Fox News Continues to Ignore Trump’s Increasingly Bonkers Political Rhetoric
AP Photo/Evan Vucci
Following the embarrassing revelations from Dominion’s defamation lawsuit, Fox News insists that it still considers itself a news network, despite clear evidence of the network allowing claims about the 2020 election to be aired that it knew to be false.
There is continued evidence, however, that Fox is not performing the duties of a news network: its continued tactic of looking the other way when it comes to the increasingly radical rhetoric of former President Donald Trump, the top Republican candidate for president in 2024. The tactic undermines claims Fox is anything but a propaganda outlet.
To be clear, Fox News employs many top-quality journalists, a fact demonstrated in the past week by foreign correspondent Benjamin Hall and his triumphant return to Fox’s HQ following an attack by the Russian army in Ukraine that took the lives of another journalist, a local fixer, and left him gravely wounded.
But are such journalists the rule at Fox News … or the exception?
The vast majority of programming on Fox News is politically oriented, which puts the network squarely in line with the programming of its cable news rivals. If President Joe Biden makes so much as one potential misstep, they are on it, covering awkward asides, blunders, and stumbles with alacrity. Curiously though, and this has been documented ad nauseam over the years, Trump is not treated with the same standard.
Now one could argue that Trump is the former president and not worthy of the sort of coverage that the sitting commander-in-chief deserves, and that is a reasonable argument. But Trump is the Republican frontrunner for the 2024 nomination. He is, in fact, the presumptive candidate for the party that all opinion programs at Fox News openly support. And yet? He mostly avoids the scrutiny any other candidate in a similar position would receive.
It’s not like Trump is boring. The opposite is true right now: as he seeks attention for his 2024 campaign, he’s working overtime to pump out the most outrageous political rhetoric possible, an attempt that seems specifically aimed at getting the attention of Fox News, whose outsized viewer base he covets.
Yet, as Trump says increasingly bonkers things, Fox News continues to ignore him — as if pretending the crazy uncle in the room isn’t there means he isn’t. But he is. And he’s currently the most powerful voice in the Republican Party.
Quick thought experiment: Imagine if Biden was captured on video blaming Americans for the decline of Western Civilization and “not Russia,” as Trump did on Thursday. A weeks-long outrage cycle on Fox News would ensue, and for a good reason. It’s an absurd claim, and as Charlie Sykes points out, it echoes rhetoric coming out of the Kremlin.
Tune into Fox News to hear how they are reacting. You’ll find no mention of the former president’s declaration. Literally, not one second of programming has been dedicated to this absurd comment released Thursday afternoon.
I’ve written before that Fox News hasn’t yet come clean on Trump’s stolen election claims, and that still holds true. Trump continues to this day to insist that the 2020 election was stolen — a patently false and dangerous claim that undermines our democratic process — but Fox News doesn’t feel it newsworthy to cover. Why is that?
I’ll tell you why: Fox News cares more about appeasing its audience than reporting the truth. The network, from the top down, is cravenly afraid of angering viewers, many of whom embrace the fantasy that Trump is spinning.
There is a solution to this entirely reasonable criticism, of course. And that’s for all of Fox News to address the elephant in the room in a manner that befits an actual news outlet. Start with telling viewers that there is no evidence that the 2020 election was stolen every time Trump makes that dangerous and bullshit claim. Continue by noting how Trump’s blaming America for the decline of Western Civilization is radical and remarkably controversial. And maybe even note the similarities in foreign policies coming out of Mar-a-Lago and the Kremlin? You know, report the news without fear or favor.
Mediaite reached out to Fox News for an explanation of why they are ignoring these stories, particularly in light of the recent editorial controversies. Fox News declined to answer.
So is Fox News a news network? Well, they are a political information network that occasionally reports the news. But only the news that appeals to their viewers. We report, you decide.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
