Last updated on June 10th, 2012 at 12:21 pm
Going through a recent poll on Fox News is like taking a trip down the rabbit hole.
This time, while claiming Mitt Romney and President Obama are tied overall in their own poll, the hosts of Fox and Friends were flabbergasted to find out that Americans trust President Obama more on foreign policy, education, terrorism, bringing the US together, and fighting special interests.
Watch the June 8 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends courtesy of Media Matters:
The Fox and Friends hosts wisely avoided the fact that a Democrat had stolen national security and terrorism from the Republicans, and instead focused on the one issue that could be easily muddied – unity.
Gretchen Carlson, “I’m stunned by that bringing the US together.”
Steve Doocy alerts Americans that he doesn't know what unity means, “I don’t know what that means.”
Gretchen is fired up enough to interrupt Doocy's revelations, “Because you know, the whole campaign of President Obama four years ago was hope and change and bringing everyone together and a lot of people were looking forward to that – “
— certainly not Fox News —
“But a lot of people (who are these “lots of people”?) also believe that that hasn’t been what’s happened in the last three and a half years so I’m stunned that he’s still on top with that percentage.”
Fox and Republicans do not know what to do with their war hawkish fear mongering now that a Democrat has shown that he can keep this country safer than a Republican can, and do it with less loss of life by relying on intelligence more than military strategy. They know Americans prefer Obama’s foreign policy to anything they have to offer, so they skip over that.
As for unity, President Obama has governed as the President to all, instead of the President to his own base, much to the disappointment of some factions of his base. Fox News has done nothing but root for the failure of America under Obama, and now they are pinning the radical division on him.
The truth is that Fox News amplified the partisan, corporate, Koch-funded agenda of the Tea Party and accused this President of being a radical Muslim, socialist, fascist, madrassas-seeking, anti-Colonial, Kenysan Hitler from the beginning of his term. That is on them. If there is division in this country, and there is, much of stems from Fox News’ propaganda and outright lies seeping into the culture at large, causing many of their own base to actually believe the things they say.
It is their base who does not believe Obama is a citizen of this country, after all. It is Fox News that gives an unchecked voice to the birthers and the Tea Party nonsense.
Even their own poll shows that they aren’t fooling Americans on that issue. They are fooling Americans on Romney regarding the economy and taxes, as Americans must not have seen the breakdown for Romney’s secret budget, wherein the middle class and poor get hit with more taxes.
Then again, it’s highly possible that Fox viewers are so drunk on the KoolAid that they want to pay more money in taxes because they think they haven’t earned divine status as a “job creator” (aka; corporate socialist) yet. It could be that they don’t want to associate with any club that would have them as members, so they vote against their own self-interests, aligning themselves with the economic “winners” (aka in other circles as “vultures”) of our society even as those “winners” soundly reject them.
Fox News and Republicans have tried to paint Obama as a radical way back in the 2008 campaign. But for the last three and a half years, Obama has taken their crap (“You lie!) and still tried to work with them. He has shown the American public that he is more fiscally prudent than the Republicans were when they were in power. He has taken their insults and calmly proceeded. Most of America is waiting for him to metaphorically bitch slap the next Republican who calls him “boy” or suggests he wasn’t born here. Americans have had enough of Congressional Republicans and the polls clearly show that.
One thing this suggests is that even Fox can’t confuse voters enough to make them want endless preemptive wars, defunded schools, Presidents who don’t care where Osama is, radical partisanship, and special interests running the show in DC.
Fox News has devoted itself to driving a wedge between American citizens in order to muddly the waters of the clearly corporate agenda they support in the name of "conservativism". They appear shocked that in spite of their daily hatred, Americans trust the President more than their own party.
It's possible that Americans know exactly who is to blame for the ugly rhetoric and unpatritoic division in this country.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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