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.
It’s Trump’s, not Biden’s, declining acuity on display.
The absurd or the nonsensical, who knows what Trump’ll say.
If you haven’t noticed,
It dates from when Trump was POTUS
To 2017, when he coined his first nonsense term,”covfefe.”
“I’d ask a rhetorical question. If you thought you were best positioned to beat someone who, if they won, would change the nature of America, what would you do?”
— President Biden, quoted by the New Yorker, on his decision to run for re-election.
“While a pregnancy might have been difficult on a 10-year-old body, a woman’s body is designed to carry life.”
— Cincinnati Right to Life leader Laura Strietmann, commenting on the 10-year-old Ohio girl who was raped and had to travel to Indiana for an abortion.
A new Pew Research Center survey “finds that 80% of U.S. adults say religion’s role in American life is shrinking – a percentage that’s as high as it’s ever been in our surveys. … Most Americans who say religion’s influence is shrinking are not happy about it. Overall, 49% of U.S. adults say both that religion is losing influence and that this is a bad thing. An additional 8% of U.S. adults think religion’s influence is growing and that this is a good thing.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) “boasted shortly after he began soliciting private donations for his controversial migrant busing program that there would likely ‘be no cost to the state’ given the outpouring of support from concerned citizens across the country,” CNN reports. “But after nearly two years of fundraising to offset the program’s costs, Abbott’s operation has collected less than half of 1% of the roughly $150 million spent on busing migrants to sanctuary cities.”
A new Wall Street Journal poll finds a plurality of American voters “think Israel has gone too far in responding to the October attacks by Hamas, and a growing share believes the U.S. isn’t doing enough to help the Palestinian people. … The new poll found that 60% of voters disapprove of Biden’s handling of the war, 8 points more than in December, with 31% approving of Biden’s actions.”
“More than 8 million asylum seekers and other migrants will be living inside the U.S in legal limbo by the end of September — a roughly 167% increase in five years,” Axios reports. “That’s up from about 3 million in 2019 — a sign of how the underfunded and outdated U.S. immigration system can’t keep up with the rapidly growing migrant population driven by new border surges.”
Pew Research: “No single issue stands out after the economy. Nearly three-quarters of Americans (73%) rate strengthening the economy as a top priority. That is considerably larger than the shares citing any other policy goal.”