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Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

Trying to make sense of a crazy world, with limited success mostly
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Slim Cognito
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Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#1

Post by Slim Cognito »

Placeholder for excerpts of the above title, cuz I'm too lazy to buy it.

Or too scared.
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Kendra
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#2

Post by Kendra »

Thanks for starting this. Be afraid, but there's some fun stuff too. Kimberly, for example :popcorn:
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#3

Post by Kendra »

Here we go, spam and spoilers ahoy.
The police were overwhelmed. McCarthy needed Trump to call off the mob. So he placed a call to the most influential body in the president’s life: the Fox News Channel. “People are getting hurt,” McCarthy told anchorman Bill Hemmer. “Anyone involved in this, if you’re hearing me, hear me very loud and clear: This is not the American way. This is not protected by the First Amendment. This must stop now.”
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#4

Post by Kendra »

“I watched barriers being broken. I watched people breaking windows,” he told Hemmer. “I watched people running into a building.” He said the violence was un-American.
McCarthy hoped the president was watching. And he had every reason to believe he was, because the president was almost always watching. Fox was Trump’s viewfinder—his primary way of seeing the world around him. He took directions from Fox. And the network’s anchors took full advantage of this power.
McCarthy was alluding to the problem: His initial phone call to the president, around 2:30 p.m. Eastern, had been a failure. The president seemed intoxicated by the live pictures of the attack. He only half-listened to McCarthy’s plea for help.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#5

Post by noblepa »

But, but, they were just tourists, weren't they?

And I didn't see anyone carrying a TV set.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#6

Post by Kendra »

Shortly after 2:50, he heard an officer say “shots fired” over the police radio. Then he heard that the crowd was swelling outside. Since appealing to Trump directly didn’t work, McCarthy had gone the Fox route.
[Stelter}
...my phone lit up with a text from a guilt-stricken Fox News veteran. The four words were like something out of a nightmare: “What have we done?”
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#7

Post by Kendra »

noblepa wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:37 am But, but, they were just tourists, weren't they?

And I didn't see anyone carrying a TV set.
Just tourists...
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#8

Post by Kendra »

For the record, when I highlight on a Kindle book, it zaps over to my Goodreads updates for that book, with the option to make any and all of them public. I am not aware of any restrictions to copy/paste those elsewhere.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#9

Post by Kendra »

So he avoided the newscasts and relied on propagandists like Hannity and Maria Bartiromo to tell him what he wanted to hear. He depended on them to keep the walls of his alternative reality intact. And they abused their access to him.
McEnany and other Hannity guests filled the Fox audience with false hope night after night and never, ever delivered. The excuse I heard internally was that Hannity was a people-pleaser. If last night’s ratings indicated that the viewers wanted to hear about voter fraud fantasies, then, by golly, give them more fraud.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#10

Post by Kendra »

The president laundered whatever he wanted through Hannity, and the host dutifully attributed the info to unnamed “sources.” In other words, Hannity borrowed from the language of journalism—by saying he had “sources” and access to special knowledge—while deriding journalism every chance he got.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#11

Post by Kendra »

Fox and Friends
When unexplainable idiocy came out of the mouths of F&F hosts, this was part of the reason why. The straight-out-of-school writers had to unlearn journalism skills and reflect a right-wing world view that didn’t always come naturally.
That’s really what F&F was about. Certain segments were designed to instill fear; others, to stoke hate; others, less often, to spark love. And the hosts were encouraged to ask viewers for feedback to confirm that the segments were having the intended effect.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#12

Post by Slim Cognito »

Kendra wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:42 am
Shortly after 2:50, he heard an officer say “shots fired” over the police radio. Then he heard that the crowd was swelling outside. Since appealing to Trump directly didn’t work, McCarthy had gone the Fox route.
[Stelter}
...my phone lit up with a text from a guilt-stricken Fox News veteran. The four words were like something out of a nightmare: “What have we done?”
:nooo:


Thanks, Kendra!!!! I'm not sure I could handle reading the whole book.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#13

Post by Kendra »

Guilfoyle was mighty hungry for airtime. “Kimberly’s an avatar,” a Fox insider said. “If MSNBC offered her a better gig with more money, she’d be a raging liberal.”
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#14

Post by Slim Cognito »

Kendra wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 12:02 pm
Guilfoyle was mighty hungry for airtime. “Kimberly’s an avatar,” a Fox insider said. “If MSNBC offered her a better gig with more money, she’d be a raging liberal.”
I'm shocked, SHOCKED, I say.

I believe I heard something similar about McIninny.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#15

Post by Kendra »

The president’s early morning TV watching hurt him on his very first day waking up in the White House. Most people don’t know this, but the inauguration crowd size debacle started because Trump was watching CNN’s Early Start the morning after the inauguration. At 5:19 a.m. anchor John Berman turned to journalist Josh Rogin and said, “One thing people are discussing today, Josh, and I think it’s just worth showing the picture, is the difference in crowd size.
Then Spicer told his aides to leave and asked the White House operator to patch in the president. Trump proceeded to yell at the CNN executive for close to half an hour. Trump cared so much about this coverage from five in the morning that he was still venting about it at six in the evening. Trump’s rage and Spicer’s presser turned crowd size into a top story for the rest of the weekend. So Trump’s narcissism ruined his first days on the job.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#16

Post by Kendra »

Within days of the inauguration, White House reporters had to wrap their heads around the fact that the Fox morning show had supplanted the president’s daily intelligence briefing. West Wing aides and lawmakers and lobbyists had to start watching the show so they could follow Trump’s tweets and orders.
The F&F mission in the Trump age was to make hosts and guests forget what they knew about journalism. That’s how you became a “friend.” On F&F Trump’s agenda was America’s agenda. Immigration was something to be feared. White Christian culture was something to be protected. The media, other than Fox of course, was something to be defeated.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#17

Post by Kendra »

By the time Trump took over the GOP, Doocy and Earhardt and Kilmeade were already big deals at Fox.
Kilmeade was a sideline reporter for the MSG Network, covering soccer matches, when Collier called him up for the morning show. “The joke around the office is that he’d be a soccer coach in Massapequa if it weren’t for Chet,” a Fox veteran said. “Now he’s writing history books!”
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#18

Post by Kendra »

They didn’t even buy what they were selling half the time: The same Fox talkers who called The New York Times “failing” relied on it for story ideas and background information. The same hosts who bashed CNN texted me links to their latest segments, hoping for coverage from CNN.
It was worse than a cover-up. Fox eventually coined a catchy name for this: “Investigating the investigators.”
On the Obama had me wire tapped kerfuffle:
Who were Napolitano’s sources? What the hell was he doing, stating as fact that Obama used the British to spy on Trump? The judge was making it sound like the network had landed a big scoop, when it hadn’t. No one vetted what Fox’s top legal expert said on air to millions of viewers.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#19

Post by raison de arizona »

Kendra wrote: Thu Jun 10, 2021 11:37 am
“I watched barriers being broken. I watched people breaking windows,” he told Hemmer. “I watched people running into a building.” He said the violence was un-American.
McCarthy hoped the president was watching. And he had every reason to believe he was, because the president was almost always watching. Fox was Trump’s viewfinder—his primary way of seeing the world around him. He took directions from Fox. And the network’s anchors took full advantage of this power.
McCarthy was alluding to the problem: His initial phone call to the president, around 2:30 p.m. Eastern, had been a failure. The president seemed intoxicated by the live pictures of the attack. He only half-listened to McCarthy’s plea for help.
I hate to wish harm on people, but I wonder what would have happened had that crowd got their hands on McCarthy? Would he still be carrying Trump's water had he suffered harm at their hands? Because they absolutely would have harmed him.

Eh, probably wouldn't have made any difference, his head is too far up Trump's butt to pull out now.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#20

Post by sad-cafe »

you know- I wonder if had someone with an R beside their name, had gotten killed, would they be acting differently now?
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#21

Post by Kendra »

At that point, Hope Hicks interjected—“Can we get to infrastructure?”—and other aides laughed.

At least Hicks knew Trump should shut up.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#22

Post by Kendra »

Career-wise, Hannity was in the I-don’t-give-a-shit stage: He had made it to the top, and now he could coast for a while.
“Tits up, hair back.” That’s what Ailes said he wanted Suzanne Scott to deliver for him. “She was the wardrobe enforcer,” a former Fox host told me.
It wasn’t actually the end of his presidency—because he had Hannity and the Fox base. Ailes was gone, but his troops knew what to do: Make Mueller enemy No. 1, make sure Trump could keep rolling back regulations, and make sure the GOP could keep appointing judges to remake the federal judiciary.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#23

Post by Slim Cognito »

How horrifyingly not-shocking.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#24

Post by Kendra »

I'm just scratching the surface. What a toxic place to work.
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Re: Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News & the Dangerous Distortion of Truth

#25

Post by sad-cafe »

just started it yesterday


I am already disgusted. I am at the O'Liely/ Kelly mess


god what a shit show fox is.


Another thing that could have been had fatnixon not cheated.

COMEY should be tarred and feathered
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