Trumps The Butt Of A Joke But Might Still Have The Last Laugh
Despite his personal failings and the legal threats he faces, his populist brand is only growing, at home and globally.
- Senior political analyst at Al Jazeera.
Last week, American talk show hosts had a field day with Donald Trump, ridiculing his claim to FOX News that he had the right to keep classified government records found in his Florida residence because as president at the time, he could declassify documents by merely thinking it.
Truly hilarious. However, while liberal mainstream media outlets are so focused on Trumps comical wonders, his influence at home and abroad is no laughing matter.
Despite the former US presidents personal failings and the ongoing legal investigations against him, Trumps populist brand is making headway, both nationally and internationally. From Europe to Latin America and from North Africa to southeast Asia, more and more leaders are following in Trumps footsteps.
Some are winning elections, as Giorgia Meloni did in Italy last Sunday. Some are threatening hell on earth if they lose elections, as Brazils Jair Bolsonaro has warned. And others are waging successful political campaigns and gaining ground fast, as Marine Le Pen has done in France. Even Tunisias populist president, Kais Saied, has taken a few pages from Trumps playbook, attacking the system that propelled him to power, dissolving parliament, and demonising and repressing the opposition, all in the name of the people.
United Kingdom And Ireland
FNC was carried in the United Kingdom by Sky, which was 40-percent owned by 21st Century Fox at the time, and operates its own domestic news channel Sky News. On August 29, 2017, Sky dropped Fox News the broadcaster said its carriage was not “commercially viable” due to average viewership of fewer than 2,000 viewers per day. The company said the decision was unrelated to 21st Century Fox’s proposed acquisition of the remainder of Sky plc .
The potential co-ownership had prompted concerns from critics of the deal, who felt Sky News could similarly undergo a shift to an opinionated format with a right-wing viewpoint. However, such a move would violate Ofcom broadcast codes, which requires all news programming to show due impartiality. The channel’s broadcasts in the country have violated this rule on several occasions, while the channel also violated election silence rules by broadcasting analysis of the 2016 Brexit referendum while polls were still open .
Has The Love Affair Between Trump And Fox News Gone Sour
The rightwing channel has not covered its former sweetheart with its regular fervour could a billion-dollar lawsuit be why?
For years, Donald Trump and Fox News were smitten.
The former president would call into the rightwing news channel seemingly whenever he liked. Fox News hosts pumped up every Trump utterance. Trump watched the channel religiously, and in 2019 alone he sent 657 tweets in response to Fox News or Fox Business programs.
Since then, however, things appear to have changed. Trump, as the New York Times has pointed out, has not been interviewed on Fox News for more than 100 days.
A recent Trump speech was largely ignored by the network, and in a sign that Fox News has recognized alternative Republican presidential candidates are available, a Mike Pence address was broadcast live, in its entirety.
With the news channel embroiled in a billion-dollar lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems over its claims the voting machine company tampered with the 2020 election, Trumps continuing lies about election fraud seem to have rattled Rupert Murdoch, the media titan who owns Fox News.
Two of Murdochs newspapers, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, published scathing editorials on Trump in July, the former calling the twice-impeached 45th president unworthy to be this countrys chief executive again and the latter branding Trump The President Who Stood Still on January 6.
There are other people in the audience that they care about.
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What I Learned About Media Rage After Getting Fired From Fox
I was fired from my job on Decision Desk after calling the election for Biden in 2020. The funny thing is I should have seen it coming.
The Fox News Decision Desk was the first to project that Joe Biden would win the former GOP stronghold of Arizona in 2020. | Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
08/28/2022 02:49 PM EDT
Chris Stirewalt is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Previously, he was political editor of Fox News Channel.
My first meeting in Roger Ailes boardroom of doom was on Election Day 2010.
At the time, I was the networks new political editor. Republicans were poised to deliver a serious walloping to President Barack Obama and roll back the Democrats doughty majorities in both houses of Congress. The GOP was in a position to score major wins in governors mansions and statehouses from coast to coast.
After four straight days and nights of data obsession and rehearsals, I had to now appear to be a normal human in front of a room full of New Yorkers to whom I assume I appeared to be a sweaty bumpkin.
In this Sept. 29, 2006 photo, former Fox News CEO Roger Ailes poses at Fox News in New York.|Jim Cooper/AP Photo
The number, of course, was how many seats I forecast Republicans to win that night. Our best guess is 64 seats, sir. Ailes, mouth set like a bulldog and eyes staring through the back of my head, said, Dick Morris says it could be one hundred. Why is yours so low?
Nyc Human Rights Law Violations
In mid-2021, Fox News agreed to pay a $1 million settlement to New York City after its Commission on Human Rights cited “a pattern of violating the NYC Human Rights Law“. A Fox News spokesperson claimed that “FOX News Media has already been in full compliance across the board, but to continue enacting extensive preventive measures against all forms of discrimination and harassment.”
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Prosecutors Use Emails To Build Case Against Key Trump Ally
Posted: Sep 29, 2022 / 04:22 PM EDT
Posted: Sep 29, 2022 / 04:22 PM EDT
NEW YORK Prosecutors cracked open a trove of emails and other communications at a federal trial on Thursday that they say shows how the former chair of Donald Trumps inaugural committee worked behind the scenes in 2016 to get the future president to embrace the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.
Some of the email traffic was between Tom Barrack accused of working at the direction of the UAE as a secret foreign agent and Paul Manafort, Trumps campaign manager at the time. The exchanges focused in part over an energy policy speech by Trump in 2016.
In one email read to the jury by an FBI agent, Barrack complained to Manafort that an original draft of the speech didnt mention either the UAE or Saudi Arabia, or the importance of their role in the Middle East.
Wow. Im just stunned by how bad this is, the billionaire private equity manager wrote about the draft.
Manafort responded: Send me an insert that works for our friends.
The speech Trump gave ended up referring to the need to team with our supportive Gulf allies as part of a broader strategy to fight terrorism in the region. Afterward, Barrack received an email from a UAE official congratulating him for doing a great job.
Barrack, 75, has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government, obstruction of justice and making false statements.
How The January 6 Committee Used Fox News Against Donald Trump
Everyone knows that Donald Trump is a devotee of Fox News. During his presidency, he would regularly live tweet his favorite shows and viewed prime-time hosts like Sean Hannity as de facto advisers to his White House.
On Thursday night, the January 6 committee used the former Presidents viewing habits against him, making a compelling case that Trump had to know about the violence happening at the US Capitol on that fateful day.
Virginia Rep. Elaine Luria, a Democrat, said that witnesses had told the committee that Trump had Fox News on in the White House dining room where he spent much of the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
Luria and Illinois Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who alternated laying out what Trump was doing on the afternoon of January 6, repeatedly played clips of what was airing on Fox News at the time. And repeatedly, those clips showed Fox News anchors making clear that the initial protest was turning violent as early as the 2 p.m. Eastern hour.
At one point, the committee showed a layout of the White House, complete with a TV showing exactly what was on Fox News at the time Trump would be watching.
The committee also displayed texts between then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and the likes of Hannity and fellow Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham, who urged Meadows to tell Trump to issue a statement telling the crowd to go home.
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Listen To Today Explained
Our podcast explains how Ukraine finds itself at the center of the American political drama, yet President Trump is the least of the countrys worries.
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Fox News Gets Ready To Dump Trump
Fox staffers believe the network will pivot to a focus on bashing a President Biden. Rival outlet Newsmax sees an opening with the loyal Trumpkin viewers potentially left behind.
For Fox News, breaking up with Donald Trump will be hard to do.
Their sometimes stormy marriage began nine years ago, when the right-leaning cable channels founding chairman, the late Roger Ailes, gave Trump a weekly segment on the popular morning show Fox & Friends, thus launching the reality television stars improbable trip to the White House.
However, since Tuesday nightwhen the top-rated outlets Decision Desk, all alone among the nations major cable and broadcast networks, enraged Trump and millions of viewers by calling Arizonas 11 electoral votes for Joe BidenFox News has been embarked on the thorny, painful and public process of separating from the 45th president of the United States.
Which is not to mistake this tricky transition as the loving embrace of Biden.
Hosts will scream socialism, tell its minority viewers that Biden’s policies are bad for them, and they will further push the narrative that it’s Kamala Harris viewers should be scared of, since shes the actual president behind the scenes, according to their narrative, said a longtime Fox News staffer, one of four who spoke to The Daily Beast on condition of anonymity in order to protect their jobs. I believe it will be a resistance network if Biden wins, because being in the opposition is good for business.
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Fox News Host Calls Out Trump’s ‘outrageous’ Cry To Be Reinstated As President
Fox News anchor Shannon Bream dismissed Donald Trumps demand to be reinstalled as president during an awkward panel analysis of the former presidents rant on Tuesday.
Declare the rightful winner or and this would be the minimal solution declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a new Election, immediately! Trump wrote on Truth Social this week.
Bream actually checked the former president. All of us on this panel know that is not happening, she said. When the president says things like this, the former president, it gets a lot of eyeballs saying this is outrageous.
Trumps latest outburst came on the heels of reports that Facebook was warned by the FBI to be on the lookout for Russian propaganda before the 2020 election. The FBI did not specifically mention stories about Hunter Bidens laptop a persistent GOP talking point that Trump often cites involving unproven claims of corruption on the part of Joe Biden and his son. However, Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg allowed that the social network did limit the newsfeed ranking of New York Post stories about the laptop seen for a few days while fact-checkers determined their veracity. Conservatives, led by Trump, claimed that meant the FBI manipulated the election in Democrats favor.
This article originally appeared on HuffPost and has been updated.
Brian Kilmeade Becomes Latest Fox Host To Rip Trump Over Baseless Election Claims
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade attacked Donald Trump on Sunday and said he has seen no evidence that proves the former presidents claims of election fraud.
Kilmeade joined the growing chorus of criticism from the staunchly Trump-supporting Fox News amid reports that owner Rupert Murdoch is turning his back on Trump in favor of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for a possible White House run in 2024. Neither Trump nor DeSantis have announced that theyre running.
The Fox & Friends host told Howard Kurtz on Media Buzz about his experience interviewing Trump at West Point where he watched the Army-Navy game after the 2020 election.
The president was unhinged during that period, Kilmeade recalled. …As soon as we were done, he just stormed off. And you know how long Ive known him, for 15 years or 20 years prior to him going to the White House. Ive never seen him so angry.
Hes convinced he was robbed, Kilmeade said, referring to Trumps baseless claims of voter fraud.
Ive said this before: I believe from the time when the election results came in until January 6th is the worst moment of Donald Trumps political career, said Kilmeade.
I think how you lose in life defines who you are, he added. And even if there are things that bother you, welcome to the world. A lot of times times things dont work out, and are so-called unfair. Your team couldnt prove , move on, Kilmeade added.
Your guys have been unable to prove it as of now, Kilmeade told Trump.
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Donald Trump Gets Regular Fox News Spot
Donald Trump, who says he is seriously considering a presidential run, will now appear on Fox News every Monday morning.
A Fox News representative, Dana Klinghoffer, said that Trump will be a regular guest, not a contributor, and thus will not be paid.
Trump’s segments were referred to as “Monday Mornings with Trump” in a network promo .
“Bold, brash and never bashful, the Donald now makes his voice loud and clear every Monday on Fox,” an announcer says in the promo. The promo then cuts to a clip of Trump saying, “my message is a better message than anybody else’s.”
Klinghoffer, the Fox News spokesperson, said that Trump will be permitted to continue making the regular Monday appearance even if he declares a presidential campaign, since he is not a paid contributor. It would be highly unusual for a network to give a regular weekly forum to a declared presidential candidate.
Fox News suspended Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich as contributors in Marchahead of their likely presidential campaigns. The network also employs Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin, both of whom say they are considering presidential runs.
Trump has made headlines in recent days by questioning whether President Obama was really born in the United States. His position prompted one Fox News personality, Bill O’Reilly, to suggest Trump was pushing the “birther” perspective for publicity even though he does not believe it.
Trump will appear on the morning show “Fox and Friends.”
Breaking Through To The Fox Audience
Fox might shy away from anti-Trump commentary in its programming, but one way to ensure that such messages do make their way to its large audience is through ad buys. Which is precisely the strategy that Liz Cheney has decided to employ as she faces a tough primary race this month against a Trump-backed challenger.
Cheneys campaign has purchased a series of national ad spots on the network to run the campaign ad featuring her father lace into Trump as a coward who lies to his supporters and tried to steal the election using violence. The ads, first reported by Axios Alayna Treene, started running on Tuesday and will continue throughout the week, airing twice each day on Fox & Friends and once each night on Hannity.
Jeremy Adler, a spox for the Cheney campaign, said in a statement, Its important not only for Fox News viewers, but for the networks hosts and top executives, to hear former Vice President Cheneys warning about the ongoing danger Donald Trump and his lies pose to our constitutional republic. Heres my full story
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Fox News Defends Calling Arizona For Biden After Pushback From Trump Team
Despite a successful decade as politics editor at the Fox News Channel, I got canned after very vocal and very online viewers including the then-president of the United States became furious when our Decision Desk was the first to project that Joe Biden would win the former GOP stronghold of Arizona in 2020.
The call was the handwriting on the wall for Trumps chances, and it delighted Democrats almost as much as it infuriated MAGA land. Regardless of who won, we were proud to have beaten the competition yet again and defended the title network promos had given us as the best-in-class Decision Desk.
But even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations. Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.
When I went on-air in 2020 to defend the Decision Desks call that Joe Biden would win Arizona, I was supremely confident. The Decision Desk team that director Arnon Mishkin had built was the best in the business. And we had better survey data than the competition, thanks to our partnership with the Associated Press and the National Opinion Research Center.
Were all losers in this one.
The cover of Broken News, by Chris Stirewalt, from which this article is adapted.
