I woke up at 5 AM and in looking at my usual websites I found this on Salon. It was their top story.
Trump administration media mouthpiece Fox News published an extraordinary report Monday blaring the headline, "Rough polling stretch has GOP operatives asking: Could Trump drop out?"
"A stretch of lackluster polling for President Trump has some Republican operatives nervous about the president's reelection prospects in November — with some even floating the possibility for the first time that Trump could drop out if his poll numbers don't rebound," says the report, published by the previously Trump-centric network that in recent months has increasingly drawn the president's wrath.
This led me to discover the Fox News story.
The article begins:
A stretch of lackluster polling for President Trump has some Republican operatives nervous about the president’s reelection prospects in November – with some even floating the possibility for the first time that Trump could drop out if his poll numbers don’t rebound.
“It’s too early, but if the polls continue to worsen, you can see a scenario where he drops out,” one GOP operative who asked to remain anonymous told Fox News.
“I’ve heard the talk but I doubt it’s true,” another said. “My bet is, he drops if he believes there’s no way to win.”
Lots of luck finding this story on the Fox News website today. Since it was published yesterday I don’t know how prominently it was featured at the time it was published.
This was the Fox News website with the Mt. Rushmore story deemed the most important news of the day at 5:00 AM in Oregon (8 AM Eastern):
Casual readers had to scroll down past the lead stories, above, to read about the Russian bounty scandal:
You can tell from the titles what their bias is: Rep. Michael Waltz questions timing, motives behind report on Russian bounties on US troops, White House pushes back report that President Trump was briefed on Russian bounty intel, House Dems attend White House briefing on Russian bounty reports, No evidence to corroborate NY Times bombshell report on Russian Bounty for US soldiers: DOD, Jesse Watters suggests bounty intelligence was leaked by Trump “hater” to create another ‘Russian cloud.’
Then I went back to check the titles since they were unreadable in the image above and all of those stories had disappeared. That part of the main page looked like this with no stories in the center section about the Russia story:
I went back to Fox News once again and found that they had moved this Russian bounty story to the top of their page.
My only explanation for this is that whoever decides where to put stories is under orders to ignore anything critical of Trump was told that since this story was so widely covered elsewhere in the media they might lose some readers unless they had at least one major story about it.
Who knows?
You might say in answer to this question “who the blank cares” but I think it is helpful to understand why people who aren’t totally brainwashed but who rely on Fox News for all their information about Trump still support him.
Fox News exists for one reason and one reason alone and it isn’t to support Donald Trump and the right wing cause. It is to make money. This is probably why they continue to play the ads from The Lincoln Project. If they were truly ideologues they would refuse to put them on. I could be wrong, but I do not think they are required to do so by FCC rules.
There is a debate as to whether these ads can influence Fox News viewing voters. For example, see “The Lincoln Project is trolling Trump. But can it sway voters?” Politico where the rationale behind the ads is that “they figured the best bet to get to the president would be to target Trump where he was, Washington, D.C., on the channel he watches, Fox News, when he was most likely to be watching, at night.”
Joe Biden ads, and ads for local Democratic Party candidates are aimed at persuading voters. Fox News, by FCC rules stations are required to air them.
Even if any these ads prompt a few swing voters to seek more information than is offered on Fox News and take a look at CNN, ABC, CBS, or NBC (perish the thought they tune into MSNBC or PBS) they will find some unbiased reporting and hard-hitting interviews and contrary opinion.
Regardless of the ads on Fox News I want to assume they have some viewers who don’t live in an impenetrable bubble populated only by members of the MAGA cult and somehow stories like the Russian bounty one penetrate their thick skulls and if only not to appear to be total dolts they try to find out what the fuss is all about. This is why I think as a scandal of this import and gravity is publicized Fox News will be forced to cover it even as they try to toe the Trump line. Otherwise they may find some viewers discover there are other sources of news that they find more appealing.