Faux News: Who Says the USA Doesn't Have State TV?

[GreyhoundFan]

Kate McKinnon hits it out of the park again. Actually, everyone is spot-on:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Sean Hannity owns Fox News"

Spoiler

Back in the early years of the Obama administration, Fox News host Sean Hannity used his popular program to boost conservative activism. The fiery host was a celebrity at tea party rallies, including one in Georgia in 2009: “If we go through these numbers and we’re going to spend and create $10 trillion in debt and 10 years from now $806 billion in interest on that debt. This is unsustainable, and America has a message tonight for the White House. Fifteen or 20 thousand strong here in Atlanta: Leave our children and grandchildren’s money alone,” said the host, as the crowd roared.

In those days, however, the folks in Fox News headquarters exerted a bit of control over their prime-time talk-show star. For instance: When Hannity decamped to Cincinnati in April 2010 to cheer on the tea party, he was recalled to New York. The reason? Ethics, believe it or not. Executives at the network grew concerned that tea party organizers were using Hannity’s presence to raise funds. “I’m doing a big post-mortem and trying to get to the bottom of it,” said Bill Shine (then Fox’s executive vice president of programming, now a White House aide) at the time.

Safe to say that no one at Fox News will be trying to “get to the bottom” of Hannity’s latest flurry of activism. As announced on Sunday, Hannity will be a “special guest,” along with talk radio host Rush Limbaugh and country singer Lee Greenwood, at a rally with President Trump in Cape Girardeau, Mo., on the eve of the 2018 midterm elections. Here’s how the sign-up form appears on the Trump campaign website:

Carly Shanahan of the Fox News PR department didn’t respond to questions about the arrangements. However, a “spokesperson” for the network told the Hill that “Hannity will be hosting his show from the rally location and interviewing Trump.”

Hannity himself has sought to bring clarity to whether he’d be appearing onstage with Trump:

Such proximity isn’t altogether unprecedented. In October 2017, Hannity “interviewed” Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania for Trump’s tax plan. Hannity: “Is he going to win Pennsylvania in 2020, too?” Crowd: “Yay!”

And in September, Hannity “interviewed” Trump at a Las Vegas rally. The tone was propagandistic from the very start. “There he is, the commander in chief, and here comes the music, and here come the flags. Obviously, a lot of — the crowd in this arena is huge as we come to you from the Vegas Convention Center,” said Hannity, who began with these pleasantries: “Mr. President, how are you sir? It is an honor to see you. Wave to the fake news media.”

Through his promotion of Trump at events such as those; through his nightly fealty to Trump talking points and utter Trump worship; through his craven and successful attempt to lead Trump supporters in a round of applause for Trump’s Muslim ban; through his status as an unofficial adviser to Trump the candidate and later Trump the president; through the provision of Hannity’s private jet to take a vice-presidential candidate to meet with Trump; through the sheer coincidence that his good friend and former colleague — Shine, that is — snagged a top job in the White House; through his appearance in a Trump campaign video promotion during the 2016 race; through those frequent phone calls, Hannity has become every bit as invested in the Trump presidency as a White House adviser or even the president himself.

One pro-Trump cheer after another has solidified “Hannity” as the No. 1 program on cable news. And that consideration appears to outweigh any ethical concerns at Fox News that “Hannity” has become a wholly owned subsidiary of WhiteHouse.gov.

All signposts are arrayed in one direction: Hannity owns Fox News. He owns the Fox News identity. He owns the Fox News management. He owns the Fox News branding. He owns the Fox News standards guide, if indeed such a thing still exists. He owns the Fox News programming. He owns the Fox News everything.

Whenever discussing the line-crossing of Hannity or the craziness of Tucker Carlson, it’s customary to include a nod to the more newsy stretches of the Fox News schedule. Hosts such as Shepard Smith, Harris Faulkner, Bill Hemmer, Chris Wallace and Sandra Smith, that is. Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, mentioned the network’s straight-news cluster last week in defending Fox News from critics.

Sure, great: Those folks don’t do what Hannity does. And they’re powerless to stop him from doing so.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘They were threatening me and my family’: Tucker Carlson’s home targeted by protesters"

Spoiler

Fox News host Tucker Carlson was at his desk Wednesday evening, less than two hours before his 8 p.m. live show, when he suddenly started receiving multiple text messages.

There was some sort of commotion happening outside his home in Northwest D.C.

“I called my wife,” Carlson told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “She had been in the kitchen alone getting ready to go to dinner and she heard pounding on the front door and screaming. ... Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.”

His wife, thinking it was a home invasion, locked herself in the pantry and called 911, Carlson said. The couple have four children, but none were home at the time.

But it wasn’t a home invasion. It was a protest.

According to now-deleted social media posts shared by Smash Racism DC, a local anti-facist organization whose members have been tied to other demonstrations against prominent Republican figures, activists showed up outside Carlson’s home Wednesday and they had a message for him.

“Tucker Carlson, we are outside your home,” one person could be heard saying in the since-deleted video. The person, using a bullhorn, accused Carlson of “promoting hate” and “an ideology that has led to thousands of people dying.”

“We want you to know, we know where you sleep at night,” the person concluded, before leading the group to chant, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

Roughly 20 people had gathered outside Carlson’s residence, said Lt. Jon Pongratz with the Metropolitan Police Department of D.C. Authorities received a call at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and responded “within a few minutes,” Pongratz told The Post.

Carlson said the protesters had blocked off both ends of his street and carried signs that listed his home address. The group called Carlson a “racist scumbag" and demanded that he “leave town,” according to posts on Twitter. A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to “bring a pipe bomb” to his house, he said.

“It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat,” said Carlson, who is often denounced by critics, particularly liberal critics, for inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants and minorities on his Fox News show. “They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said. They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation. ... They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”

He added that he still does not know who was behind the protest, but plans to find out.

On Twitter, Smash Racism DC accused Carlson of spreading “fear into our homes” every night, taking particular issue with his comments about the migrant caravan.

“Tonight you’re reminded that we have a voice,” a now-deleted tweet read. “Tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.”

The host’s address, as well as the addresses of his brother and good friend Neil Patel, with whom he co-founded the conservative media site the Daily Caller, were shared in tweets from Smash Racism DC’s account.

In a Facebook post that included video of the gathering, the group wrote, “Fascists are vulnerable. Confront them at their homes!”

Following backlash and news reports, Twitter deleted the problematic tweets and suspended the group’s account early Thursday morning. The Facebook video was also taken down, but the page is still up. A request for comment made to the group’s Facebook page early Thursday has not been returned.

Hours after the protesters dispersed, police were still stationed near Carlson’s home, Pongratz said, adding the block will be under “special attention” for “as long as needed.”

“We’re going to keep an eye on the block and the area because of the earlier disturbance to make sure that nothing escalates,” he said, noting that the increased security was a decision made by police. “We wanted to make sure that it stayed safe ... in case they do come back.”

News of the protest and doxxing, revealing personal information on the Internet, prompted widespread condemnation from not just conservative-leaning journalists or Fox News personalities but also media members who are critical of Carlson.

Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News personality who is reportedly in exit talks with NBC, called the demonstration “stomach-turning.”

“This has to stop,” Kelly tweeted, sharing a video of the protesters. “Who are we? What are we becoming? @TuckerCarlson is tough & can handle a lot, but he does not deserve this. His family does not deserve this.”

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume decried it as “revolting, and frightening.” Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo tweeted that the protesters were “cowards” for going to Carlson’s home while he was taping his show. S.E. Cupp, a CNN host, wrote on Twitter that the activists' actions were “not okay," adding, “don’t do this.”

Washington Post columnist Max Boot, who has been critical of Carlson, also spoke out against the protest.

“I think Tucker is a terrible influence on modern America but that doesn’t justify harassing him at home,” Boot tweeted. “Go high, not low.”

In his nightly newsletter, CNN’s Brian Stelter dedicated a section to the protest titled, “Tucker Carlson does not deserve this.” Stelter also shared screenshots of the newsletter on Twitter.

“You can love or hate Fox’s Tucker Carlson, but we should all be able to see that this protester behavior is wrong,” the newsletter read. Quoting the responses from Kelly and Boot, Stelter wrote, “I agree. Get a permit for a protest outside Carlson’s office if you want. But don’t chant ‘we know where you sleep at night’ outside his home.”

Carlson, a longtime D.C. resident, said he went to “great lengths” to keep his home address private because of his family, who were all “very upset” by the protesters. He added that he loves his home and neighborhood and does not want to move.

“They think of Northwest D.C. as a tranquil sanctuary where they know everyone and everyone is nice,” he said. “They think of this as the greatest place in the world.”

Now, Carlson is worried about leaving his family alone at home.

“How can you go out for dinner and leave the kids at home at this point?" he said. “If they’re talking about pipe bombs ... how do you live like that?”

He added that he also doesn’t know what he’s going to do about checking the mail. In October, pipe bombs were mailed across the country to high-profile critics of President Trump.

“I probably won’t open another package sent to our house from now on,” Carlson said.

Wednesday night’s events are the latest in a spate of harassment aimed at prominent politicians and media outlets, ranging from being heckled in restaurants to receiving packages containing explosive devices.

While he is no stranger to threats, Carlson said this time things went “too far.”

“I don’t think I should be threatened in our house,” he said. “I think I should fight back, and I plan to.”

He added: “I’m not going to be bullied and intimidated.”

While I think it's wrong to threaten and intimidate, he shouldn't be surprised as he loves to spread hate and lies.

[RosyDaisy]

No excuse for this. Innocent people could have gotten hurt. I despise Tucker Carlson, but this is taking things too far.

[Cartmann99]

19 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

He must have pissed off the makeup artist. He looks like a damn pumpkin! 

[fraurosena]

38 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

He must have pissed off the makeup artist. He looks like a damn pumpkin! 

Nah, he's only emulating his idol.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

Sarah Kendzior, author of Flyover Country  and someone I follow on Twitter, has been predicting this scenario for weeks --  that Republican would attempt to nullify or delegitimize the results of close races that might go to Democrats.  She also presciently predicted the state of our union right now -- she saw it coming from three-ish or more years ago. 

The scary and the bad?  She knows these things because she studies authoritarian governments. 

Edited November 10, 2018 by Howl

[WiseGirl]

1 hour ago, Howl said:

Sarah Kendzior, author of Flyover Country  and someone I follow on Twitter, has been predicting this for weeks...

Yes, I follow her too.

[fraurosena]

On 11/8/2018 at 3:24 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

"‘They were threatening me and my family’: Tucker Carlson’s home targeted by protesters"

  Reveal hidden contents

Fox News host Tucker Carlson was at his desk Wednesday evening, less than two hours before his 8 p.m. live show, when he suddenly started receiving multiple text messages.

There was some sort of commotion happening outside his home in Northwest D.C.

“I called my wife,” Carlson told The Washington Post in a phone interview. “She had been in the kitchen alone getting ready to go to dinner and she heard pounding on the front door and screaming. ... Someone started throwing himself against the front door and actually cracked the front door.”

His wife, thinking it was a home invasion, locked herself in the pantry and called 911, Carlson said. The couple have four children, but none were home at the time.

But it wasn’t a home invasion. It was a protest.

According to now-deleted social media posts shared by Smash Racism DC, a local anti-facist organization whose members have been tied to other demonstrations against prominent Republican figures, activists showed up outside Carlson’s home Wednesday and they had a message for him.

“Tucker Carlson, we are outside your home,” one person could be heard saying in the since-deleted video. The person, using a bullhorn, accused Carlson of “promoting hate” and “an ideology that has led to thousands of people dying.”

“We want you to know, we know where you sleep at night,” the person concluded, before leading the group to chant, “Tucker Carlson, we will fight! We know where you sleep at night!”

Roughly 20 people had gathered outside Carlson’s residence, said Lt. Jon Pongratz with the Metropolitan Police Department of D.C. Authorities received a call at about 6:30 p.m. Wednesday and responded “within a few minutes,” Pongratz told The Post.

Carlson said the protesters had blocked off both ends of his street and carried signs that listed his home address. The group called Carlson a “racist scumbag" and demanded that he “leave town,” according to posts on Twitter. A woman was also overheard in one of the deleted videos saying she wanted to “bring a pipe bomb” to his house, he said.

“It wasn’t a protest. It was a threat,” said Carlson, who is often denounced by critics, particularly liberal critics, for inflammatory rhetoric about immigrants and minorities on his Fox News show. “They weren’t protesting anything specific that I had said. They weren’t asking me to change anything. They weren’t protesting a policy or advocating for legislation. ... They were threatening me and my family and telling me to leave my own neighborhood in the city that I grew up in.”

He added that he still does not know who was behind the protest, but plans to find out.

On Twitter, Smash Racism DC accused Carlson of spreading “fear into our homes” every night, taking particular issue with his comments about the migrant caravan.

“Tonight you’re reminded that we have a voice,” a now-deleted tweet read. “Tonight, we remind you that you are not safe either.”

The host’s address, as well as the addresses of his brother and good friend Neil Patel, with whom he co-founded the conservative media site the Daily Caller, were shared in tweets from Smash Racism DC’s account.

In a Facebook post that included video of the gathering, the group wrote, “Fascists are vulnerable. Confront them at their homes!”

Following backlash and news reports, Twitter deleted the problematic tweets and suspended the group’s account early Thursday morning. The Facebook video was also taken down, but the page is still up. A request for comment made to the group’s Facebook page early Thursday has not been returned.

Hours after the protesters dispersed, police were still stationed near Carlson’s home, Pongratz said, adding the block will be under “special attention” for “as long as needed.”

“We’re going to keep an eye on the block and the area because of the earlier disturbance to make sure that nothing escalates,” he said, noting that the increased security was a decision made by police. “We wanted to make sure that it stayed safe ... in case they do come back.”

News of the protest and doxxing, revealing personal information on the Internet, prompted widespread condemnation from not just conservative-leaning journalists or Fox News personalities but also media members who are critical of Carlson.

Megyn Kelly, the former Fox News personality who is reportedly in exit talks with NBC, called the demonstration “stomach-turning.”

“This has to stop,” Kelly tweeted, sharing a video of the protesters. “Who are we? What are we becoming? @TuckerCarlson is tough & can handle a lot, but he does not deserve this. His family does not deserve this.”

Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume decried it as “revolting, and frightening.” Daily Wire reporter Amanda Prestigiacomo tweeted that the protesters were “cowards” for going to Carlson’s home while he was taping his show. S.E. Cupp, a CNN host, wrote on Twitter that the activists' actions were “not okay," adding, “don’t do this.”

Washington Post columnist Max Boot, who has been critical of Carlson, also spoke out against the protest.

“I think Tucker is a terrible influence on modern America but that doesn’t justify harassing him at home,” Boot tweeted. “Go high, not low.”

In his nightly newsletter, CNN’s Brian Stelter dedicated a section to the protest titled, “Tucker Carlson does not deserve this.” Stelter also shared screenshots of the newsletter on Twitter.

“You can love or hate Fox’s Tucker Carlson, but we should all be able to see that this protester behavior is wrong,” the newsletter read. Quoting the responses from Kelly and Boot, Stelter wrote, “I agree. Get a permit for a protest outside Carlson’s office if you want. But don’t chant ‘we know where you sleep at night’ outside his home.”

Carlson, a longtime D.C. resident, said he went to “great lengths” to keep his home address private because of his family, who were all “very upset” by the protesters. He added that he loves his home and neighborhood and does not want to move.

“They think of Northwest D.C. as a tranquil sanctuary where they know everyone and everyone is nice,” he said. “They think of this as the greatest place in the world.”

Now, Carlson is worried about leaving his family alone at home.

“How can you go out for dinner and leave the kids at home at this point?" he said. “If they’re talking about pipe bombs ... how do you live like that?”

He added that he also doesn’t know what he’s going to do about checking the mail. In October, pipe bombs were mailed across the country to high-profile critics of President Trump.

“I probably won’t open another package sent to our house from now on,” Carlson said.

Wednesday night’s events are the latest in a spate of harassment aimed at prominent politicians and media outlets, ranging from being heckled in restaurants to receiving packages containing explosive devices.

While he is no stranger to threats, Carlson said this time things went “too far.”

“I don’t think I should be threatened in our house,” he said. “I think I should fight back, and I plan to.”

He added: “I’m not going to be bullied and intimidated.”

While I think it's wrong to threaten and intimidate, he shouldn't be surprised as he loves to spread hate and lies.

It turns out that Tucker Carlson's version of what happened that night was faux news. Who'd have thought?

 

[fraurosena]

Tucker Carlson lies for a living on national tv. He also lies for attention IRL. It seems he’s now got the attention of somebody he didn’t quite expect. Oops.

 

[hoipolloi]

Interesting that the Fox News Twitter feed has gone inactive since November 8.

They usually post at least 100-200 tweets a day, but it's just been totally silent.  You'd think, being such rah-rah fans of the military, they'd have at least posted something about Veterans' Day, but no - crickets.

The internet being what it is, people have noticed & are speculating:

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, hoipolloi said:

Interesting that the Fox News Twitter feed has gone inactive since November 8.

They usually post at least 100-200 tweets a day, but it's just been totally silent.  You'd think, being such rah-rah fans of the military, they'd have at least posted something about Veterans' Day, but no - crickets.

The internet being what it is, people have noticed & are speculating:

 

Oh, wouldn't it be absolutely delicious if this were true? 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Sean Hannity was one of those indicted. He was a 'client' of Cohen's after all, and Cohen is cooperating with Mueller...

[hoipolloi]

And it looks like Matt Drudge has *deleted* the contents of his Twitter account.

What is that saying again about horses & barn doors? ?

[GreyhoundFan]

"Will Fox News survive as a house united? A look at the cable network’s ongoing drama in the Trump era."

Spoiler

NEW YORK — On election night at Fox News Channel, big red news alerts lit up the small courtyard outside Studio F where Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum were hosting the channel’s midterms coverage.

The rain had just let up and Baier, the channel’s chief political anchor, sat square-jawed and sober, resembling a Dick Tracy cartoon without the hat. MacCallum, a new presence as an election-night co-anchor (for the 2016 presidential election, Megyn Kelly was in that seat) appeared sharp in a suffragist-appropriate white jumpsuit with perfectly arranged blond hair.

This was supposed to be Fox News’s star turn — the big day for its journalists. Instead, the previous 24 hours had exposed the spreading fissures at Fox News, which is in the midst of its own version of a civil war, pitting its news anchors against its big-name pundits, who are avid promoters of President Trump. Baier, who has been at Fox for 21 years, says he approaches every day “with horse blinders on.”

“I don’t spend a lot of time analyzing what the opinion shows are doing,” he adds, but it was impossible to ignore Sean Hannity’s guest appearance at President Trump’s final midterm-elections rally in Missouri.

Before the rally, Hannity had said he would only be interviewing Trump and wouldn’t appear on stage. But after the interview, Hannity did exactly what he said he was not going to do, which was jump onstage, hug Trump, repeat his campaign talking points, and then high-five former Fox News executive Bill Shine, who is now the White House deputy chief of staff in charge of communications.

Hannity later said Trump’s invitation to join him on stage was unexpected, which many at the channel disbelieved. “You know he’s lying through his teeth, right?” said one current Fox News staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. Hannity maintained on his show after election night that “he had no idea” that the president was going to invite him up there.

Hannity’s decision to bound up on stage effectively made him a part of the Trump campaign and further wed the channel and the president. And, like any married couple, Fox News and the White House have started to resemble one another. The West Wing contains various factions; so does Fox. Baier and MacCallum are like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, projecting a reasonable mien and moderate opinions, while Hannity and others lean toward the extremes.

The day before the midterm elections, Rupert Murdoch, whose family controls the company that owns Fox News, stopped by Baier and MacCallum’s practice session. “Rupert is at heart a newsman, and he likes to know what is going on,” Baier said in an interview.

The Murdoch family has its factions, too. Hollywood spotlights circled outside and occasionally highlighted the office tower from which Murdoch and his son, Lachlan, watched the channel’s coverage with a small gathering of senior staff. James Murdoch, who has told friends he is embarrassed by much of what appears on Fox News, did not attend.

As the network prepares for the 2020 presidential campaign the question is: Will Fox survive as a house united?

Baier and his news colleagues have long been overshadowed by the opinion hosts at Fox News, who have most often gotten the prime-time slots and biggest ratings. Hannity's ascent to star of the most-watched show on cable news came only after the departure of Bill O'Reilly (because of a sexual harassment scandal) and Megyn Kelly, who left Fox in early 2017 for a short-lived morning show on NBC News. Perhaps not coincidentally, Hannity's ascent occurred during the first year of Donald Trump's presidency.

Hannity’s show “Hannity” averaged over 3.5 million viewers in October, with Baier’s show, “Special Report with Bret Baier” clocking an average of 2.7 million viewers, and MacCallum’s “The Story with Martha MacCallum” averaging 2.5 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Election-night coverage was seen as an important moment for Baier and MacCallum to showcase their straightforward style and set them and their news colleagues apart from the image of Fox News that is so tied to Donald Trump and decried by critics as state TV.

For election night 2018, Fox News built an outdoor studio plus three large screens that broadcast the coverage from the main anchor desks inside. The last element of the Fox Election Experience was a promotional tent for Fox Nation, the streaming service that Fox News plans to launch late this month for its self-proclaimed “superfans.” A sign welcomed visitors: “Feeling Left Out? Join Fox Nation.”

Fox News alerts about the win by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) garnered boos from the crowd in the courtyard, as did Florida gubernatorial hopeful Andrew Gillum’s early lead. When Republican Ron DeSantis pulled ahead later, the crowd whooped. When a photo of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) appeared on the large screen outside Studio F, a man draped in a U.S. flag yelled “Anti-American!”

Inside the main studio, Baier and MacCallum played it straight. They left it to Laura Ingraham, who has mocked Parkland survivor David Hogg and compared immigrant detention facilities to “summer camp,” to argue that Trump deserved more credit for helping Republicans maintain control of the Senate.

There were moments in the evening when it felt as if Ingraham might have been more comfortable cheering outside, alongside Aimee Cabo and her husband. They were visiting from Miami. Cabo enthused about Trump rallies: “I love watching them,” she said. Cabo added that she also loved parts but not all of Fox News.

“I love ‘Fox & Friends’ and anything after 5 p.m.,” Cabo said. “Anything in between, they are more Democrat than Republican.”

The divide inside Fox had been on display in the weeks leading up to the midterm elections. Parroting Trump’s hyped-up rhetoric of a dangerous and imminent migrant “invasion,” Jeanine Pirro, Brian Kilmeade and other Fox contributors imagined the migrants wandering through Mexico as a group preparing to charge the border and bringing diseases, wife beaters and maybe even pedophiles to the United States.

It fell to Shepard Smith, Fox’s chief news anchor, to level with viewers at the end of October that the migrants, if they arrived at the U.S. border at all, were two months away. “There is no invasion. No one is coming to get you,” he soberly told the camera. “There is nothing at all to worry about.”

It's hard to know how Ailes, who was ousted in 2016 in a sexual harassment scandal and who died in 2017, would have handled Trump and Hannity's bond. When he was alive, Ailes gave Trump a platform as a birther conspiracy theorist on "Fox & Friends" but didn't like Trump as a political candidate, former associates say. Ailes did not want a single individual in the GOP to dictate Fox News's coverage; he wanted to run the GOP. Some former Fox News executives see the network's alignment with Trump, as well as its inability to control Hannity, as a sign of how Ailes managed to keep major stars in line.

“When I left Fox, nobody inside there liked Trump,” said Eric Bolling, former co-host of the Fox News show “The Five.” “Now, look at it. Everyone is falling into line.”

When Trump declared his candidacy, divisions inside the network played out on camera. Dana Perino, a former press secretary for George W. Bush, was dubbed one of the “Bushies,” and Greg Gutfeld, another co-host of “The Five,” regularly attacked Trump on air. Other Fox personalities, including Bolling himself, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Hannity were pro-Trump from the start.

Bolling and Guilfoyle have left the network. (Guilfoyle is dating the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.) Today, both Perino, who has been given her own 2 p.m. news show, and Gutfeld are quieter in their objections.

The pro-Trump posture of Fox News alienated some contributors. Ralph Peters, a longtime military analyst for the channel, severed his association with Fox months ago and said in an interview that the network divides itself into three categories: the true believers who see Trump as “the new messiah;” the cable news opportunists, who have fallen into line; and the respectable hosts who are “disgusted by what goes on there.” But the distinction between opinion and programming hosts is meaningless these days, he says: “It’s like saying, ‘I’m only a prostitute from noon to midnight.’ ”

Baier hardly appears disgusted — “Fox News is a great place to work,” he says — but finds himself in a news environment dominated by the president and the conspiracy theories sometimes created by his colleagues. He tries to keep his show at least partly away from Trump news. “I think that’s one of our problems as an industry overall. President Trump is brilliant at that. He controls the media, and he’s in the conversation, and he’s on the front page every day.”

The New Yorker’s Ken Auletta noted recently in a conversation at Advertising Week New York that Baier’s show is more expansive than the average. “ I get more news about the Middle East on Bret Baier at six o’clock than I do at CNN.”

After Hannity's onstage appearance with Trump, Baier said that "there was a lot of reaction inside the company," and that he, MacCallum, Brit Hume and Chris Wallace addressed it at a pre-scheduled lunch with Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott and Fox News President Jay Wallace the day of the election.

“It was a big part of the discussion,” Baier said. Wallace and Scott told them the Murdochs had been personally involved in the statement that Fox News put out that morning expressing disapproval of Hannity’s action. “We felt confident that they understood the seriousness of the moment, and that the news side needed to make sure [management] had our backs. . . . I do something different than Sean does, but when an event like this happens, it needs to be clear cut.”

After that, Baier had what he called “a good conversation” with Hannity. The two men have been with Fox News from the beginning and have known one another for 21 years. Still, the whole thing was “a huge distraction from what was a huge night.”

The whole thing didn’t hurt ratings. As it has been for years, Fox News was the highest-rated news program on election night, beating both cable and network news programs with 7.8 million prime-time viewers, according to Nielsen.

As for Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, they were “disappointed and felt strongly about reassuring the journalists at Fox News” that what Hannity did “is not acceptable,” according to a person close to them. Disappointed or not, the Murdochs and Fox News are at the mercy of Trump and Hannity, at least for now. “They’re willing to support Sean in the short term but Sean’s key to survival now is the connection to the Trump base and voter,” said a Trump administration official close to the network. Lachlan Murdoch recently said that he wasn’t embarrassed by what is on Fox News and that more people watch the channel’s news coverage than its opinion programming.

Hannity has flirted with other political figures. He was due to appear at a 2010 Cincinnati fundraiser for the tea party when Ailes angrily called him home before he could participate. This time, with the Missouri rally, there was no one to call him back before it was too late. “Hannity is really pushing the envelope,” said a former Fox executive. “He’s daring people to try to stop him.”

 

[Audrey2]

3 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Will Fox News survive as a house united? A look at the cable network’s ongoing drama in the Trump era."

Hannity has flirted with other political figures. He was due to appear at a 2010 Cincinnati fundraiser for the tea party when Ailes angrily called him home before he could participate. This time, with the Missouri rally, there was no one to call him back before it was too late. “Hannity is really pushing the envelope,” said a former Fox executive. “He’s daring people to try to stop him.”

Don't tell me Hannity has dreams of becoming President...

[fraurosena]

59 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

Don't tell me Hannity has dreams of becoming President...

No, but AG would be nice...

[Cartmann99]

9 hours ago, fraurosena said:

No, but AG would be nice...

I'd love to see Hannity and Judge Jeanine have a really stupid fight on the internet about which one should be Trump's AG.

[onekidanddone]

10 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

I'd love to see Hannity and Judge Jeanine have a really stupid fight on the internet about which one should be Trump's AG.

Lionel Hutz gets my vote.

[fraurosena]

Well boo-hoo dear, but that's how democracy works.

 

[fraurosena]

LOL

 

Now here's a type of interview I'd love to see more of!

Make 'em squirm!

[fraurosena]

Wow. 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez trolls Fox News in Spanish"

Spoiler

A Friday night show on Fox News used its closing segment to praise and poke fun at Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, but on Twitter, the congresswoman-elect laughed last.

Ed Henry hosted “The Story” on Friday night, when he and three panelists discussed how a pair of Ocasio-Cortez’s shoes are set to go on display at Cornell University, in its “Women Empowered: Fashions from the Frontline” exhibit. A Twitter user pointed out to the Democrat from New York that a four-person discussion about her shoes was taking place on prime-time television.

“No, no es amor/ Lo que tú sientes, se llama obsesión,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. The lyrics to Obsesión, by Aventura, translate to, “No, it’s not love, what you feel is called obsession.”

After another user asked whether she was really going to make Fox hire a translator to read the tweet, Ocasio-Cortez took her shot:

"Don’t worry, Fox News has made it clear that they are far superior to + more intelligent than me, who they’ve called a “little, simple person,” she wrote. “So I’m sure catching up to me in spoken languages shouldn’t be a problem for them.”

The discussion on “The Story” (beginning here, at 38:10) began with Henry’s acknowledgment that “we talk about [Ocasio-Cortez] a lot on Fox & Friends Weekend.” And while panelists Rachel Campos-Duffy, Susan Li and Wendy Osefo were occasionally dismissive — “I disagree with everything she’s trying to do to our country, and economically, but for the shoes, she deserves it,” Campos-Duffy said — they each had praise for her achievement. At 29, Ocasio-Cortez is poised to become the youngest member of Congress.

“Whatever your political ideology is, she worked for it,” Osefo said.

“I respect and I admire the hustle,” Li added, referencing her own history growing up in a single-parent household.

The Cornell exhibit features other items of clothing from women who were successful in politics and beyond, including Coretta Scott King, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Janet Reno.

Ocasio-Cortez originally tweeted about her “campaign shoes” in June, saying she won because her team outworked the competition. She defeated Rep. Joseph Crowley, who at the time was the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House.