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I wish Laura Ingraham would self quarantine.  Every single night she starts her show with how great chloroquine is for treating coronavirus.  I think Trump's been watching her show lately (she follows Sean Hannity).

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fauci-throws-cold-water-trumps-declaration-malaria-drug/story?id=69716324

Quote

A day after President Donald Trump declared an anti-malaria drug a “game changer” in the fight against the novel coronavirus, the nation’s top infectious disease expert downplayed any role it might play in the fast-moving pandemic and said signs of the drug’s promise were purely “anecdotal.”

Fauci’s statements at a White House briefing Friday amounted to clinical cold water thrown on the president’s repeated upbeat assessments on the U.S. fight against the virus, also known as COVID-19.

Quote

When asked if the drug was promising Friday, Fauci, standing next to Trump, said “the answer is no” because “the evidence you’re talking about … is anecdotal evidence.”

“The information that you’re referring to specifically is antecdotal,” he added. “It was not done in a controlled clinical trial. So you really can’t make any definitive statement about it.”

Trump then stepped forward to add: “We’ll see. We’re going to know soon.”

Quote

When asked if he was giving the nation a false sense of hope, Trump said no.

“It may work, it may not work,” he said. “I feel good about it.”

 

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"Trump didn’t need intelligence briefings to appreciate coronavirus. Tucker was on the case!"

Spoiler

President Trump has no excuse. As reported by The Post, U.S. intelligence agencies “were issuing ominous, classified warnings in January and February about the global danger posed by the coronavirus while President Trump and lawmakers played down the threat and failed to take action that might have slowed the spread of the pathogen.” The scoop stems from information shared by “U.S. officials familiar with spy agency reporting.”

Timeline considerations are paramount in any examination of coronavirus accountability. On this front, The Post’s story yields this key morsel:

The warnings from U.S. intelligence agencies increased in volume toward the end of January and into early February, said officials familiar with the reports. By then, a majority of the intelligence reporting included in daily briefing papers and digests from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the CIA was about covid-19, said officials who have read the reports.

Bolding added to note a convergence of sorts: Warnings from Fox News host Tucker Carlson and other media sources also increase toward the end of January and into early February. On Jan. 23, for instance, Carlson informed his audience, “A mysterious virus spreading in China has gotten hundreds of people sick. At the top of the hour, the death count has doubled to nearly 25 so far that we know of. Now, the virus is spreading to this country and fast. The strain of coronavirus is believed to have jumped from bats and snakes — which are commonly eaten in this part of China — to people."

He kept at it. On Jan. 27, Trump could have tuned in to hear Carlson ringing the alarm again: "Well, the coronavirus, which has incubated in China for some unknown period of time and now has escaped China, is getting worse by the day.”

Carlson pounded the story over and over again:

Jan. 31: “This is a Fox News Alert. The Trump administration has announced new travel restrictions meant to slow the spread of China’s deadly coronavirus. ... Coronavirus, in other words is not a small thing. It’s a big deal. Thousands of lives are at stake, maybe more.”

Feb. 4: Carlson says, “The coronavirus has actually received relatively little attention in the press relative to what a big deal it is right now in Asia and could be here. But my sense is a lot of people are growing concerned about it.”

Feb. 5: Carlson says, “In the rest of the world, the coronavirus shows no signs of slowing down in China. More cases continue to pop up here in the United States as well.”

Feb. 10: Carlson says, "The coronavirus claimed another — at least another 108 lives in China today — remember, those are the official numbers, not reliable. The disease’s death toll is now greater than 1,000 worldwide. It’s safe to say the disease is not under control, anything but, and as it spreads it’ll affect far more people than just those who are infected.”

And so on. Carlson’s work is noteworthy because it contrasted so sharply with the propaganda of his Fox News prime-time partner Sean Hannity, who will forever be known as the guy whose political affections for Trump overrode his obligations to report the truth about an emerging public-health crisis. On Feb. 27, Hannity opened his show with these words: “Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We’re all doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent, and you’re going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours, and it’s all President Trump’s fault,” he said. “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think. They’re now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

By no means was Carlson the only person in U.S. media staying abreast of the coronavirus’s alarming spread. Take CNN, an organization with 36 editorial operations worldwide and 3,000 employees. Coverage of the coronavirus surfaced as early as Jan. 6 on the network’s website. By mid-January, the focus had expanded to other CNN platforms. Even during the impeachment proceedings, CNN was running regular segments on the encroaching medical threat.

The New York Times on Jan. 10 noted that Chinese officials had reported the first death from the coronavirus, and the paper’s coverage ramped up from there. The Post followed a similar trajectory, with stories starting in early January. On Jan. 20, correspondent Anna Fifield reported that China’s Spring Festival, the “biggest human migration on the planet,” was facing a fresh challenge: “the spread of a mysterious, pneumonia-like virus that has killed four people. Experts initially thought that the virus, which began in an animal market, could not be spread between people but have now confirmed is being transmitted between humans.”

Here’s one thing that unifies CNN, The Post and the New York Times: On one occasion or another, Trump has boasted that he ignores these outlets. “It amazes me when I read the New York Times. It’s not even — I don’t — I barely read it. You know, we don’t distribute it in the White House anymore, and the same thing with the Washington Post,” said Trump in a briefing Thursday.

Whatever his sources, Trump did impose travel restrictions on China on Jan. 31, a step for which he has gotten credit from experts. Yet the Trump administration was caught flat-footed on testing, a key element in a country’s response to a pandemic. The president himself compounded poor preparation with ill-considered remarks as he stressed to Americans that things were under control. “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away,” Trump said on Feb. 10.

The Post story on Trump’s intel briefings suggests he may have accorded certain sources excessive deference:

Trump’s insistence on the contrary seemed to rest in his relationship with China’s President Xi Jingping, whom Trump believed was providing him with reliable information about how the virus was spreading in China, despite reports from intelligence agencies that Chinese officials were not being candid about the true scale of the crisis.

Another point about those briefings: They derived to a great degree from information supplied by the media. Again, from The Post’s story:

As the disease spread beyond China, U.S. spy agencies tracked outbreaks in Iran, South Korea, Taiwan, Italy and elsewhere in Europe, the officials familiar with those reports said. The majority of the information came from public sources, including news reports and official statements, but a significant portion also came from classified intelligence sources. As new cases popped up, the volume of reporting spiked.

Well, there you have it: The U.S. intelligence community — an institution whose credibility Trump has attacked — was formulating its coronavirus assessments with input from the media — an institution whose credibility Trump has attacked. No wonder Trump wasn’t listening: He was hearing the same message from two institutions that he had tuned out long ago.

 

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8 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

Attention seniors:

 

Family Values! 

Speak for yourself, asshole.  Plenty of grandparents are the ones caring for their grandchildren.  They are also probably people who voted for you - and now, hopefully, they will vote your ass out!

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From conservative columnist Max Boot: "Now we know: The conservative devotion to life ends at birth"

Spoiler

After watching so many on the right deny the science of climate change for so many years, I am not remotely surprised to now see so many “conservatives” denying the reality of the novel coronavirus. I am, however, shocked to see that the “pro-life” movement is so willing to sacrifice the lives of the elderly and ailing in a sick attempt to restart the U.S. economy while we are struggling with more coronavirus cases than any other country. Apparently, the right-wing devotion to life ends at birth.

The Republican reaction initially was to write off concern about the virus as a “hoax” designed to embarrass President Trump. There was a brief turn in mid-March, when both Trump and his media boosters began to take the virus a bit more seriously. But now Trump and the right-wing media are coalescing around the theme that “the cure is worse than the disease” — meaning that, after trying social distancing for a week or two, we should all get back to normal and pretend people aren’t dying around us.

Their justification for this dangerous move is based on pure ignorance. To cite but one example, Ann Coulter tweeted that “For people under 60, coronavirus is LESS dangerous than the seasonal flu.” In support of this view she included a chart that shows the coronavirus death rate for those aged 30 to 39 is 0.12 percent compared with a death rate for the flu of 0.02 percent for those aged 18 to 49 — meaning coronavirus is at least six times deadlier. But how many of her fans bothered to read the fine print?

Fox News host Laura Ingraham, for her part, touted Trump’s miracle cure, claiming: “Lenox Hill in New York among many hospitals already using hydroxychloroquine with very promising results.” As a HuffPost reporter noted, this was based on false information from a man who doesn’t actually work at Lenox Hill Hospital. In fact, a small Chinese study just concluded that hydroxychloroquine is no more effective than standard treatment for the coronavirus. More research needs to be done, but it is highly irresponsible to tout this anti-malaria drug as a “gift from God,” as Trump has done. An Arizona man even died from ingesting fish tank cleaner containing chloroquine phosphate in hopes of preventing covid-19.

Vastly more irresponsible — in fact, downright terrifying — is the willingness of some right-wingers to argue that we should sacrifice the lives of seniors to restart the economy. This notion was put forward most explicitly by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (R) on Fox News and amplified by other right-wing commentators. “You know, we don’t shut down the economy to save every single life that’s threatened by a widespread disease,” said Fox News senior political analyst Brit Hume. “We just don’t.” A Daily Wire host said we should accept “way over 35,000” deaths to “preserve our economy.”

I thought I was hardened to the depravity of the Trumpified right, but even I am astonished by the callous willingness to risk large numbers of innocent casualties — as if the economy can function while the medical system is overwhelmed and people are (rightly) terrified of being infected.

Radio host Dennis Prager bemoaned our unwillingness to sacrifice lives as we did during World War II, saying “that attitude leads to appeasement” and “cowardice.” The United States lost 418,500 people in World War II — and they were almost entirely military personnel. That’s bad enough, but it would be far worse to lose 2.2 million civilians — the worst-case estimate of the U.S. death toll if we let the novel coronavirus spread unimpeded.

Many on the right sound like characters from “Dr. Strangelove.” (“Mr. President, I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed. But I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending on the breaks.”) R.R. Reno, the editor of the “theocon” publication First Things, writes that “there are many things more precious than life” and laments that “fear of death and causing death is pervasive.”

It’s easy to volunteer others to die — but not so easy to risk death yourself. Glenn Beck of the Blaze says, “I would rather die than kill the country. ‘Cause it’s not the economy that’s dying, it’s the country.” He is saying this while sitting by himself in what looks to be a home studio. When I see Beck volunteering to work a supermarket register, I will take his bravado a bit more seriously.

But for a truly “sick” response it’s hard to top the Federalist. This right-wing website published a piece urging a “somewhat unconventional approach to COVID-19,” namely infecting volunteers to boost their immunity. In a similar vein, the Wall Street Journal editorial page ran an article urging the “deliberate infection” of first responders. I wonder what Christell Cadet would think of that. At last report, this 34-year-old paramedic in New York City was hooked up to a ventilator, fighting for her life, after contracting covid-19.

I wish I could dismiss these commentators as an inconsequential, lunatic fringe. But they have the ear of a president who wants “packed churches” on Easter. If churches really are packed on Easter, those same houses of worship should be prepared to hold a lot of funerals by Memorial Day — if, that is, funerals are even permitted during a pandemic.

 

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https://www.newsweek.com/fox-business-trish-regan-part-ways-after-she-claimed-coronavirus-was-meant-impeach-trump-1494776

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Fox Business host Trish Regan was relieved of her position Friday after telling her viewers in March that the Democratic response to the White House response to the coronavirus pandemic was "another attempt to impeach the president."

Quote

"I have enjoyed my time at FOX and now intend to focus on my family during these troubled times," Regan said in a Friday statement sent to Newsweek. "I am grateful to my incredible team at FOX Business and for the many opportunities the network has provided me. I'm looking forward to this next chapter in my career."

 

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OAN is just as bad, if not worse, than Faux.

 

I love how he keeps whining about wanting our lives back. No, he doesn't, he wants his life back. His life being golfing, schmoozing, and watching TV.

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I wouldn't mind it if Faux was sued for so much that they went out of business:

 

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9 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

OAN is just as bad, if not worse, than Faux.

 

I love how he keeps whining about wanting our lives back. No, he doesn't, he wants his life back. His life being golfing, schmoozing, and watching TV.

Shocker that the OANN reporter is a young blonde woman.

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I couldn't agree more: "Hannity must go"

Spoiler

Recent personnel actions at Fox just happen to have fallen when people turn away from their phones and laptops. On Friday, March 13, news emerged that the Fox Business show of Trish Regan had gone on hiatus — along with another show — as part of the network’s resource shift toward the coronavirus. Days earlier, Regan had issued a fact- and reason-defying riff on air about the politics of the coronavirus. “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam,” read the on-screen graphic as Regan denounced the common villains of Fox programming: “Many in the liberal media using, and I mean using, coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president,” she said, triggering a momentous backlash pointing out that the coronavirus was a real public-health crisis.

Then, on Friday afternoon of last week, Fox disclosed that the network had “parted ways” with Regan. There was no good explanation. “[W]e thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors.”

Those hollow words come in lieu of any Fox reckoning with some of the coronavirus programming that has come from its opinion hosts. In particular, franchise prime-timer Sean Hannity.

The fossil record shows that Regan’s troubles began when she made irresponsible statements just like the irresponsible statements of Hannity, who on Feb. 27 said this, “Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We’re all doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent, and you’re going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours and it’s all President Trump’s fault,” said Hannity, in typically benighted and dangerous commentary. “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think. They’re now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

We pointed out the parallel after Regan’s show went on hiatus. We asked: Why no hiatus for Hannity?

Take a look, again, at the side-by-side view:

Hannity, Feb. 27: “They’re now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

Regan, March 9: “Many in the liberal media using, and I mean using, coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president.”

Where is the fairness? We have posed that question to Fox News and will update with any response.

There could be an argument that Regan made her despicable comments more than a week after Hannity’s, a period when public awareness of the coronavirus threat advanced. But by the time that Hannity made his “weaponizing” comments, the dangers were unfolding in China, in Italy, in Iran and elsewhere around the world. In late January, in fact, Hannity interviewed Anthony S. Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and contemplated the possibility of a public crisis. “What if it is worse?” asked the host. Weeks later, that cautious, curious posture was gone. In late February, Hannity’s rhetoric amped up as the coronavirus started to gobble up more and more national mindshare. For context, consider this sequence of events:

  • Feb. 21: News surfaces that President Trump was furious with aides for how they handled 14 Americans in Japan who had tested positive for coronavirus.
  • Feb. 23: “Fewer than 500 people from 43 states had been or are being tested for the virus,” according to Reuters.
  • Feb. 25: Vox rounded up the Trump administration’s failures in responding to coronavirus. “Trump says coronavirus is ‘under control.’ It’s not.”
  • Feb. 26: Trump named Vice President Pence to head the White House task force on coronavirus. “The president’s announcement, at a White House news conference, followed mounting bipartisan criticism that the administration’s response had been sluggish and came after two days of contradictory messages about the virus, which has infected more than 81,000 people globally, killing nearly 3,000,” reported the New York Times.
  • Feb. 27: Stat News noted that U.S. testing inadequacies had frustrated health-care workers and political leaders.

It was right in the midst of this bad-news plume that Hannity offered his ill-informed takes on the virus — just as the president was coming under attack and needed someone on cable news to defend him. On Feb. 26, Hannity blasted Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) for using “coronavirus to bludgeon President Trump, not telling the truth as usual — shameless politicizing of health and the well-being of Americans.” The next night, he kept it up. Only after a backlash managed to place him within roaming distance of reality did he begin to change his tone.

By mid-March, Hannity was sounding the alarm on the virus. “Make no mistake, the coronavirus — every virus, as we have been telling you, you must take it seriously. It has been and it is being taken seriously,” said the host on his March 12 program. And then last week, Hannity took the side of Trump in his dispute with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the federal response to the virus. “Thank Donald Trump. Maybe once in a while just say ‘thank you Mr. President.’ Thank you to the American people,” said Hannity.

You might say that Hannity has “evolved” on the coronavirus.

Regan, meanwhile, evolved into a former Fox Business host. So what else could have led to Regan’s dismissal? For Friday night’s edition of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter, Brian Stelter provided this reporting on how Fox handles personnel changes:

What caused Fox to part ways with Regan? It wasn’t a single incident. For my forthcoming book about Fox in the Trump age, I’ve been interviewing scores of sources at the network. Last year a network veteran said to me, “No one at Fox ever gets in trouble for what they say, they get in trouble for insubordination.”

They do, huh? Well, then, let’s look at Hannity’s insubordination record. As reported in this blog, he once earned a public rebuke from the network for participating in a video promotion for Trump’s 2016 campaign. He earned another public rebuke when he appeared onstage with Trump at a 2018 rally, at which he called assembled media “fake news” even though staffers from his own network were in attendance. He attacked his own network’s polling, even though that unit at Fox News is widely respected. He has cited bogus polling in defiance of news-side standards. He has used the same lawyer — Michael Cohen, now serving a federal prison sentence — as Trump. And who could forget the Seth Rich episode?

Those are just the examples that come immediately to mind.

In explaining why Regan has “parted ways” with Fox, Stelter cited another factor: “It was also about her weak ratings performance — she was in a very tough time slot, 8pm ET, but she was losing half of her Lou Dobbs lead-in despite her daily attempts to mimic Dobbs.” In its write-up, the New York Times noted that Regan’s program “attracts a fraction of Mr. Hannity’s audience.”

In a rightside-up kind of world, the ratings factor would grind harder against Hannity than Regan. Regan spouts harmful nonsense to a relatively small audience; she then “parts ways” with the network. Hannity spouts harmful nonsense to a relatively huge audience; he’s an employee in apparently good standing.

In a column last week, Ben Smith of the New York Times placed the responsibility for this mess precisely where it belongs — in the inboxes of Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. Opinionators like Hannity, argued Smith, respond to cues from the boss in the White House, not to their “nominal bosses” in the company. That those “nominal bosses” moved to “part ways” with Trish Regan while leaving Hannity unscathed only fortifies Smith’s argument.

It’s time. Hannity must go.

 

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5 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I couldn't agree more: "Hannity must go"

  Hide contents

Recent personnel actions at Fox just happen to have fallen when people turn away from their phones and laptops. On Friday, March 13, news emerged that the Fox Business show of Trish Regan had gone on hiatus — along with another show — as part of the network’s resource shift toward the coronavirus. Days earlier, Regan had issued a fact- and reason-defying riff on air about the politics of the coronavirus. “Coronavirus Impeachment Scam,” read the on-screen graphic as Regan denounced the common villains of Fox programming: “Many in the liberal media using, and I mean using, coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president,” she said, triggering a momentous backlash pointing out that the coronavirus was a real public-health crisis.

Then, on Friday afternoon of last week, Fox disclosed that the network had “parted ways” with Regan. There was no good explanation. “[W]e thank her for her contributions to the network over the years and wish her continued success in her future endeavors.”

Those hollow words come in lieu of any Fox reckoning with some of the coronavirus programming that has come from its opinion hosts. In particular, franchise prime-timer Sean Hannity.

The fossil record shows that Regan’s troubles began when she made irresponsible statements just like the irresponsible statements of Hannity, who on Feb. 27 said this, “Tonight, I can report the sky is absolutely falling. We’re all doomed. The end is near. The apocalypse is imminent, and you’re going to all die, all of you in the next 48 hours and it’s all President Trump’s fault,” said Hannity, in typically benighted and dangerous commentary. “Or at least that’s what the media mob and the Democratic extreme radical socialist party would like you to think. They’re now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

We pointed out the parallel after Regan’s show went on hiatus. We asked: Why no hiatus for Hannity?

Take a look, again, at the side-by-side view:

Hannity, Feb. 27: “They’re now sadly politicizing and actually weaponizing an infectious disease, in what is basically just the latest effort to bludgeon President Trump.”

Regan, March 9: “Many in the liberal media using, and I mean using, coronavirus in an attempt to demonize and destroy the president.”

Where is the fairness? We have posed that question to Fox News and will update with any response.

There could be an argument that Regan made her despicable comments more than a week after Hannity’s, a period when public awareness of the coronavirus threat advanced. But by the time that Hannity made his “weaponizing” comments, the dangers were unfolding in China, in Italy, in Iran and elsewhere around the world. In late January, in fact, Hannity interviewed Anthony S. Fauci, longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and contemplated the possibility of a public crisis. “What if it is worse?” asked the host. Weeks later, that cautious, curious posture was gone. In late February, Hannity’s rhetoric amped up as the coronavirus started to gobble up more and more national mindshare. For context, consider this sequence of events:

  • Feb. 21: News surfaces that President Trump was furious with aides for how they handled 14 Americans in Japan who had tested positive for coronavirus.
  • Feb. 23: “Fewer than 500 people from 43 states had been or are being tested for the virus,” according to Reuters.
  • Feb. 25: Vox rounded up the Trump administration’s failures in responding to coronavirus. “Trump says coronavirus is ‘under control.’ It’s not.”
  • Feb. 26: Trump named Vice President Pence to head the White House task force on coronavirus. “The president’s announcement, at a White House news conference, followed mounting bipartisan criticism that the administration’s response had been sluggish and came after two days of contradictory messages about the virus, which has infected more than 81,000 people globally, killing nearly 3,000,” reported the New York Times.
  • Feb. 27: Stat News noted that U.S. testing inadequacies had frustrated health-care workers and political leaders.

It was right in the midst of this bad-news plume that Hannity offered his ill-informed takes on the virus — just as the president was coming under attack and needed someone on cable news to defend him. On Feb. 26, Hannity blasted Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) for using “coronavirus to bludgeon President Trump, not telling the truth as usual — shameless politicizing of health and the well-being of Americans.” The next night, he kept it up. Only after a backlash managed to place him within roaming distance of reality did he begin to change his tone.

By mid-March, Hannity was sounding the alarm on the virus. “Make no mistake, the coronavirus — every virus, as we have been telling you, you must take it seriously. It has been and it is being taken seriously,” said the host on his March 12 program. And then last week, Hannity took the side of Trump in his dispute with New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo over the federal response to the virus. “Thank Donald Trump. Maybe once in a while just say ‘thank you Mr. President.’ Thank you to the American people,” said Hannity.

You might say that Hannity has “evolved” on the coronavirus.

Regan, meanwhile, evolved into a former Fox Business host. So what else could have led to Regan’s dismissal? For Friday night’s edition of CNN’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter, Brian Stelter provided this reporting on how Fox handles personnel changes:

What caused Fox to part ways with Regan? It wasn’t a single incident. For my forthcoming book about Fox in the Trump age, I’ve been interviewing scores of sources at the network. Last year a network veteran said to me, “No one at Fox ever gets in trouble for what they say, they get in trouble for insubordination.”

They do, huh? Well, then, let’s look at Hannity’s insubordination record. As reported in this blog, he once earned a public rebuke from the network for participating in a video promotion for Trump’s 2016 campaign. He earned another public rebuke when he appeared onstage with Trump at a 2018 rally, at which he called assembled media “fake news” even though staffers from his own network were in attendance. He attacked his own network’s polling, even though that unit at Fox News is widely respected. He has cited bogus polling in defiance of news-side standards. He has used the same lawyer — Michael Cohen, now serving a federal prison sentence — as Trump. And who could forget the Seth Rich episode?

Those are just the examples that come immediately to mind.

In explaining why Regan has “parted ways” with Fox, Stelter cited another factor: “It was also about her weak ratings performance — she was in a very tough time slot, 8pm ET, but she was losing half of her Lou Dobbs lead-in despite her daily attempts to mimic Dobbs.” In its write-up, the New York Times noted that Regan’s program “attracts a fraction of Mr. Hannity’s audience.”

In a rightside-up kind of world, the ratings factor would grind harder against Hannity than Regan. Regan spouts harmful nonsense to a relatively small audience; she then “parts ways” with the network. Hannity spouts harmful nonsense to a relatively huge audience; he’s an employee in apparently good standing.

In a column last week, Ben Smith of the New York Times placed the responsibility for this mess precisely where it belongs — in the inboxes of Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch and Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott. Opinionators like Hannity, argued Smith, respond to cues from the boss in the White House, not to their “nominal bosses” in the company. That those “nominal bosses” moved to “part ways” with Trish Regan while leaving Hannity unscathed only fortifies Smith’s argument.

It’s time. Hannity must go.

 

Why Regan and not Hannity? That’s an easy one!

Regan is female. Duh.

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On 3/27/2020 at 7:48 PM, JMarie said:

"I have enjoyed my time at FOX and now intend to focus on my family during these troubled times," Regan said in a Friday statement sent to Newsweek. "I am grateful to my incredible team at FOX Business and for the many opportunities the network has provided me. I'm looking forward to this next chapter in my career."

 Does anybody ever believe this "focus on my family" horseshit that comes out after someone does something that damages their career? The woman's a multi-millionaire, so if her heart's desire was to be at home with her children, she would already be doing that.

 

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21 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Why Regan and not Hannity? That’s an easy one!

Regan is female. Duh.

And Hannity is on five times a week, five weekday prime time hours.  Regan was just once a week, on sad Saturday night.

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I bet loyal Faux viewers are freaking out because Dr. Desai isn't spouting the party line:

 

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I am frankly amazed that once he started to shake his head no that “technical difficulties “ didn’t immediately cut off his video feed. 

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On 4/2/2020 at 2:38 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

I bet loyal Faux viewers are freaking out because Dr. Desai isn't spouting the party line:

 

Program alert: Anderson Cooper is interviewing Dr. Desai right now!

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I think Fauci's IQ is higher than the three F&F idiots combined.

 

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In honor of Kayleigh McEnany being appointed Press Secretary, I zipped through Fox News' prime time shows to see if any host congratulated one of their own.

First up is Tucker Carlson.  He thinks predictions on CV's progression are largely overexaggerated, based on computer model predictions.  The number of hospitalized patients is far less than predicted, in at least several states, though the number of deaths is close to the predicted number. We should celebrate CV not being much worse, and we should focus on getting Americans back to work.

"You can't go to church until we have a vaccine. The truth is, we have no choice.  Heard that before? That's a familiar phrase in Washington and it ought to make you nervous.  Do what I say, follow my orders without question or complaints or a million people will die. The oceans will rise, the polar bears will perish, the human race itself will go extinct." Um, no.

Karen Whitsett, a state representative from Michigan, was saved by taking hydroxychloroquine. The chyron describes her as "Dem Lawmaker," and she credits the president with having hydroxychloroquine available. Many clips from CNN, discussing the "dangers" of hydroxychloroquine, follow. "Watching people in the media talk down a potentially life saving medicine because a politician they don't like has endorsed it is probably the most shameful thing, and I've done this for 29 years, I've ever seen. It's making a lot of us ashamed to work in the same profession as those people. So reckless and wrong in the middle of a pandemic. It really is, for real."

Criminals are benefitting from the lockdown.  Not only are they being released from prison, but because many police officers are affected by CV, there's less police to keep Americans safe.

Lockdowns are overzealous and possibly unconstitutional. A constitutional law attorney gives a long explanation, but I'm not sure if Tucker was following along (anyone who has ever watched him knows he often looks confused). The attorney's opinion is that churches should be deemed essential, but only if they adhere to the regulations that other essential places are following.

Fun commercials: Museum of the Bible (Washington, D. C.), which is currently closed, and MTV's Families of the Mafia

No mention of Kayleigh, but Tucker did offer a hearty "amen" after guests' segments were finished

Next up is Sean Hannity. Yuck.

NYC is experiencing a major decline in new cases and in patients needing intubation. Arizona is now predicted to need only 1500 ICU beds and 1500 ventilators, and they already have those numbers (but Hannity is disregarding all the non-CV patients who need ICU beds and ventilators).

The MSM is obsessed with hydroxychloroquine.  It's an incredibly safe drug, says a rheumatologist in Los Angeles, who has never had a patient hospitalized because of an adverse side effect. The MSM are not doctors, and shouldn't be discussing the lack of clinical study for CV or related illnesses.  Luckily, Dr. Oz, a real doctor, stops by. Dr. Oz thinks people should be taking it as a precaution, because people who are already taking it don't seem to be contracting CV.

Yay, it's time for the phone interview with Trump. He mentions the state representative who got better after taking hydroxychloroquine, who he thinks is a Democrat and also might vote for him. He talks a LOT, but doesn't really say anything.  He did say the NJ governor is doing a good job (FYI: Phil Murphy is a Democrat). Trump bought more than 29 million doses of hydroxychloroquine, we have lots of ventilators, and our progress on a vaccine is doing very well. NYC is getting ready to peak, and we'll be able to open the country up again soon. WHO is awful, and the U. S. puts more money into the WHO than any other country. So unfair. Most of the governors are doing a great job, and says he has a good relationship with Andrew Cuomo, but there's a few who aren't, but he's not naming names. We're building beautiful hospitals everywhere. He had a nice and friendly phone call with Joe Biden. He called the impeachment a "phony hoax that should never have been allowed."

No shout out to Kayleigh, and no fun commercials. Though Sean will be interviewing Pence tomorrow night.

Last, it's time for Laura Ingraham. 

What we've experienced is nowhere close to what was predicted, and maybe we shouldn't pay such close attention to predictions. Some European countries will be opening businesses and schools in the near future, so when can we get back to normal? Another mention of the Democrat lawmaker who was saved after taking hydroxychloroquine. She's an exception, because The Left keeps talking about how untested and potentially unsafe the medicine is. Lots of talking, but basically the same topics Carlson and Hannity have already discussed.

fun commercial: Samaritan's Purse

Again, no mention of Kayleigh. Poor Kayleigh, forgotten by her former coworkers.

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@JMarie, thank you for that recap. I was reading an article about a doctor who was treating Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine on my local newspaper's Facebook page, and I found the comments strange. I see now that I was reading Faux news talking points.

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3 minutes ago, Cartmann99 said:

@JMarie, thank you for that recap. I was reading an article about a doctor who was treating Covid-19 patients with hydroxychloroquine on my local newspaper's Facebook page, and I found the comments strange. I see now that I was reading Faux news talking points.

I know all the Fox News "personalities" are getting itchy over not being able to use all their favorite buzzwords (Steele, Page, dossier, Hillary, uranium, etc.).

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Does he even realise that he is talking about himself?

Fair warning before watching, this video features SHS.

 

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