Bad Moon on the Rise: Fox News May Save Trump From a Senate Impeachment Conviction. After All, Fox News Is Trump's Pravda.
November 5, 2019
Sean Hannity (DonkeyHotey)
MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH
On October 1, Geraldo Rivera was a guest on Sean Hannity’s program and told him “You know, if it wasn't your show, Sean, they would destroy him [Trump] absolutely. You are the difference between Donald J. Trump and Richard Nixon.”
Hannity continues to be the top-ranked cable news program, with more than three million viewers a night. But perhaps the most important viewer is the one who sits in the White House, who shares conspiracy theories and political memes with Hannity and other Fox News staffers. Hannity might best be called the Trump “whisperer” in recognition of his pervasive influence on Trump.
In fact, Hannity is such an overriding force in Trump’s positions, attacks and tweets that ousted Ukrainian Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch told Adam Schiff, in the just-released deposition transcript,
Schiff: And did you ever find out when, you know, the allegations were being made or the attacks were being made by Donald Trump, Jr., or Rudy Giuliani, did you ever find out what the Secretary of State’s position, whether the Secretary of State was going to defend you or not, apart from the refusal by the Secretary to issue a statement in your defense?
Yovanovitch: What I was told by Phil Reeker was that the Secretary or perhaps somebody around him was going to place a call to Mr. Hannity on Fox News to say, you know, what is going on? I mean, do you have proof of these kinds of allegations or not? And if you have proof, you know, telI me, and if not, stop.
And I understand that that call was made. I don’t know whether it was the Secretary or somebody else in his inner circle. And for a time, you know, things kind of simmered down.
Schiff: I mean, does that seem extraordinary to you that the Secretary of State or some other high-ranking official would call a talk show host to figure out whether you should be retained as ambassador?
Of course, Trump doesn’t just rely on Hannity for both advice and amplification of Trump’s narrative, Trump is a regular on Fox News programming in general. The network, in large part, replaces his lack of news conferences by positively filtering and amplifying his shock pronouncements, which are then repeated by other media outlets. It’s also the go-to network for Trump loyalists, including his Press Secretary Stephanie Grisham, who hasn’t held a news conference since she replaced Sarah Huckabee Sanders, but frequently defends Trump on Fox.
That serves Trump well, given that according to a recent MEDIAite email, “Fox News was once again the most-watched basic cable network in total day for the fortieth consecutive month.”
There is countless evidence about how Fox News works synergistically to maintain Trump’s base.
According to a late October USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll:
Trump’s strongest support comes from those who say Fox News is the TV network they trusted most; 78% of Fox viewers say they agree that Trump’s impeachment was like a “lynching.” In contrast, just 2% of those who trust MSNBC most and 10% of those who trust CNN most agree with the statement.
The poll also notes, “30 percent to 40 percent of those surveyed remain solidly on Trump’s side,” and would stand behind him no matter what evidence emerged in the impeachment hearings. This is the base that invokes dread in GOP Senators and Representatives because they could eliminate Republicans in primaries with Trump’s backing and funds if they were to cross Trump. These are primarily Fox News viewers.
On October 21, The Washington Post ran an article headlined, “The most loyal Trump allies are Republicans who watch Fox News.” It cites a Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) American Values Survey:
Perhaps the strongest evidence that Fox News is driving views of Trump comes from a 2017 study linking Fox News viewership to an increase in acceptance of right-wing political views — and, therefore, voting for Republicans. There are anecdotal examples of people becoming more conservative on a Fox News diet, as well.
Regardless of causation, the link is obvious. There is no more fervent and loyal base of support for Trump, according to PRRI, than Republicans who rely on Fox News.
In an October 29, Washington Post article that looked at a new Suffolk poll on Cable news stations, journalist Philip Bump concluded:
What’s continuously interesting about Suffolk’s findings is how unified Republican trust in Fox News is, compared to the relatively distributed trust Democrats place in various outlets. CNN is the outlet Democrats trust the most, in Suffolk’s polling, but seven outlets get at least 5 percent of Democratic respondents calling them most trusted. Among Republicans, nearly six in 10 cite Fox as their most-trusted outlet. The only other outlet that gets the endorsement at least 5 percent of Republicans? CNN
Consistent with the authoritarian allegiance to Trump, Fox News dominates with a Republican viewership, whereas Democrats tend to be more diverse in which stations they watch. There are other Republican news outlets, such as the One America News Network and Salem Broadcasting. However, Fox is the semi-official White House propaganda outlet.
Indeed, it is often difficult to determine how to draw a distinction between Trump’s utterances/tweets and Fox’s opinions and “reporting.” On November 2, The New York Times analyzed Trump’s history of tweeting. It described Trump’s morning ritual:
After waking early, Mr. Trump typically watches news shows recorded the previous night on his “Super TiVo,” several DVRs connected to a single remote. (The devices are set to record “Lou Dobbs Tonight” on Fox Business Network; “Hannity,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “The Story With Martha MacCallum” on Fox News; and “Anderson Cooper 360” on CNN.)
He takes in those shows, and the “Fox & Friends” morning program, then flings out comments on his iPhone. Then he watches as his tweets reverberate on cable channels and news sites.
Fox News viewers tend to exist in a bubble that reinforces the outlooks of its viewers. It also mold those outlooks through the testing of pro-Trump narratives. In the current impeachment inquiry GOP response, Fox may be instrumental in convincing their viewers — Trump’s base that determines Republican candidates in primaries — that no crime occurred on the July 25 call.
In regards to Nixon’s resignation to avoid an impeachment conviction, one needs to remember that it was the discovery of smoking gun audio tapes in which Nixon admitted to covering up the Watergate burglary, a clear violation of common criminal law that forced his “I am not a crook” hand. Nine Republican Senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee changed their votes from against to for impeachment after hearing the key smoking gun cover-up tape.
Trump’s Ukraine betrayal and violation of the Constitution is more malleable to a pro-Trump counter-narrative that holds Trump accountable for nothing more than bad judgment, an alibi which is being floated now.
Of course, as BuzzFlash has urged in five commentaries, both the media and the impeachment inquiry should be daily calling upon the White House to release an unedited version of the July 25 call, which may have been preserved as an Artificial Intelligence software recognition transcript, or even on tape, which Mack Mulvaney and Trump have both made curious passing references to. There are also several other calls and meetings with foreign leaders, including several with Putin, that have not been registered in the presidential call archive. They may be on the classified server, and also be even more incriminating than the White House edited summary of the July 25 call.
Meanwhile, watch for Fox to disseminate the “move along, nothing to see here” line of defense about the July 25 call. They may very well be successful in keeping Trump’s hardcore base from defecting. It that is the outcome, we will have lost the Republic to full-grown fascism because the GOP Senators will not vote to convict without a significant portion of the Trump base abandoning him.
And Trump will feel complete impunity to continue his dismantling of democracy, polluting the planet, and his racist cruelty. He will govern as a Queen of Hearts despot without accountability.
After all, Fox News is Trump’s Pravda.
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