While compiling this week’s Friday Fox Follies, this reporter admits to being distracted by Fox “News” gushing about Emperor Trump’s latest Victory Lap, or as one of my editors so eloquently put it: Trump Raves Like An Unhinged Lunatic Against The Press In Credibility Torching CPAC Rant. However, Fox is here to rehabilitate and what it will never tell you is How Trump’s campaign staffers tried to keep him off Twitter:
A former senior campaign official said Nunberg and his successor, former communications director Jason Miller, were particularly skilled at using alternative media like Breitbart, Washington Examiner, Fox News, Infowars and the Daily Caller to show Trump positive coverage.
And once they got the stories published, campaign officials with large numbers of Twitter followers would tweet them out.
They would also go to media amplifiers like Fox News hosts and conservative columnists to encourage them to tweet out the story so that they could print out and show a two-page list of tweets that show that they were steering the message.
Imagine that. Fox “News” allows itself to have stories planted, then amplified by their hosts, which are then used to mollify the Twitter Child.
That pipeline goes both ways. In case you were asleep this week, follow Tucker Carlson’s Swedish Meatball™:
First Carlson hosted deceptive documentarian Ami Horowitz, who falsely claimed Sweden is a Muslim hellhole, or something. This despite the fact that the police interviewed have totally denounced Horowitz as a “madman“, who replaced the questions originally asked with different questions in the editing process. Doesn’t matter. Because the very next day Emperor Trump regurgitated the fake xenophobic news that Sweden is a Muslim hellhole, or something, which led to headlines like:
Trump Is An International Laughing Stock After
Referring To Imaginary Sweden Terror Attack
So Twitter Child blamed the Fox “News” Channel:
My statement as to what's happening in Sweden was in reference to a story that was broadcast on @FoxNews concerning immigrants & Sweden.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 19, 2017
…leading to stories like, What President Trump gets wrong about immigrants and crime in Sweden:
Except it’s Fox News and not the rest of the media, that’s manufacturing fake news in this case. A cursory look at the data shows there is no immigrant-driven crime wave in Sweden. There has been no “absolute surge” in rape. And Horowitz, the ultimate source of all this, is facing serious allegations of selectively editing footage of Swedish police officers to make it seem like they’re blaming crime on immigrants when they actually aren’t.
The American president is using the world’s largest megaphone to amplify a false panic about brown-skinned immigrants raping white women.
Consequently, Tucker & Fox have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled down.
Tucker’s a hot property these days, but FFF has been making fun of the sanctimonious sphincter since March 27, 2015. Despite that, he’s come a long way. Especially considering he failed at every other network. Now others are echoing what I’ve been writing:
Don’t Volunteer To Be Ambushed On Television
Deceptive Editing And Actors: Tucker
Carlson’s Underhanded Practices Exposed
WATCH: Libertarian Destroys Tucker
Carlson’s Immigration Strawman
However, he’s a hypocrite, as this example from a largely negative Atlantic article, The Bow-Tied Bard of Populism, proves. It ends with:
Even as denizens of the right continue to sort out what they stand for in the Trump era, they remain united in their hatred of a common enemy, the smug elites who Carlson rails against every night. And while he may have spent his life happily living among them, he’s clearly demonstrated he has no qualms about taking them on.
“Putting smart people in charge of things is fine, but what you really want is wise people,” he tells me, and then quotes something his father used to say: “The beginning of wisdom is to know what an asshole you are.”
Either Tucker is VERY wise or he is totally self-unaware. As certain as Sweden is a Muslim hellhole, I’m sure Tucker would be a massive disappointment to his dad with this display of supreme sphincterness:
Tucker Carlson Says He Wanted
to Be Mean to Teen Vogue
Writer in Infamous Interview
Why? He blamed his behavior on not being prepared. Got that?
But his Teen Vogue victim, Lauren Duca, didn’t have to look far for the real reason:
At least Pat gets it pic.twitter.com/Mu33yEqkAN
— Lauren Duca (@laurenduca) February 23, 2017
None of that matters. The only thing that matters in tee vee are ratings and Tucker Carlson Has Increased Ad Rate in Fox Timeslot 27 Percent. Consequently, expect more international incidents.
PASSAGES: The Fox “News” hallways were sadder than usual this week as two of its extended family died.
Fox News Channel’s Brenda Buttner Passes Away
Alan Colmes, liberal voice on Fox, dead at 66
Harvey Levin, who helped cheapen legal justice with The People’s Court, and cheapened tabloid Tee Vee (no, really!) with his TMZ, has just sold 10 new episodes of OBJECTified after last year’s pilot had boffo ratings. ICYMI:
TMZ and Fox News Team Up for the Worst Trump Special Imaginable
OBJECTified: Donald Trump review – a basket of objectionables
This is where we are as a nation, and I cannot think of a better man to usher us into oblivion than Harvey Levin. He has made a fortune taking advantage of the prurient interests of a clinically depressed country and now he’s humanizing a politician who made his name questioning the legitimacy of the sitting president, then labeling Mexican immigrants as rapists. Levin doesn’t seem bothered by his role in giving agency to a public figure who has gone on record advocating for famous people not waiting for consent from women.
Ambition knows no boundaries. Ego is limitless in our new reality. To his credit, Levin asks Trump about why he maintains a table full of magazines featuring his cartoonishly tan face on the cover in his office. Trump responds: “It’s not ego. I love doing it. I just have fun.”
Levin showed us everything except Trump’s golden shower.
Meanwhile, the Foxy Friends on Fox and Friends will be moving the Curvy Couch into the Oval Office on Monday to tape a slobber fest for broadcast on Tuesday morning. Look for snippets starting to appear mid-Monday
NEW HIRE:
Fox News Hires Obamacare Architect Ezekiel Emanuel
You can’t make this up.
FOX “NEWS” IN BLACK & WHITE:
Bill O’Reilly Still Can’t Figure Out Why
Anyone Thinks Donald Trump Is A Racist
Fox’s Jesse Watters: ‘I Haven’t
Seen’ Any Reason To Think Donald
Trump Is Racially Insensitive
Jesse Watters: Trump Isn’t Racist
Because He Met With Kanye And
Has Taken Pictures With Black People
“There’s no White Privilege on the basketball court. Have you seen me play?”
~~~~~Racist Jesse Watters to the racist Fox & Friends, February 24, 2016, 8:35am
CREDIT WHERE CREDIT’S DUE: Chris Wallace continues make enemies among regular Fox viewers by telling the truth:
Even Chris Wallace Thinks Trump
Went Too Far Calling the Press the Enemy
‘That’s what they have in dictatorships’:
Chris Wallace rips Priebus for
wanting a ‘state-run media’
Of course, Twitter Child attacked the media again this morning. As this article goes to press there’s word of a partial press boycott at the White House because some news outlets were not allowed into the latest press “gaggle”, as it’s being described.
FOX BYTES: Fox’s Kurtz: “A Bit Unfair” To Report On Domestic Violence Allegations Against Withdrawn Labor Secretary Because “It Was So Long Ago” • Sean Hannity Falls For Misleading Claim From Gateway Pundit (Again) • Does Snowflake Sean Hannity Do The Same Whining Monologue About The Media Every Night? • Rush Limbaugh [on Fox & Friends]: Obama Got ‘Everything He Wanted’ His First Year Because He’s Black • Fox News Dismisses Huge Town Hall Participation As Paid Liberal Organizing • Fox Tries To Normalize Trump’s Campaign Rally By Pretending Obama Had One Sooner In His Presidency • Fox’s The Five Blames Obama For Release Of Guantanamo Detainee During Bush Presidency • Fox’s Bob Beckel, On DNC Chair Race: “[Keith] Ellison Is A Muslim And That’s Going To Be A Problem”
Headly Westerfield is head writer at Not Now Silly and the genial host of Fox Follies and Fallacies.
- Friday Fox Follies: Trump Tee Vee - Fri, Jun 23rd, 2017
- Friday Fox Follies: Fair & Balanced No More - Fri, Jun 16th, 2017
- Friday Fox Follies: Comey Comedy Cavalcade - Fri, Jun 9th, 2017
