Donald Trump and his supporters have soured on Fox News because they think that apart from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham, the rest of the hosts were not sufficiently supportive of Trump and not enthusiastic enough is peddling his lies that the election was stolen from him. As a result they are seeking even more extreme news sources and one that is becoming popular is a cable news outfit called One America News.
About seven months ago, John Oliver took an in-depth look at OAN.
Trump and his supporters continue to be in denial that he has lost the election and claim that the election was stolen from him, despite the almost complete absence of evidence. As is usually the case, the losing side is looking around for the villains who contributed to this situation and they have taken aim at Fox News, despite the fact that the network has long been been a faithful mouthpiece for Trump, with their talk shows giving him complete freedom to utter nonsense and amplifying his efforts to spread hate and division. Fox viewers were the largest part of Trump’s support, dwarfing in numbers other Trump-supporting outlets like One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart.
What has specifically earned their recent ire is that Fox News, along with the AP, were the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden, doing so late on Tuesday night itself. That call, though it did not put Biden over the top of 270 electoral votes, still brought him to 264, close enough that it was all over bar the shouting, since it was expected that Nevada with its six EVs would go for Biden too. That would make all the other as yet uncalled races in Pennsylvania and Georgia moot.
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The problem of hate speech never goes away. What to do about people who say or write the most hateful things is problematic to say the least. The freedom to say whatever one likes is not absolute even in the US where the First Amendment provides robust protection for almost any kinds of speech. There are certain things that you cannot say, and this article summarizes the kinds to things that are allowed and not allowed. You are not allowed to “incite actions that would harm others” or to “make or distribute obscene materials”. Interestingly, you are allowed to “engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest)” but you are not allowed to “burn draft cards as an anti-war protest”.
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It seems clear that the TV network NBC’s decision on Wednesday to schedule a Trump town hall on Thursday at the same time as the previously scheduled town hall that Joe Biden was having on ABC (which itself was a replacement for the debate that Trump refused to take part in) was due to them caving in to the demand by Trump that it be at the same time. Trump must have been sure that he would get higher ratings than Biden and thus could gloat about it because for him, ratings are everything. But that strategy proved to be a bust because not only was his performance panned, what must have really stung was that the Biden show got better ratings than the Trump show.
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As the election draws nearer, reporters are fanning out trying to root out that very rare species, the undecided voter. I find it hard to imagine how anyone can be an undecided voter at this point. Elections with an incumbent running are usually a referendum on that person’s performance and Trump has been such an intensely divisive and polarizing figure that this time it will be even more so. I find it hard to imagine that any sentient being could not have formed an opinion of whether to vote for him or not. But yet there are people claiming to be so and the media is drawn to them as flies to honey. [Read more…]
The next debate on the schedule is between the vice-presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Mike Pence to be held on October 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Usually the vice-presidential debate does not generate much excitement (with the possible exception of 2008 when Sarah Palin was debating Joe Biden and people wanted to see if she knew where Europe was) but given the utter disaster of the first presidential debate and no indication that Trump will behave any better in the next two presidential debates, this one might be the only chance to have anything approaching a substantive discussion of the issues. Harris is sharp and aggressive and quick on her feet and it will be interesting to see how Pence will defend his indefensible boss.
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As the election nears, there are more and more media attempts to gauge the mood of the electorate. Polls of course are one indicator but given how people got burned by polls in 2016, people are a little skeptical of putting too much faith in them. Another popular reporting staple is to go out to various communities and talk to the people and then report on what they are saying, often quoting specific individuals. These vox pop pieces (short of vox populi or ‘voice of the people’) are interesting but how seriously can you take these people in the street interviews?
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When Trump ran for president in 2016, he touted the fact that he was a businessman and that this background would enable him to run the government more efficiently. The idea that being a businessman is good training for running a government is a dubious proposition at best because there are major differences between the two. With a business, you have to appease just the stockholders if it is a public company or nobody at all if you own a private company. But with government you have to deal with a huge number of different constituencies that have independent sources of power and are not beholden to you and finding ways to get things done takes a different skill set.
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Another day, another bunch of Trump lies revealed, as well the lies of those around him who are supposed to be public servants. Much attention has been paid to Bob Woodward’s latest book that says that Trump knew about the dangers posed by the coronavirus as far back as in February but downplayed the threat.
Donald Trump knew the extent of the deadly coronavirus threat in February but intentionally misled the public by deciding to “play it down”, according to interviews recorded by one of America’s most venerated investigative journalists.
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In an age when we are inundated with information from all sides with little time to carefully digest all of it, it should not be a surprise to find that people often read just the headline and the opening sentences of an article before deciding that they agree with the contents and forward it to others. Twitter is making an attempt to discourage this practice.
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