Fox’s Laura Ingraham Scoffs at Notion Trump Demands Loyalty After Her Network Slavishy Repeated His Election Lies to the Tune of $787.5 Million
The folks at Fox News are having a grand time covering the self-inflicted drama at NBC News thanks to the inexplicable decision to hire Ronna McDaniel as a paid contributor. That coverage, however, is woefully lacking in self-awareness.
McDaniel’s deal was terminated after her hiring prompted inevitable backlash among NBC and MSNBC talent. Even more predictably, Fox hosts such as Laura Ingraham have held up the decision as proof that there is no room at the organization to diverge from liberal orthodoxy.
To hear them tell it, McDaniel – the former chair of the Republican National Committee – was let go because NBC and MSNBC hosts aren’t interested in conservative viewpoints. What this ignores, though, is that the backlash was driven by the fact that McDaniel promoted Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and even participated in a phone call during which Trump tried to overturn the election results in Michigan. In that instance, McDaniel advised election canvassers not to sign paperwork to certify the election results.
“We will get you attorneys,” she assured them.
So, the problem with McDaniel’s hiring wasn’t that she and Chris Hayes disagree on the top marginal tax rate for corporations, or that she doesn’t see eye-to-eye with Rachel Maddow on abortion. No, it’s that Ronna McDaniel aided the attempt to invalidate a presidential election result. And she tried to do this because she was so enthralled to the loser, she was willing to burn it all down for him.
On Wednesday’s edition of The Ingraham Angle, Ingraham delivered a lengthy monologue about the McDaniel drama. Because I lack the constitution for sadism, I’ll spare you most of its contents. However, I want to call attention to this excerpt:
Look, Democrats and the corporate media have gotten themselves into a huge mess here. They’re in their bunkers and refusing to change their minds on issues or even– they don’t wanna be in the same room with someone with whom they have disagreements.
Now, what’s funny about this is they accuse Trump of this very thing. It’s the usual projection that they engage in. They said that he demanded complete loyalty. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. The ugly truth is, the price one has to pay to be in their club – the media or national politics on the left – is total and complete loyalty.
It doesn’t occur to Ingraham (or maybe it does but she doesn’t care) that Trump has a well-documented history of requiring loyalty – fealty, really – to him and whatever bullshit he peddles. But it should. Because this kind of slavish devotion to Trump and his lies is what cost Fox News $787.5 million in a defamation settlement last year after the network’s hosts and guests promoted the claim that a voting machine company rigged the election.
In Fox News parlance, lying to viewers because they want to hear lies is called “respecting the audience.” After the network accurately called the 2020 election for Joe Biden, it began hemorrhaging viewers to right-wing networks like Newsmax. In the weeks following his loss, Trump claimed the contest was rigged, and not surprisingly his followers believed him and they hated that Fox was acting as though Biden won in a free and fair election.
With Fox’s ratings and stock price down, its hosts got busy platforming all manner of cranks to pump garbage into the discourse as on-air talent played the role of credulous truth-seekers trying to uncover just how the election was rigged. Even when Trump’s words turned to actions in which he actively tried to subvert the election results by initiating an unprecedented pressure campaign on public officials in states he lost, Fox just couldn’t quit the guy – even after he inspired an insurrection at the Capitol. And they can’t quit him because they’re stuck. They’re stuck with him and his loyal followers whom Fox lives in fear of alienating.
Ingraham said the cost of being in liberal politics is “complete loyalty.” Maybe that’s true to an extent. But in conservative media, the cost is complete loyalty and $787.5 million.
Watch above via Fox News.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
