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Kamala Harris won’t be going on Fox News, telling The Hill that Fox "reached out but we haven't entertained it.”
Elizabeth Warren won’t be going on Fox News, taking the opportunity to really bash the f’ out of them when turning them down. “Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracists,” she tweeted. “It’s designed to turn us against each other, risking life & death consequences, to provide cover for the corruption that’s rotting our government and hollowing out our middle class.”
Warren is absolutely correct. Fact is, there isn’t a single primary voter watching Fox News. It’s a waste of time for a Democratic presidential candidate to spend time on that hate network if their goal is to, you know, win a Democratic presidential primary. Meanwhile, they are giving white supremacist Trump State Media undeserved credibility while getting nothing in return.
Bernie Sanders was the first to do a town hall on Fox, much to the glee of that network. What better way to fend off advertiser boycotts than to say “we can’t be so bad if Democrats pay us a visit!” Amy Klobuchar followed suit. Pete Buttigieg will be going on that homophobic network soon. So will Kirsten Gillibrand, attempting to reboot her campaign by stressing opposition to the Alabama abortion bill, even while going on the network that’s cheerleading for those laws (and the Supreme Court poised to overturn Roe v. Wade).
The Sanders appearance has its own internal logic: He likes to thumb his nose at Democrats, including those fighting the war against Fox News. And he delighted his supporters by doing battle with Fox News hosts. It wasn’t helpful to the broader movement, and reinforced the fact that he’ll never be a team player, but it definitely gave him a nice promotional boost at the time. Ratings were legit great. I’ll call it a smart move. An asshole move, for sure! But smart.
But the rest of these Democrats? Going on Fox is a desperate cry for attention, from a crew so desperate for relevance that they would apparently attend a Klan rally if it gave them a shred of a spotlight.
And what did Klobuchar get out of her appearance? She validated Trump State TV for what? I didn’t even KNOW she had gone on Fox until I did some quick research for this piece! Will any of these other Democrats fare any better? Of course not.
So congrats to Warren and Harris for doing the only smart thing here: using their time to talk to actual Democrats, while refusing to give any credibility to the right-wing’s most pernicious propaganda outlet.
There’s a reason Fox News is so desperate to host these Democrats, and it isn’t because it wants to help them.