Magnus
Diamond Member
- Jun 22, 2020
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The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”
And then, in a universe all its own, was Fox News.
“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”
“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.
An ebullient Harris campaign immediately called for another debate. (Trump, who once called for debates “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” eventually refused the challenge after much hemming and hawing.) But Harris’s gesture of confidence prompted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to argue: “They don’t think she won. They don’t think she’s in a position to win this race.”
Sean Hannity interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Trump notched “a big win.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “the best closing in presidential debate history.”
Trump himself joined Hannity in the spin room. “I think it was my best debate ever,” he said.
Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcast on the network) that they had not seen what they just saw.
Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem.
As the article rightly points out - when Joe Biden stumbled in his debate against Trump, the so-called "liberal" media did not attempt to deflect blame onto moderators or make wild allegations about Trump receiving preferential treatment. Instead, they placed the responsibility for the performance squarely on Biden.
But see how the right-wing media circle the wagon around Trump. No wonder we have such cognitive dissonance among the right.
And then, in a universe all its own, was Fox News.
“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”
“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.
An ebullient Harris campaign immediately called for another debate. (Trump, who once called for debates “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” eventually refused the challenge after much hemming and hawing.) But Harris’s gesture of confidence prompted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to argue: “They don’t think she won. They don’t think she’s in a position to win this race.”
Sean Hannity interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Trump notched “a big win.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “the best closing in presidential debate history.”
Trump himself joined Hannity in the spin room. “I think it was my best debate ever,” he said.
Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcast on the network) that they had not seen what they just saw.
Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem.
As the article rightly points out - when Joe Biden stumbled in his debate against Trump, the so-called "liberal" media did not attempt to deflect blame onto moderators or make wild allegations about Trump receiving preferential treatment. Instead, they placed the responsibility for the performance squarely on Biden.
But see how the right-wing media circle the wagon around Trump. No wonder we have such cognitive dissonance among the right.
