunistic, as the network uses Ukraine to advance the same old right-wing grievances, ranging from culture war hysteria to attacks on vaccine mandates.
Another Moment Of Zen
CNN: Stelter: Fox News host is sounding a lot like Alex Jones
CNN's Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy discuss Fox News host's Tucker Carlson's recent conspiracy claim and note that he is sounding a lot like ridiculed internet conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.
Media Matters: Tucker Carlson has been defending Alex Jones for years
On September 30, a Texas judge handed down three major rulings against conspiracy theorist and Infowars founder Alex Jones, declaring him liable for damages related to lawsuits brought against him by family members who lost children in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Fox News, previously an organization dedicated to pretend to be autonomous while attacking the country and its constitution to protect its leaders has now joined with the last GOP administration and morphed its an Alex Jones like propaganda outlet which only pretends to be honest to its own viewers and the cult goes on.
Whats interesting about Fox News's new trend of openly supporting authoritarians since Trump took office and made supporting authoritarians in other countries cool is that they have been supporting Russia's invasion of the democratic country of Ukraine like a Russia state TV outlet. Further showing how antidemocratic and how unamerican they are.
Media Matters: Fox News has pushed pro-Russia talking points every day of the invasion
Since the start of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine, Fox News personalities have aired or promoted pro-Kremlin talking points or shown deference to Russian aggression every single day, for a total of at least 49 instances.
On February 22, President Joe Biden declared that Russian dictator Vladimir Putin sending additional troops into Russian-backed separatist regions of Ukraine amounted to “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” Since that day, Fox News and Fox Business hosts, contributors, and guests have defended Putin, aired Russian propaganda justifying the war, made pro-Russian points on the air, criticized America’s strong responses to Russia’s aggression, and blamed the United States and the West for the invasion. At times, Fox’s seemingly Kremlin-approved propaganda has been so effusive that a top Russian government official praised the network, and state-run media have been ordered to air these pro-Russian segments.
Even Russia openly supports Fox News spin
As Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin wages a brutal war against Ukraine and its people, the Kremlin has made a point to single out Fox News for praise. Russian state media and government accounts have promoted commentary from the network and its personalities; a leaked memo even instructed such outlets that it was “essential” to feature programming by Fox host Tucker Carlson.
In an English-language interview on state-run outlet RT, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov praised Fox News for proving an “alternative” perspective on the war.
Fox News advertisers and the cable companies who fund Fox News should take note.
There is no lie too audacious or hypocritical for Fox News
Fox News pushes an alternate reality in which Donald Trump opposed Russia
Right-wing propaganda network papers over Trump’s history of siding with Russia and extorting Ukraine
Fox News is gaslighting the American public about how former President Donald Trump would have handled Russian aggression against Ukraine, claiming Trump had been a stronger leader than President Joe Biden and would have better protected vulnerable countries. In reality, Trump often promoted a foreign policy agenda that aligned with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s interests.
The disgraced former president publicly sided with Putin in 2018 against U.S. intelligence officials’ determinations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. He also reportedly sided with Russia, in conversations with other world leaders, over Russia’s illegal annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014. Trump also attempted to extort Ukraine into launching an investigation against then-presidential candidate Biden by withholding military aid vital to their defense against Russia, in a scheme that led to Trump’s first impeachment. (The scheme almost worked, too.)
Trump was also infamously biting toward the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the linchpin of European military security against Russian aggression, calling the organization “obsolete” before being forced to backtrack. Trump publicly wavered in his commitment to NATO's “Article 5” assurances, which bind member states to one another's mutual defense if they were ever to be attacked, before again backtracking.
In Fox News’ alternate reality, none of this happened. Prime-time host Sean Hannity spoke Monday night with Fox News contributor and retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who held a number of national security positions in the Trump administration, with the two suggesting that Trump had been a stronger leader against Russia.
To protect Trumps followers from the truth public hearings aren't covered by Fox News thereby providing support to Trump & The GOP's attempted coup. Though to be fair Fox News help with the coup from the start.
Media Matters: Fox News’ ongoing complicity in the January 6 insurrection
The network won't let tomorrow’s hearing pierce the bubble it created
As soon as the FBI search began of Trump's theft of classified material, Fox News began furiously protecting Trump without evidence... as is thier job to protect party/leader over country (this trend permeates everything Fox does)
Media Matters: Fox is furiously poisoning the well after the Mar-a-Lago search
“Partisan witch hunt,” “dark day for our republic,” “preemptive coup,” “Third World bullshit,” “Gestapo,” “Stasi”
Fox comes up with bullshit excuses to misinform its audience to protect party/leader over country
Media Matters: Fox complained the feds should have subpoenaed Trump’s documents before seeking a search warrant. They did.
Fox News personalities have repeatedly denounced Monday’s FBI execution of a search warrant at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence by claiming that the agency should instead have subpoenaed the documents the former president illegally took from the White House, which the bureau was reportedly seeking. In their telling, Trump is a naif who may have accidentally taken some documents he should not have, but sending federal agents to seize the documents is a massive escalation which revealed that President Joe Biden’s administration is targeting a political opponent for partisan gain.
“All they needed to do was issue a simple subpoena, and that would have mandated that if there's anything left, you turn it over,” Sean Hannity asserted on his radio show on Wednesday.
“If Trump is not allowed to keep all this stuff, fine,” host Jesse Watters said on Fox that night. “Get a subpoena, he will give it back. It's not like Trump won't cooperate.”
There’s just one problem. Trump previously did get a subpoena seeking the documents, according to a new report, and the FBI only escalated to asking a judge for a search warrant after it became clear that Trump would not, in fact, cooperate.
The New York Times reported on Thursday:
Fox News has become a conspiracy based channel as is to be expected if party trumps country as lies are the only way to sell such an authoritarian and unamerican approach to the American public
Media Matters: There is no difference between Fox News and far-right “fringe” responses to the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago
Fox’s unhinged reaction shattered any distinction between the supposed news network and the constellation of right-wing conspiracy theorists and cranks
Fox News' coverage of the FBI’s search for stolen government records at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort has demonstrated how little distinction there is between the network as a supposedly legitimate if conservative-leaning outlet on the one hand, and the far-right provocateurs and fringe pro-Trump outlets on the other.
Right-wing attacks against the warranted search from fringe sources have argued that it constituted the end of the American republic. Reacting immediately after the story broke, Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec tweeted, “The country you grew up in no longer exists.” QAnon influencer David Niño Rodriguez tweeted, “America is under attack. This is a hostile takeover. People are seeing what it’s like to live under a fraudulent rogue regime.” The Federalist’s Jordan Boyd wrote that the search was evidence of “a crumbling nation that is governed by people who target their political enemies.”
The sentiment from Fox News hosts and regular guests has been remarkably similar; both Fox host Laura Ingraham and former Trump adviser and frequent Fox guest Stephen Miller referred to the Biden administration as “the regime” in their outraged responses to the news.
Fox and Trump's lies about Obama's handling of classified documents
National Archives: “President Obama has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.”
In response to recent reporting that former President Donald Trump was illegally in possession of classified material – including nuclear secrets – at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Fox News hosts and Trump himself lied that his predecessor, former President Barack Obama, had also kept millions of government documents in his possession. After Trump and his right-wing media allies promoted these lies, the National Archives and Records Administration released a statement refuting them.
Friday morning, Trump first issued a rant declaring the “nuclear weapon issue is a hoax” and slamming the FBI’s warranted search of his home, which reportedly recovered classified materials illegally held by Trump’s estate. Later, Trump posted a three-sentence statement: “President Barack Hussein Obama kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified. How many of them pertained to nuclear? Word is, lots!”
It seems clear Trump ripped off this false claim from Fox, which pushed the lie on at least four separate programs. Fox host Jesse Watters claimed on August 10 that “Obama took 30 million documents back to Chicago.” The next evening, Fox guest Harmeet Dhillon also referenced “Obama’s 30 million pages of documents.” Fox host Sean Hannity took the lie even further, saying, “Obama took 30 million pages of sensitive, potentially classified presidential material to Chicago. Not one page has ever been returned. Where is the raid on Obama’s house?” And, on Friday morning, hours before Trump repeated the lie, Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade asked: “Where’s the 30 million documents with Obama admin – Obama has 30 million documents.” Co-host Ainsley Earhardt added, “Imagine if they raided Michelle’s closet, and gone through her personal items. What the media would do then.”
Another Moment Of Zen
FBI warns of rising threats against law enforcement l GMA
15 Aug 2022 ABC News’ Terry Moran reports on the FBI’s latest warning of rising threats against law enforcement and others following the raid on Donald Trump’s residence.
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