Categories: Featured NewsMedia

Friday Fox Follies – Circular Impressions

You’re be forgiven if this makes you as dizzy as a Tilt-A-Whirl: First Fox “News” spews, then it’s retweeted by the Oval Office, which is reported on by Fox, subsequently cited by Emperor Trump in interviews with Fox, before being debunked by one Foxite, validated by another, ending with the station proffering a brand new conspiracy, leading to red faces, retractions, and apologies all around. As our own Jason Easley writes this morning:

White House Apologizes To UK For
Using Fake Fox News Report That
They Helped Obama Spy On Trump

Napolitano said, “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn’t use the NSA, he didn’t use the CIA, he didn’t use the FBI and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It’s the initials for the British intelligence-finding agency. So, simply by having two people saying to them president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump’s conversations, involving president-elect Trump, he’s able to get it and there’s no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common-sense together, this leads to a lot.”
 
The British government had already debunked this claim, but Sean Spicer still trusted Fox News over the government of an ally.

More circular impressions:

White House Press Flack Sean Spicer quotes both Sean Hannity, who believes NBC is involved in “corporate jihad” against The Orange One and Tucker Carlson, who likewise believes NBC has it in for Agent Orange, rather than examining their own bias. But mostly Fox “News” has been pushing the idea that The Deep State is out to destroy the current administration.

As if it needed help. It’s falling apart on its own.


STOP THE PRESSES: What I really want to talk about is That Time Sean Hannity Reportedly Pulled A Gun On Juan Williams… It seems that Witnesses Just Revealed Hannity Pulled A Gun On Juan Williams On FOX News Set, but Sean Hannity denies pointing gun at Juan Williams on Fox News set.

Yet, a gun was pulled. No one denies that.


TUCK & ROLL: In another desperate attempt to distract, Fox’s Tucker Carlson Asks: Who Tried Harder to Swing the Election, Russia — or NBC?

Left out of that equation is the Fox “News” Channel, which did far more than WikiLeaks. FFF reports, you decide.

This week Tucker Carlson Tonight became the 4th show to be granted an audience with Emperor Trump (following Hannity, O’Reilly, and those 3 Foxy Friends who tag-teamed him). Carlson was as slavishly sycophantic as you’ve come to expect, with nary a follow-up question despite that Trump Was Just Asked What He Reads and Pulled a Sarah Palin, or that Trump leaked classified CIA intel to Tucker Carlson on live TV: ranking House intel member, or you can even Watch Trump Seemingly Admit That He Knows His Health Care Bill Screws His Voters. Some people say ‘The President Looked Like a Third-Grader’: CNN Political Director Hammers Trump’s Tucker Interview. Meanwhile, I’ll just leave this here:

Tucker Carlson Defends Rep. Steve King’s
Racist Tweet: “Everything You Said I
Think Is Defensible And Probably Right”


HAIR FORCE ONE: Who will be next to interview the Twitter-Liar-in-Chief?

Fox’s Jesse Watters to interview Trump on Air Force One

Oh, I sure hope he does that stupid, “I’m Watters and this is my world” thing while he’s being thrown out of the airplane at altitude.


A RISING TIDE: In ‘Fox & Friends’ gets Trump ratings bump: Fox News Channel show has best month ever in February we learn:

The designation as the president’s favorite cable news program is not a badge of honor in journalism circles. As a freewheeling talk show for the conservative Fox News audience, “Fox & Friends” has long been maligned by liberal media watchdogs and lampooned on “Saturday Night Live.”
 
But supporters of Trump’s brand of populism are making “Fox & Friends” their morning destination. The show had its best month ever in February, averaging 1.7 million viewers, according to Nielsen, a 46 percent gain over the same month a year ago.
 
The program is riding a trend in which viewers are moving toward political talk in the morning as the frenetic activity of the Trump administration dominates the national conversation.
 
MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” was up 34 percent in February compared with a year earlier, averaging 847,000 viewers. CNN’s “New Day” was also up 46 percent to 639,000 viewers. Both programs have a heavy Washington focus, but a far more skeptical view of Trump.

The amusing article Attempting to watch as much ‘Fox & Friends’ as the president is made funnier because no one could be bothered to find a pic of the Foxy Friends that was not more than a year old.

Fifteen hours into this experiment, we realize that the trouble with “what does it feel like to watch eleventy billion hours of ‘Fox & Friends’ ” is that is [sic] presumes we all feel the same things, or start from the same place, or have much common ground at all.
 
If you are already a connoisseur of the show, then bingeing it will feel both reassuring and entirely unremarkable: a place where Trump is finally getting a fair shake, and people are finally able to call the mainstream media out on their piles of B.S. by saying things that need to be said. If you’re not, it will feel like a parallel universe where up is down, and down is backward, and two plus two equals purple.
 
[…] If, on the other hand, you are trying to watch “Fox & Friends” merely as an anthropological exercise, then what you’ll think of it is that they are masters of tone and delivery. The show is an object lesson on how you can say the darnedest things, so long as you do them in a sunny-side-up way.

It’s almost as if I had written that, ‘cept I watch 15 hours of F&F, 5 hours of Fox & Friends First, and 8 hours of Fox & Friends Weekend per week. I’m sure that explains why I swear so much.


NEWS YOU CAN USE: Three weeks ago this reporter …err… reported that Fox “News” was under investigation because:

It’s being alleged that secret payments were made to keep other sexual harassment complaints hush-hush. If so, shareholders may have also been hoodwinked.

What Fox viewers are not being told:

Fox News’ Reporting On Fired US Attorney
Ignores His Investigation Of Fox News

What else is Fox not reporting?

Report: Breitbart Editor-Turned-Trump
Official Is A “Sworn Member”
Of “Nazi-Allied” Hungarian Group

Sebastian Gorka is a former-Fox commentator.


MORE GUN VIOLENCE AT FOX:

Fox Host Says Snoop Dogg And Bow
Wow Should Be Killed By Secret Service


CREDIT WHERE CREDIT’S DUE:

Fox’s Rosen to Pence: Shouldn’t Trump Have
a Firmer Basis for His Wiretapping Claims?

Fox News analyst rips Trump over ‘
Twilight Zone’ belief in wiretap conspiracy


WISHIN’ & A-HOPIN’: It must be wish fulfillment on viewers’ part, but Snopes had to debunk the fake news that Shepard Smith was kicked to the curb because of headlines like:

Fox News Anchor Shepard Smith Has
Simply Had It With Kellyanne Conway

‘That’s Wrong’: Shep Smith Says
National Weather Service ‘Lied
to Us’ Over Blizzard Prediction


PASSAGES: In a new attempt to normalize Trump’s version of populism:

Former David Cameron top adviser
Steve Hilton to host Fox News show

Since leaving Cameron’s team in 2012, Hilton backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton for the US presidency, writing for Fox in November: “You don’t have to agree with everything Donald Trump says or does to conclude that he would make the most positive, practical difference in the real lives of real people.” He backed Brexit but has since criticised the government for “dark” policies that “pull up the drawbridge” to the rest of the world.

FORMER FOXERS:

Megyn Kelly’s Messy Exit From Fox News

Monica Crowley Lost White
House Job, Now She’s Got
One With Pro-Russian Oligarch

I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.


FOX BYTES: A Trump-Russia FOX News Poll Just BACKFIRED HilariouslyThe Five’s Eric Bolling: “You Could Use Mexicans To Build The Wall”Watch The TV Ad John Oliver Ran On Fox & Friends Today Re #Trumpcare‘These People in Black Robes Are Tyrants’: Michelle Malkin Rails Against Federal JudgesFox News Host On Trump’s Budget Gutting Public Broadcasting: “More Killing, Less Kermit”Fox’s Geraldo Reacts to Comparisons Between Al Capone Vault Bust, Maddow Tax Report


Headly Westerfield is Head Writer at the Not Now Silly Newsroom and the genial host of Fox Follies and Fallacies.

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