There are rumblings in Trumpville that the Lord Emperor is not happy with Fox News these days. Daughter in law Lara Trump did a Facebook broadcast called "Real News," a few days ago which Stephen Colbert wasted no time in parodying, and surrogate Kayleigh McEnany has departed from CNN and now plans to broadcast "News Of The Week,” a show which will originate in Trump Tower and will focus on Trump accomplishments and “positive news." This is the same vlog that Lara Trump introduced last week. More on what Trump’s surrogates are calling “Real News” in a moment, let's take a look at what Fox News led its website page with this weekend, a banner story proudly asking,
"Would You Even Care If He Was Guilty?"
So does it matter to you whether or not the president is a crook? The answer for a lot of Americans may be no.
With the
revelation that a grand jury is looking at evidence against members of President Trump’s 2016 campaign team, we move closer still to the possibility that someone could be in very big trouble.
Special Counsel Robert Mueller
and his squad are moving fast, and the likelihood that some charges will be brought can no longer be ignored. It is not hard to imagine a moment in the very near future where some associate of the president is in the dock, charged with misdeeds relating to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
But, again, we ask: Would it matter to you?
Now this is of course the juncture where wingnut false equivalency comes in, which is exactly what you would expect.
As we hear Trump devotees wail that colluding with a hostile foreign power isn’t a crime or cavil that Mueller & Co. might find other crimes unrelated to Russian disruption, what we are really hearing is their acceptance of wrongdoing. This is the big: “So what?”
The underlying argument is that she probably did something even worse, so if he lied, cheated and maybe even stole the election. For after all, he would have been only beating Democrats at their own game.
But take a look at this. In the next sentence Fox News actually admits that this is a sick viewpoint. They're still sticking to it, they add, but at least they're admitting it's sick.
Even though this view represents a minority of a minority, it is still pretty strong evidence of an unwell national civic culture. It is also like money in the bank for Trump.
Look at how Fox News is admitting that there is something wrong and also look at how Fox News has handled similar incendiary stories in the recent past. If you go back several weeks, you may recall that Fox was pushing the narrative that collusion wasn't really such a bad thing. Then it came out that sure enough, Donald Jr. had the now famous meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower. Now Fox is blatantly asking, "Would you even care if he was guilty," again telegraphing the event to come in advance, and also minimizing the gravity of it at the same time. That seems to be Fox' strategy, in any event. But weigh this article and Fox' previous attitude towards Trump against the line talking about, "evidence of an unwell national civic culture." That line doesn't seem to signify the usual Fox fawning adoration for all things Trump. There is a distinct departure from traditional Fox-Trump doctrine in admitting that anything could be possibly wrong. And then there’s this tidbit:
As Mueller and his fellow G-men close in on their quarry, the willful blindness of partisans won’t be enough to keep Republicans from turning against Trump in numbers large enough to put his job at risk.
Another admission. There's a potential of risk to Donald Trump from anything other than evil Democrats? From members of his own party? Really?
Now is the moment to revisit Kayleigh McEnany and Lara Trump. Kayleigh plans to devote herself exclusively to reporting on Donald Trump's good tidings.
Crooks & Liars
The Trump cult has decided that Fox News doesn't provide the extreme level of Hitleresque propaganda that they crave, so what did they do? Launch their own "Real News" Trump weekly online news channel. The first episode was launched by Trump daughter-in-law, Lara Trump.
This latest gig for Kayleigh comes just one day after she announced her sudden departure from CNN. Previously, she served as the dead-eyed, rabid, intellectually-challenged Trump proxy on CNN panels, occasionally joined by historically and follicly-challenged Jeffrey "KKK were Democrats" Lord.
Well, McEnany has moved on to a platform even more well-suited to her "talents" - an online Facebook page where she is limited to a few minutes of rambling about Trump "News of the Week." The focus of the show is to rehash positive Trump news of the week, so each segment should be about 30 seconds long. Per week. Maximum.
Perhaps Lara Trump will vlog along with McEnany on Facebook and perhaps it's possible to infer that Trump & Co. are unhappy with Fox and looking for alternatives. Fox is either looking to lay cover for Trump's eventually being found guilty of treason, or Fox is getting ready to pull away for the sake of its own survival. Fox regularly reports Trump's approval ratings on its website and it must be difficult over there to publish a figure that steadily goes down and then to write copy for the air talent saying how all is well in Trumpville. All is not well in Trumpville and if Fox News is starting to decide that it's too hot to stay in the kitchen, and the best that Trump can come up with is a couple of lame video blogs on Facebook to counter Fox' defection, if in fact that is what is happening, that doesn't bode well for Trump's immediate future. Don't forget that Breitbart took Steve Bannon's side against Anthony Scaramucci and trolled Trump in the process, saying that Scaramucci was then the biggest star in the White House. Right wing media made Trump and it can break him. It appears that now Trump feels he can make his own right wing media. That remains to be seen and it certainly is a development worth watching.