Dan Abrams Drags Fox News, MSNBC for ‘Coddling’ Allies From On-Air Challenges Before Midterms
NewsNation host and Mediaite founder Dan Abrams called out Fox News and MSNBC for “coddling” their political allies by promoting them on air without opposition ahead of the midterm elections.
On Friday, Abrams delivered a monologue in which he accused the two networks of not giving sufficient airtime to both sides of the political spectrum so that midterm candidates would be forced to answer tough questions before the elections. The NewsNation host called out MSNBC for having interviewed “dozens of Democratic candidates but not one Republican running in a midterm election” in recent days. As for prime-time programming on Fox News, Abrams noted that “only one Democrat has appeared, but by our count, 28 Republicans candidates have been invited on to answer softball questions.”
From there, Abrams rolled footage of Sean Hannity hosting Dr. Mehmet Oz, Herschel Walker and Senator Ron Johnson all within the same taping of his show.
“That was all from one episode,” said Abrams. “But at least Hannity is honest about his overtly-partisan views and efforts to help Republicans.”
He noted that this “partisan promotional effort” was chewed out by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, but Abrams took Hayes to task for not acknowledging that MSNBC acted similarly “to prop up Democrats.” Thus, Abrams called out an episode of The Last Word where Lawrence O’Donnell spoke to Mark Kelly, Katie Hobbs, Beto O’Rourke and Kathy Hochul in a single night.
“Again, that was just one show,” Abrams exclaimed. “Four candidates running in tight midterm races, and every one a Democrat.”
Abrams continued by offering Fox News credit for the fact that they held a town hall with J.D. Vance (R) and Rep. Tim Ryan last week. He was astonished, however, that it was newsworthy for Ryan to condemn the mockery over the Paul Pelosi attack, and that Ryan had to explain his decision to go on Fox News afterwards.
How strange is it that a candidate of either party condemning political violence is actually newsworthy? But these days, when a Democrat does so on Fox News in connection with violence against a Democrat and the Fox News audience supports him, it’s news. But of course, then Ryan has to defend himself on MSNBC for the grave sin of even appearing on Fox News…
Candidates should be going on various networks, even if it’s not a “friendly” environment, because the marginalized moderate majority, the people who will likely decide most of the battleground elections, want it, and ought to demand it.
In the case of CNN, Abrams gave the network credit for the interview Dana Bash conducted recently with Republican gubernatorial candidate, Kari Lake (R-AZ). He concluded by returning to his argument that cable news outlets are responsible for America’s political divide with their constant pandering to those they politically align with.
Mediaite reached out to Fox for comment on Monday, and they responded to Abrams’ argument by referring to the pre-midterm op-eds they recently published from Democrats, including Maggie Hassan, Raphael Warnock, and John Fetterman. The network also referred to its recent interviews with Charlie Crist and James Clyburn, along with other bookings of Democratic midterm candidates on its digital platform.
Watch above via NewsNation.
