MSNBC host Chris Hayes noted how Donald Trump has turned conservative mistrust of the media towards the very network that stoked that mistrust as marketing ploy, Fox News:
For years, right-leaning outlets like Fox News and talk radio have been telling their audience, day after day, that any information coming from outside of conservative media is not to be trusted. It's has been an ingeniously effective way to consolidate their own influence, and insulate themselves from any external criticism.
Not only has Trump adopted that tactic, attacking usual suspects like The New York Times and The Washington Post, but he's turning it back on the conservative media who invented it in first place. After starting a blood feud with Fox News, something no Republican presidential candidate has dared to do before, Trump seems to have successfully undermined the network in the eyes of its core audience -- with perception of the Fox News brand among Republican adults hitting its lowest point in three years, according to a new YouGov survey. And after being asked about his tax returns at last night's debate, Trump initially dodged the question by insulting moderator Hugh Hewitt, using Fox News' favorite method of taunting, ratings. [...]
I had crazy experience when I was talking to voters at the Nevada caucus the other night in Vegas. Voter after voter after voter, these are Republican, you know primary voters, caucus-goers saying "I don't listen to Fox anymore, I can't trust Fox anymore, I'm over them." And these were all Trump supporters, who he had successfully sort of pried their trust, away from the thing they have been trusting for years. And now, when Megyn Kelly says something about him they just dismiss it, because it's not -- It's all considered the source. It's not evaluating the information on its own, it's just consider the source.
The problem, after all, is that if your hosts have spent a decade conditioning conservatives to discount any news or scientific reporting they don’t like as being a conspiracy peddled by the movement’s enemies, that audience is going to be very, very receptive to someone else telling them that whatever news makes them look bad is a conspiracy peddled by their enemies. It’s now baked into the movement psyche.
The polls are always wrong; the science is always out; the facts are whatever the loudest person in the room says they are. And there’s nobody who can beat Donald Trump at being the loudest person in the room. Nobody.
HIGH IMPACT STORIES • TOP COMMENTS
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—AFL-CIO Seeks a Real Jobs Bill:
Remember the New Deal? You know, that 75-year-old collection of programs without which the Great Recession would have been an even worse disaster than it is? The AFL-CIO remembers. And it's pushing a New Deal-style jobs proposal focused on infrastructure and funded at least partly by a tax on securities transactions. Great idea. Something in line with the many good ideas raised nearly three months ago at the White House job summit and since ignored by Congress in favor of watery legislation that utterly fails to deal with the reality of 8.4 million jobs lost in the past 26 months.
The proposal, promoted under the populist rubric of "Jobs Now Make Wall Street Pay," is slated to be announced sometime in the next couple of days during the AFL-CIO's executive council meeting in Orlando, Fla. A handful of notables such as Warren Buffett and John Bogle, founder of Vanguard Group, and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown support the concept of a transaction tax.
|
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin & Joan McCarter round up headlines from Super Tues., Trumpmatic Stress Disorder, and Christie’s Stockholm Syndrome. Will Ryan roll over for Trump? Will Republicans pass a budget? Apple wins an opening round. Cheney remains horrible.
Find us on iTunes | Find us on Stitcher | RSS |Support the show via Patreon or PayPal