Fox News and other Murdoch-owned right-wing media outlets have made it clear that they are done with Donald Trump and see no further usefulness in supporting his baseless attempts at stealing the election. This isn’t inconsistent as the cynicism that Fox News has shown in helping to create and promote every fact-free conspiracy theory and piece of misinformation, is why they feel so comfortable walking away now. Whether this is an ideological decision, hoping to pivot away from the more QAnon-style right-wing support system toward the slightly less unhinged Republican audience, or simply that Rupert Murdoch is tired of having to pretend he likes Donald Trump whatsoever, remains to be seen.
On Monday night, as Trump and other Republicans play a game of undercutting our most democratic of processes, elections, while other Trump-surrogates nurse their newly contracted coronaviruses, Kayleigh McEnany, Trump’s press secretary, held a press conference. Fox News’ Neil Cavuto was running the right-wing media misinformation machine at that moment and he did something good for a change. He told his audience the truth.
McEnany began the presser by making a statement. This statement amounted to an accusation, baseless, with no evidence at all to support it, that the Democratic Party apparatus was stealing the election. In fact, McEnany started by saying that Biden and his team were participating and welcoming illegal voting. Cavuto, broke in by speaking over McEnany, saying “She is charging that the other side is welcoming fraud and welcoming illegal voting. Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continuing showing you this.”
Fox News muted McEnany’s feed at that point and then cut away as Cavuto continued that “I want to make sure, maybe they do have something to back that up, but that's an explosive charge to make: the other side is effectively rigging and cheating. If she does bring proof of that of course we'll take you back. So far she has started saying right at the outset ‘welcoming fraud,’ ‘welcoming illegal voting.’ Not so fast. We will have more after this.” And he cut away to commercial. It is about 30 seconds of the most honest reporting we may ever see on Fox News, but it’s worth the watch.