CNN’s Brian Stelter reports:
Right-wing media has made a shift from “pro-Trump” to “pro-Trump-supporter.” This week the talk shows are all about sympathizing with the voters, who are generally depicted as downcast and discriminated against. “Right now in America it is hard to be a Trump supporter, and it is getting harder, a lot harder,” Newsmax’s Greg Kelly said Tuesday night. His message was that “we have nothing to be ashamed of, and we should be proud.” His colleague Rob Schmitt said “the left wants to rip the soul out of anyone who supported Donald Trump over the last four years.”
On Fox Wednesday night, Tucker Carlson made a similar argument while attacking Mitch McConnell. Carlson said McConnell should not be focused on the future of Trump — who he described on his show as “elderly and retiring” — but instead “the tens of millions” of Trump voters. Carlson claimed Trump voters have been “redefined as domestic terrorists” in the past week. He straight up said he doesn’t care about Trump: “What I care about are his voters.” Later in the evening, Laura Ingraham said impeachment was actually an attempt to “impeach the Americans who support his policies,” which is obviously not true. One of her first guests, Ben Domenech, said that voting for impeachment was akin to telling Trump voters, “CNN’s right about you.” Later in the hour, guest Lara Logan imagined a new “war on terror” targeting Trump supporters.
“Fox News purports to be a news channel, not a right-wing talk network. But Fox opted to stick with its normal programming throughout the day, instead of having its lead political anchors, Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, lead a special report. When the House had the votes to impeach Trump, it fell to 4pm anchor Neil Cavuto to deliver the news to the network’s viewers. Less than an hour later, Fox had already moved on, doing a typical ‘The Five’ segment about supposed media bias…”
>> As I pointed out on Twitter, One America News didn’t even cover the vote live…
Many Trump fans are still on board
So what are those voters hearing from their favorite media sources? Well, there’s an increasing amount of 1/6 denialism on the airwaves. At 7pm on Newsmax, Kelly said Wednesday that there’s “overwhelming” evidence that Trump “did nothing wrong” on the day of the attack. At 8pm on OAN, host Dan Ball said the Republicans who spoke out against the “political theater” of impeachment were “brave patriots.” At 9pm on Fox, Sean Hannity bashed the “ten swamp Republicans” that “went along with the stunt.” Oh, and QAnon-promoting congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene said on Newsmax that she will file articles of impeachment against Biden on January 21.
My point: Trump’s brand is NOT in tatters on the channels and websites that his die-hard fans trust. Sure, some of the shine is off, but the MAGA media is much closer to Kevin McCarthy‘s position than Liz Cheney‘s. I just heard Mike Huckabee, on Fox, say that “this was a lynching of Donald Trump.” Some Trump voters are embarrassed by the past week’s events, but many are still fully on board the cliched “Trump train.” Don’t underestimate that…
They are fine with what happened because they are determined to convince themselves that attacking a joint session of congress to overturn an election is less threatening than burning a Wendy’s. (Also, many of them are just too ignorant to understand the gravity of an armed insurrection.)
They aren’t going to change as long as they are addicted to this right wing lies, Trump or no Trump. I don’t know how we are going to break that spell. Deplatforming is, at best, an emergency measure and it won’t solve the problem. The real issue is that the Republican Party has several full-fledged propaganda networks, along with various online outlets and talk radio. Social media is just a part of it, and the people who are looking for conspiracy theories will find them, even if they aren’t on Facebook.
I don’t know what to do about this. But this problem lies at the heart of our civic, cultural problem. Trump is just one of the consequences of it.