How Fox News Pushed a ‘Bipartisan Acquittal’ Impeachment Narrative That Completely Fell Apart

Bipartisan? Yes. Acquittal? Not so much.

In the days leading up to the final Senate impeachment vote of President Donald Trump, Fox News viewers were repeatedly led to believe that Trump’s eventual acquittal would include one, two, or even more Democratic senators joining the Republicans.

This outcome, the network’s audience was told time and again across morning shows, in news reports, and during primetime talk shows, resulted from articles of impeachment that were weak and misguided and Democratic arguments that were riddled with conspiracy theories and alleged falsehoods. Not only would Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff and the other House impeachment managers fail to convince a single Republican to vote for removal, Fox viewers were told, the pro-impeachment case wouldn’t even get all 47 of Democratic Senators on board.

Sen. Mitt Romney’s vote to remove Trump over abuse of power charges, however, obliterated both of these right-wing talking points. And his vote also rendered judgment on a network that allowed a dozen different personalities to claim, almost always with no specific attribution or sourcing whatsoever, that the real bipartisan sentiment supported the president.

This framing started as far back as mid-December, a week before the House had even voted to approve articles of impeachment. That’s when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell told Fox’s Sean Hannity in an “exclusive” interview: “It wouldn’t surprise me if we got one or two Democrats” to vote in favor of Trump’s acquittal. Going even further — and, ultimately, being doubly wrong — McConnell boasted that there was “zero chance” any Republican senators would vote to remove Trump.

Weeks later, in mid-January, before the Senate trial started, South Carolina Senator and passionate Trump supporter Lindsey Graham appeared on Hannity to likewise confidently predict a bipartisan acquittal of President Trump. Two weeks later, Georgia GOP Rep. Doug Collins, who served as Trump’s defense counsel during the Senate trial, claimed on Fox & Friends that the “only bipartisan part of this whole impeachment sham will be bipartisan to acquit the president.”

As the final Senate vote approached, the “bipartisan acquittal” narrative amped up even more, as the predictions of  Democratic defections were repeated numerous times.

In all, nine different Fox News hosts, reporters, or guests pushed this ultimately baseless and wrong bit of speculation in the week before Wednesday’s vote (see video above).

The list includes:

-Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

-Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, who agreed with Jordan

-Fox News anchor of America’s Newsroom, Ed Henry

-Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA), who told Tucker Carlson he expected “at least two, maybe three Democrats” to vote for acquittal before flatly declaring “he can’t, there’s no way” when asked if Romney might vote for removing Trump.

-Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)

-Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA)

-New York City GOP Councilman Joe Borelli

-Fox News host Laura Ingraham

-Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL)

While news organizations of every stripe have been known to face-plant on political predictions — see Election, Presidential, 2016 — they also owe their audience a reckoning of how and why they failed when they do. But of dozen different voices who got the Senate acquittal vote wrong, not one has been called out to explain why they so badly misread the situation or regurgitated inaccurate information. Instead, Fox News as a whole has just swiftly moved on, acting as if its months-long, right-wing narrative about broad opposition to Trump’s impeachment wasn’t just flipped on its head — and hoping that its viewers don’t notice that their reality is now upside-down.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.