Heather Cox Richardson: “A legal filing today in the case of Dominion Voting Systems against the Fox News Corporation provides a window into the role of disinformation and money in the movement to deny that President Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.
“Dominion Voting Systems is suing FNC for defamation after FNC personalities repeatedly claimed that the company’s voting machines had corrupted the final tallies in the 2020 election. The filing today shows that those same personalities didn’t believe what they were telling their viewers, and suggests that they made those groundless accusations because they worried their viewers were abandoning them to go to channels that told them what they wanted to hear: that Trump had won the election….
“The filing says that not a single witness from FNC testified they believed any of the allegations they were making about Dominion”
Folks, if you’re wearing a red cap, take cover! The wars are invading! But the brave correspondents at Fox News are on it, having one helluva time on the battlefield covering at least 46 “wars” as of late. This includes the War on Christmas, War on Fun, War on Straws, War on Hot Dogs, War on Appetizers, War on Cows, War on Cars, War on Soda, War on Knives, War on, uh, Red Hats? This montage says it all, to be watched from the safety of your bunker.
Washington Post: “Three serious research efforts have put numerical weight — yes, data-driven evidence — behind what many suspected all along: Americans who relied on Fox News, or similar right-wing sources, were duped as the coronavirus began its deadly spread. Dangerously duped.
President Trump delivered another rapid series of false and misleading claims on Sunday night, this time at a Fox News “virtual town hall” event at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. Trump was dishonest both about matters pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic and about his usual array of other topics, from trade with China to his rally crowds.
“Starting with The Five, the network’s early evening roundtable commentary show, and continuing throughout the evening, Fox News broadcast portions of screen-in-screen video of the trial. But instead of playing the audio, network hosts provided the normal Trumpian spin. So while someone who just looked at the screen may have concluded Fox News was covering the trial, in fact it wasn’t covering it at all.”
“The threat posed to our democracy by Fox News is multifaceted: First and most simply, it’s clearly advancing and giving voice to narratives and smears backed and imagined by our foreign adversaries. Second, its overheated and bombastic rhetoric is undermining America’s foundational ideals and the sense of fair play in politics. Third, its unique combination of lies and half-truths has built a virtual reality so complete that it leaves its viewers too misinformed to fulfill their most basic responsibilities as citizens to make informed choices about the direction of the country.”
The first impeachment hearing was a right-wing pile-on,
With Fox New’s performance one Trump would certainly smile on.
It’s most effective tactic
Was to dump live on-screen graphics
That turned once-objective chyrons into Trumpian lie-ons.
“This is an absolute shame and I think you’ve got to call it out for what it is. The Americans who listen to Fox News and conservative talk radio are being lied to and manipulated every day when it comes to impeachment.”
— Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL), who is also running for president, slammed Fox News and conservative talk radio for their coverage of the impeachment probe of President Trump, CNN reports.
We’ve heard some crazy from Marjorie Taylor Greene,
But her latest conspiracy is the craziest we’ve yet seen.
Nuttier than Jewish space lasers,
She now says Dems control the weather,
And to hurt red states, they created Hurricane Helene.
“Liberty in Georgia includes in its meaning, in its protections, and in its bundle of rights the power of a woman to control her own body, to decide what happens to it and in it, and to reject state interference with her healthcare choices.”
— Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney finding that Georgia’s six-week abortion law violates Georgia’s Constitution, reports the AP.
“Maybe we’ll pay off the $35 trillion US debt in crypto. I’ll write on a little piece of paper ‘$35 trillion crypto we have no debt.’ That’s what I like.”
— Donald Trump, floating a plan to address the federal budget deficit and demonstrating his deep understanding of the crypto marketplace.
“To my friends in Nebraska, that one electoral vote could be the difference between Harris being president and not, and she’s a disaster for Nebraska and the world.”
— Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), quoted by Politico, on his trip to Nebraska to push for the state’s Republican leadership to change how it awards its electoral votes.
Latest results from the New York Times-Siena College poll giving Vice Pres. Kamala Harris a 3-point lead over Donald Trump. This is a noteworthy change in the NYT poll results, which have generally favored Trump in contrast to reputable organizations.
“The pace of hiring picked up strongly in September and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%, signs the economy had continued momentum in a month the Federal Reserve delivered its first interest-rate cut in four years,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
More than 40 trillion gallons of rain drenched the Southeast United States in the last week from Hurricane Helene and rainstorms that sloshed in ahead of it — an unheard of amount of water that has stunned experts, the AP reports. That’s enough to fill more than 60 million Olympic-size swimming pools, the Dallas Cowboys’ stadium 51,000 times, or Lake Tahoe just once.
Kamala Harris raised about $55 million in high-dollar events in California this weekend, a haul that pads her financial advantage over Donald Trump, Bloomberg reports.