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Tantrums all around

That tweet is from a couple of days ago, but I thought I should memorialize it as the quintessential post-election Trump tweet. It’s still stunning that the president of the United States thinks this way, much less publicly acts out in such a fashion. I don’t think I’ll ever fully get past the fact that the US elected this pathetic moron.

But that’s just me. Here’s a story in the Washington post about the people who’ve abandoned Fox News for Newsmax in the wake of Trump’s loss. They simply live in another world:

On the morning after Election Day, Greg and Jenny Brethen, loyal viewers of Fox News who watched the channel religiously for almost 20 years, turned on their go-to morning show, “Fox & Friends,” and thought they saw something fishy.

The Tennessee couple sensed that their favorite Fox personalities, weekday co-host Brian Kilmeade and weekend co-host Pete Hegseth, who appeared in a segment, were holding back. “Like they were both instructed to keep their mouth shut, that’s how I felt,” Jenny said.

The previous evening, the nonpartisan Fox News Decision Desk was the first network prognosticator to call the state of Arizona for Joe Biden, a call that to some was early — but ultimately held up. On Nov. 7, the network called the election for the former vice president, although Hegseth won’t call him the president-elect and Kilmeade has qualified his presidency with an uncertain “if.”

Whatever it was, Greg said the couple “felt duped.” At that moment, they decided to stop watching Fox News forever and look for an alternative. After hearing about the conservative upstart Newsmax during a pro-Trump rally, they chose to give the channel a shot.

“We’re permanently switched,” Jenny, 46, said in a recent phone interview. “We’re not going back. Once you do something like that, you’re done in our book.”

Jenny, who said she now watches Newsmax from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed, was among the 15 longtime Fox News loyalists who spoke with The Post in depth about why they have flipped the channel to Newsmax in recent weeks and months…

“I jumped on it and haven’t looked back,” said 40-year-old technical engineer Jeremy Arant, who was introduced to Newsmax by his friends after the election…

“The night of the election completely did it. I haven’t turned on Fox News since,” said Jami Salamida, 43, a paralegal who lives in West Virginia. She watched Fox for two decades and now said she watches between eight and 10 hours of Newsmax each day…

“The cherry on the cake was when they called the results of Arizona,” said 60-year-old Donna Cumella, who works in IT in New York…

“I don’t hate Fox News, but when I switched to Newsmax, I felt more appreciated for my viewership,” said Nicholas Stanek, 31, who lives in Arizona and works as a roofing estimator. “Part of me just doesn’t want to give Fox News the ratings.” …

Sharon Allan, a retired dental hygienist who lives in Florida, said she sensed a leftward tilt in Fox’s content starting in late September and early October. “It was like all of a sudden. A lot of my friends, we all started noticing it at the same time,” she said. “It was a shift, like they had been bought out. They like were being told to only report certain things in a certain way. It was like, ‘Wow, am I looking at Fox?’ …

They aren’t informed about politics, world events or … Fox News:

Several of the Fox skeptics guessed that a change in the network’s corporate management could have contributed to the shift they perceived, but many seemed confused about who is running the company and what, if anything, has changed. Six viewers who spoke with The Post mentioned a transfer of power to “the sons,” whom they said were “liberal.” One person said she heard that “the dad who owns it passed away,” a reference to Rupert Murdoch, 89, who is alive and remains chairman of parent company Fox Corporation.

While Murdoch’s son, James, and daughter-in-law, Kathryn, have embraced liberal causes and politicians, including Biden, they have no control over Fox News. James ceased his role as chief executive of the network’s then-parent company, 21st Century Fox, in March 2019, and almost completely cut his ties to his family’s media dynasty by stepping down from the News Corp. board of directors this summer, citing in a letter “disagreements over certain editorial content published by the Company’s news outlets and certain other strategic decisions.” And Murdoch’s other son, Lachlan, who now runs Fox Corp, is not known to have liberal leanings.

There is one Fox star they just can’t quit:

“I still like a little bit of Tucker because I think he’s a smart guy,” said 37-year-old Ricky Moxley, who works in industrial manufacturing in South Carolina.

“I will find myself allowing myself to watch Tucker because I think Tucker calls out what’s going on,” Salamida said. “That’s my problem: with the people at Fox pretending that nothing is wrong” with the election process. (There is no evidence of widespread election fraud that would change the results of the election.) Allan, the retired dental hygienist, thinks Carlson should be president one day.

They are emotionally devastated:

“It’s sad, because it’s like losing a friend,” said Jennie Spohn, 55, Markham’s sister-in-law, who works in construction in Michigan. “We loved Fox News. We stood up for Fox News. We stood by their side.”

And although Spohn digs Newsmax and watches upstart digital networks like Right Side Broadcasting Network, particularly to catch the president’s political rallies, she said, almost mournfully, “I don’t think there will ever be a love affair like we had with Fox News for years.”

“It is disappointing and it is depressing,” said Walker, who used to watch Fox throughout the day. “It was almost like Fox was a part of my family.”

Some of them do complain that Newsmax is dull as dishwater, which it is. It’s like watching a high school AV class compared to the professional razzle dazzle of Fox News. I suspect that if they don’t raise their game quickly, these people will drift back to Fox. In fact, this whole thing makes you wonder whether it wasn’t the Fox Trump Show that thrilled his cult members even more than Trump himself.

Whatever it is, this cultish affinity for a right wing news network is downright weird. I’m a political junkie to the core, but I honestly feel zero attachment to any cable news networks. I certainly have a lot of respect for certain commentators like Chris Hayes, whom I’ve admired as a writer as well as a broadcaster. But feeling like a network is “family” is just bizarre to me. To feel “betrayed” when it doesn’t tell you what you want to hear says that the propaganda is operating on a very emotional level. And it’s potent. Trump’s tantrum seems perfectly normal when that’s what you’re used to.

The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser goes through the end of the year so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, I would be most grateful.

cheers,
digby


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