It Pains Me to Say It, But Joy Behar Made a Really Important Point About Fox News & Trump

We all know that the Trump era has turned much of the media universe upside-down, but it is still remarkably disorienting when, as a conservative, you find yourself thinking that Joy Behar has made a really valid and important point. This is especially the case for me since during my only appearance on The View — way back in the days when Barbara Walters was the primary host — she and I didn’t get along very well on, or off, the air.

But that is what happened earlier this week when Behar discussed why it is that the majority of Fox News programming must stay completely devoted to President Donald Trump. In essence, she said on the show that they are personally invested in making sure he is not seen as a failure because, otherwise, since they effectively validated him, they would be perceived exactly the same way.

While the “investment” that Fox News (and the rest of the “conservative” media) has in Trump may seem rather obvious, there is a much larger reality at work here. You see this situation is fundamentally different from the strong preference for President George W. Bush that the same media outlets had starting in 2000, until Hurricane Katrina in 2006.

As a talk show host at KFI radio in Los Angeles, I saw first-hand how the conservative media turned on Bush hard after New Orleans was flooded. This happened not because their view of Bush as a person and president really changed very much, but because it was deemed better for ratings, especially because of the unpopularity of the Iraq War, to throw him under the bus.

The medium could get away with such disloyalty because their original backing of Bush was neither dramatic nor particularly influential. Bush was an establishment Republican who was really no different from the other options at the time, so if he failed it wasn’t like it was a condemnation of an entire movement, or of those who were in charge of vetting him. Bush had simply messed up and it was time to move on to a new potential hero.

With Trump, it is an entirely different ballgame. Because he was a radical departure from a normal Republican candidate, his qualifications were so highly questionable, and the conservative media played such an incredibly integral role in persuading the base that it was a good idea to take a flyer with this reality TV star, they are uniquely invested in him not being seen as a disaster.

While you would think that this would give the conservative media an incentive to keep Trump in line, bizarrely, this has the opposite effect of providing Trump with exponentially more slack than any other Republican president could possibly ever dream of. This phenomenon has become particularly pronounced when it comes to the coverage of the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

There are simply almost no circumstances under which the majority of the current “conservative” (largely state-run) media will ever accept findings of serious malfeasance on the part of Trump, even if they come directly from a life-long Republican war hero like Robert Mueller. The reasons are quite similar to why a five-year-old will almost never be convinced that there is no Santa Claus, regardless of how strong the evidence may be.

Like that five-year-old, being forced to view Trump as some sort of treasonous criminal would just simply be too shattering to their entire view of the world, and also have a devastating impact on their yearly income. It would be one thing if Trump merely failed to meet expectations, it is an entirely different matter if he turns out to be a truly bad guy who did clear harm to the country.

After searching for about two years for the perfect comparison for how an outlet like Fox News is invested in Trump not being perceived as a crook or a fraud, I think I finally found it via a fairly recent episode of 20/20 on ABC. It is the case of a father in Georgia who was convicted of murdering his young son by purposely leaving him in the car while he went to work (where, inexplicably, he spent most of the day sexting with strangers).

What made this situation particularly odd is that the man’s wife, whose only child he had been convicted of murdering, divorced him over his infidelity issues, but actually testified strongly on his behalf at his trial. While she was apparently perfectly willing to accept that the man she married was a scoundrel, she still is completely unconvinced that he purposely killed their son.

It seems pretty clear that this woman, who appears to be rather intelligent, is invested in her beliefs about her former husband in very much the same way as most of Fox News is with regard to Trump, specifically in relation to the Russia matter. It is tolerable for them each to conclude that he is far from perfect (Stormy Daniels, bad tweets, etc.), but, if he really did what he is accused of, then they themselves are directly responsible for allowing an unconscionable crime to occur, which is just psychologically unacceptable.

In this analogy, the mother is Fox News, the father is Trump, and the child is the rule of law. Don’t be surprised if when Mueller’s work is finally complete, that these two situations play out in a very similar fashion, only without the trial conviction because Fox News will have control over enough of the potential jury to make sure that never happens.

John Ziegler hosts a weekly podcast focusing on news media issues and is documentary filmmaker. You can follow him on Twitter at @ZigManFreud  or email him at johnz@mediaite.com

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