COULD FOX NEWS BE HASTENING THE END OF TRUMP’S PRESIDENCY?

…Why is this network lying to the American public?

Fox News provides the president with a real security blanket against outside critics.

The following is very much a possible form of poetic justice.

It is appearing that the entity, Fox News, that has done so much to help President Trump drive the United States to its lowest level of international respect.  However, that same operation may end up playing a large role in destroying Trump's chances at re-election.  And that is exactly what appears to be happening.

This turn of events can be attributed to two separate new reports.

One report form The Washington Post shows that trump has become very unsettled by the new surges in the Covid-19 cases.  While the second report from the New York Times remarks that his law enforcement crackdowns in Portland and Seattle are only accelerating more protests in response.

For President Trump, Fox News has two basic functions, with only a few exceptions.  It largely functions as a “shameless propaganda outlet for Donald Trump,” as Margaret Sullivan has called it.  It aggressively inflates his successes and faithfully pushes his messages. When Fox occasionally departs from this role, Trump rages as if they were his sworn enemy.

Speculation by Fox News and the president about possible coming Covid-19 cures continues to make it more difficult for health officials to do their job.  Yet, even though the president has continued to fail to support moves that could stop the spread of the virus, Fox continues to tell him that he is succeeding.  This offers the distortion of reality that allows the president to ignore any reasonable criticisms.

The results of this is that it provides the president with a substantial security blanket, and a distortion field against outside critics.

Even when The Post reveals that the president has failed to act against the spread of the virus, Fox News helps him by supporting his pathological refusal to admit his errors and his, “overly rosy assessments from error data from that same Fox News”.

The other error that the president makes is his reliance on the Fox News positive feed-back loop.  Rather than sit for daily briefings by the infectious-disease director, Anthony Fauci or his other medical experts, the president relies on much of his information from the Fox News Channel.  This is where his on-air boosters put a positive spin on the pandemic’s developments.

When the coronavirus death toll was heading for 100,000 Americans, Fox prime-time programming did not announce that fact.  Now that it’s approaching 150,000, Fox personalities are claiming the original state lockdowns that had actually worked, were a plot to harm Trump.  In addition, they claim to the president that things are going better than expected, thanks to his excellent national leadership.

It appears that misinformation from Fox and other right-wing media outlets might actually be making audiences more prone to believing the various, circulating, coronavirus conspiracy theories.   Meanwhile, the too-rapid re-openings of the states are a big reason the coronavirus is surging again.  Trump’s Fox propagandists continue to push the idea that hesitation to reopen US schools is pure politics.

Thus Fox feeds Trump’s refusal to admit any errors in a way that makes him less likely to dramatically scale up federal testing.  This is even though several governors have demanded that need, over just last weekend.  And now he is more prone to continue pushing for rapid state re-openings.

According to Trump’s own advisers, these failures are now putting his re-election at risk. The Post reports that they presented him data showing that the virus is spiking in red states and will soon surge in key swing states.

Trump is surely sliding in the polls, partly because the majorities are prioritizing the defeat of the virus, even if it harms the economy.   But Fox keeps telling him things are going better than they otherwise would be, thanks to his wonderful leadership.  They are also calling that any extreme caution on reopening states is just a hoax.

On Fox, the action against the protests, just shows Trump’s glorious strength

The reality is that the daily picture of the protests is highly distorted for the president and for him that is like drug-level mind numbing.

The Times has reported that the latest of new protests over the weekend in cities like Seattle and Oakland, Calif., were largely driven by the reaction to Trump’s law enforcement invasion of Portland, Oregon.  The Seattle mayor claims this has, “escalated matters across the country”, and the Oakland mayor warns it will “incite more unrest.”

This is surely why Trump is sending in law enforcement in the first place.  He actually believes that his inciting violent civil conflict will help his reelection.  As one GOP strategist candidly told the Times, “Republicans are hoping to define Democrats as being on the side of the anarchists in Portland.”

The crucial point here is, what Trump sees on Fox is surely persuading him that he’s succeeding in doing just that.

Fox personalities are even claiming that electing Joe Biden will make civil violence “a staple of American life everywhere.”  They are also doctoring Biden quotes to paint him as anti-police, which is totally false.  And they are suggesting that Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech, which compared the protests as “far-left fascism” is for justifying the sending in of more law enforcement.

All this surely reinforces Trump’s belief that this messaging is working for him. After all, the imagery of violence, when hyped this way, does make for powerful television. And we all know, Trump knows powerful television when he sees it!

But in the Fox narrative of the protests, there is no room for any agreement that Trump is acting as an inciting and destructive force.   This fact might be further alienating the educated white suburban voters who are according to Fox, supposed to find Trump’s authoritarian displays reassuring.

Yet a recent Post-ABC News Poll found that college-educated whites trust Biden over Trump to handle crime and safety by 52% to 40%.  Among college-educated white women, that’s a stunning 58% to 37%.  Among suburbanites, it’s 48% to 44%.  Trump is even losing on this among all US seniors.

And a recent Yahoo News-YouGov Poll found that a larger percentage of suburban voters say the country will become less safe if Trump wins (48%) than say the same about Biden (37%). Among women, it’s even worse for Trump (50% and 33%, respectively).

Today we have the two biggest crises convulsing the country.  That being the deadliest public health emergency in modern times, and the worst civil unrest in half a century.  Trump is further alienating the middle of the country with his destructive tendency’s and his depraved celebrations in the false power of his own cult-like propaganda.

Books will be written about Fox News’ role in the national catastrophe that is this presidency.  But, in the persuading of Trump, that he is actually winning the arguments of both of these crises, Fox News may also be hastening the president’s end.

Let's hope so.

Copyright G. Ater 2020.