Fox News is helping Trump plan another Jan. 6-style assault on democracy

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/fox-news-trump-election-2024-disinformation-rcna157770

25 comments

  1. Good luck, They got as far as they did last time because they had the capital police disarmed, Trump refused to activate the National Guard, had the panic buttons removed from Congress, tours of the Capitol building with offices pointed out, and the secret service themselves tried to remove the vice president.
    They had everything they could in their favor and they were still stopped by a single gunshot.
    They won’t have all of that going for them this time, and if they try it anyway, the capitol police and national guard will show them what an actual response to domestic terrorism looks like.

  2. (Article part 1. Part 2 in reply.)

    “By Matt Gertz, senior fellow for Media Matters for America

    The cycle of lies that drove the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection is again underway.

    Five months before the 2024 election, claims that only fraud could explain a future Donald Trump defeat are already commonplace in the right-wing media ecosystem. Fox News stars and Trumpist influencers are priming their audiences to listen if Trump once again claims an election was “rigged” against him — and to come to his aid.

    Twice last week, Greg Gutfeld told viewers of “The Five,” Fox News’ most-watched broadcast, that the public will only believe the 2024 results are legitimate if President Joe Biden loses.

    “If they aren’t that worried that Joe’s going to lose, given his sorry state, what are they planning? What are they doing to save the day?” Gutfeld asked June 13. He added that if “by some weird, miraculous chance” Biden wins, “how do you convince anyone that’s real? Have they even thought of that?” He concluded, “Even the Dems behind the scenes better hope he doesn’t win because no one’s going to believe it.”

    Gutfeld reiterated the point the next day, saying that if Democrats “somehow pull this out” by using “shenanigans” to win, “you’re going to deal with a public that doesn’t buy the election.”

    That same week, Gutfeld’s colleague Jesse Watters used his prime-time show to call for banning ballot drop boxes on the grounds that they are “ripe for fraud” and to warn of millions of undocumented immigrants voting. “Biden let 10 million illegal immigrants into this country,” Watters claimed (falsely). “How are we ever going to accept the results of the election in this kind of landscape?”

    This fear-mongering about the potential for election-changing fraud has been a consistent refrain all year on Fox News. “The Democrats are going to stop at nothing,” host Laura Ingraham declared in January. “If they can, they’re going to game the system or yeah, maybe even cheat.” 

    While the network paid a heavy price for its election denial in 2020 — including a $787.5 million defamation settlement with Dominion Voting Systems — its hosts are under constant pressure from other Trumpist competitors who loudly claim that Democratic election-rigging is an indisputable fact. “There are no ‘issues’ with the 2020 election — they stole it,” former Trump adviser and right-wing podcast host Steve Bannon claimed in March. “The only way they defeat Trump is to steal it. The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it. The only way they defeat Trump is they steal it. He is unstoppable.”

    We saw four years ago that these disinformation campaigns can trigger horrific results. Trump’s plot to subvert the 2020 vote did not begin when he falsely declared victory in the hours after Election Day. By that point, the then-president and his right-wing media cronies had spent months preparing Republican voters not to accept a result that ended in his defeat. Outlets like Fox News[ ](https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/fox-playing-key-role-trumps-plan-steal-election)relentlessly bombarded their audiences with misinformation about mail-in voting and election fraud. Trump in turn regularly promoted that bogus coverage, describing it as evidence that “Democrats are Rigging our 2020 Election!”

    In fact, Trump had previously offered similar predictions before the 2016 election, only for his unexpected victory to render the argument moot. Four years later, though, the Trumpist base had been carefully readied to reject the truth of a Trump loss, provide cover for Republican politicians to try to reverse the outcome in states Biden won, and march on the U.S. Capitol in his name.”

  3. Watters is the new face to hate ever since he replaced Tucker. This Bill O’Reilly protege is now one of FOX’S cash cows and he knows it. I literally can’t stand watching him for more than 2 mins.

    When you think of people who have no integrity whatsoever and are shameless to the core, Jesse Watters is one person who quickly comes to mind. Ms. Lindsey, Rubio, Cruz, Tim Scott, are others.

  4. May I respectfully suggest we all stop talking about the mouthpiece..and start talking, about the the Murdock source of this shit.

  5. Even after Trump said they weren’t to be trusted?

  6. The Conservative view is “If you do not submit completely, you are oppressing me”.

    There’s no reasoning with any Conservative, and there’s no use in trying. They don’t want to be challenged, they don’t want balanced views, they don’t want both sides to be considered, and they damn sure don’t care about facts.

    They want compliance. Their cause is not a revolution or a restoration. It’s an authoritarian takeover by people who live in constant fear of change.

  7. They’re hoping he’ll pardon the billion dollar settlement they got hit with for lying about the Jan 6 insurrection and defaming decent non-MAGA people.

  8. It’s going to be confusing when they reuse the ‘Hang Mike Pence’ signs as they riot.

  9. They lost 60 court cases challenging the 2020 election. That’s the end of the ballgame. They chose to cast the rule of law aside and attack our Capitol. They are enemies of America.

  11. Why is this allowed to be aired on national TV? The fbi should be looking into this..or just shut it down before anything awful happens..

  12. >[Greg Gutfeld] concluded, “Even the Dems behind the scenes better hope [Biden] doesn’t win because no one’s going to believe it.”

    Wonder why “no one” would believe it, Fox

  13. The Republican Party is a terrorist organization. This is no exaggeration.

  17. Special shout out to SCOTUS with their Bump Stock contribution.

  18. IANAL, but I think Fox is walking a very thin line. Their propaganda techniques are quite visible to anyone paying attention. The distance from their “reporting” to participating is razor-thin, IMO. A few changes in the legislative and judicial arenas could make things very uncomfortable for them. Vote, vote, vote and work towards making it happen.

  19. Roger Ailes created Fox News exactly for this and it has been pretty successful in indoctrinating a sizable chunk of the population in the USA. It will never stop either.

  20. Fox News has about a decade left of existence. It exists in a dying format and is the least palatable option to new viewers in that microcosm.

  21. assaulting democracy has always been fox’s raison d’etre.

  23. These assholes paid out $787 MILLION for being lying sacks, but it didn’t slow them down a bit. Now they’re knowingly showing edited videos making it look like President Biden is aimlessly wandering around. I hope the next lawsuit against them puts owners and hosts in jail for conspiring to end democracy.

  24. Fox News: expressing anger and victimization over the loss of absolute power and then reframing it as persecution of “real America” by minorities, freeloaders, and socialists.

    – Jon Stewart

    Fox is NOT a serious news source.

  25. Wow and why is Fox News getting away with all the lies and misrepresentations!
    They are out to kill US democracy !!!

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