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thefive gutfeld

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SEE GUTFLED THREE 2 25

see energy dominance / ukraine 4

4 fox host w 1 rotating lib?!

mehdi h: one word, projection

failed comedy/satire show? 2023 aha cruel punches down vs Jon Stewart etc punchup

attacks women of color eg aoc kamala EXECUTE TISH JAMES 11 24

5TH PERSON LIB POD SAVE 9 24 jessica tARLOV

freq mma

gutfeld wife ukr; praised putin? kim g

aug 2014

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/those-who-long-putin-head-the-united-states-msna399551

bak cumulus 6 23 endit1

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closeted? clown?

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mma

Trump is decimating the CFPB. Fox News isn't telling audiences what the agency does.

Written by Harrison Ray

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe & John Knefel

Published 02/14/25

Fox News mentioned key consumer protection measures from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau only once in its scant coverage of the bureau since Russell Vought, an architect of Project 2025, took over as acting director on February 7 and began gutting agency functions.

Established in 2011 following the 2008 financial crisis, the CFPB has worked to safeguard Americans from predatory financial practices by implementing consumer protection measures, such as limiting overdraft fees at banks, a practice that often disproportionately affects low-income consumers; limiting credit card late fees; and removing medical debt from credit reports, helping millions of Americans struggling with financial burdens.

The CFPB's work has also included securing over $21 billion in compensation or other relief for consumers harmed by unfair financial practices, combating discriminatory lending, investigating mortgage servicing junk fees, protecting service members from unfair lending practices, tackling peer-to-peer payment fraud, and reforming the student loan servicing market.

“Donald Trump did not go to the American people and says, ‘I want to raise your overdraft fees,’” answered Fowler.

Video

From the February 11, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

Video

Citation

From the February 10, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

The horrific financial crisis proved that the financial services market needs a watchdog like the CFPB. Shutting the bureau down hurts the people the bureau protects from scams and predators, and it will hurt the companies that clearly need the agency’s fair rules, guidance, and law enforcement to deter potentially foolish behavior.

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tariff max hypoc bad faith

what? cruel strict fr? trolling?

Greg Gutfeld: Tariffs create higher food prices that “disincentivizes” eating}:

02/13/25 MMA

February 13, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Harold, let me try to break this down for you, because I know that some of these concepts are a little complicated. We know that high taxes disincentivizes work -- why work more if the government takes more? Whereas a tariff disincentivizes consumption, so -- "I have to pay for this, maybe I won't eat as much." So, isn't the international tariff an international consumption tax? And why are you against it, commie?

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MMA MASS DEPORT PROTEST LA

February 3, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): It does make you wonder if the climate groups are working with the immigration groups to be, like, the most hated groups in America.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Do you know what, you just -- who's behind it?

PERINO: Exactly.

GUTFELD: Who's behind this? Is it USAID?

PERINO: Well, I don't think it's them, but I do think it is S-O-R-O-S --

GUTFELD: Soros, who is funded by --

PERINO -- types of people. Or Arabella Advisors.

GUTFELD: But they're funded by USAID. See? It's all making sense, Judge. It's all one tangled web of evil.

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Greg Gutfeld tells federal workers “you should be thankful you are getting fired”

01/29/25 MMA

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  1. ### Fox’s Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters mock the concept of consent in sexual relationships

01/17/25

  1. ### Fox News' Greg Gutfeld says making “unwanted requests for sexual favors” is typical first date behavior

01/17/25

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AN 11 24

'Listen here, sweetheart': Possible Trump AG pick threatens NY’s Letitia James with 'prison' - Alternet.org TISH J

//

Donald Trump is the first president-elect in U.S. history to win an election while awaiting sentencing on 34 criminal counts.

It remains to be seen what type of sentence Justice Juan Merchan will impose if the sentencing goes ahead as scheduled in late November. Meanwhile, special counsel Jack Smith's two federal cases against Trump were doomed when Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Night 2024. And Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis' election interference/RICO case against Trump and a long list of allies remains in limbo.

During a Thursday, November 7 broadcast of Fox News' "The Five," two of the hosts — Greg Gutfield and Dana Perino — called for "the death penalty" for Trump's prosecutors.

READ MORE:**'Listen here, sweetheart': Possible Trump AG pick threatens NY’s Letitia James with 'prison'**

Gutfield mockingly told his colleagues, "A lot of the people that were on this and wanted it so badly, how are they going to survive? Do you think they need therapy?”

Perino responded, "Yes, they definitely need therapy, and maybe also the death penalty."

Gutfield agreed, saying, "Yes, I think the death penalty."

Some legal experts are recommending that Smith write final reports on both of his cases against Trump, putting them to rest before Trump's inauguration on January 20, 2025.

READ MORE:[Path forward' to Democrats winning may come sooner than you think: analysis

The Daily Beast's Grace Harrington points out that Trump, as president, will have the ability to parDon federal charges but not charges at the state level.

"There are currently ongoing state cases against him in New York, for giving hush money to a porn star, and in Georgia for election interference," Harrington notes. "Trump cannot pardon himself for state crimes. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who is prosecuting Trump's case in Georgia, just won reelection."

READ MORE:[How Garland’s 'truly historic legal missteps' let Trump dodge accountability

Watch the Fox News video and read Grace Harrington's Daily Beast article[at this link.

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mma

How Fox News has been misinforming its viewers about abortion

Written by Jane Lee, Isabella Corrao & Helena Hind

Published 11/04/24 mma

In the months leading up to the first presidential election since Roe v. Wade was overturned, Fox News has ignored the positive public health impacts of Vice President Kamala Harris’ pro-choice policy proposals. The network has instead portrayed abortion as an insignificant issue in the election, accused Democrats of fearmongering that former President Donald Trump and Republicans want to restrict access to reproductive rights, and falsely claimed that Democrats want no restrictions on abortions to the point of allowing so-called “post-birth” abortions.

Candidate positions on abortion — and Fox News spin

* After co-host Jessica Tarlov criticized Trump for laughing about a Georgia woman who died after doctors delayed lifesaving treatment for abortion-related complications, Gutfeld responded, “He should've said, ‘It’s the Democrats have been lying about it, creating a completely false story.’” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/16/24; ProPublica, 9/16/24]

Fox News neglected to cover reporting about the deaths of two women in Texas who sought abortion care during medical emergencies. The network once again failed to inform its viewers of the fatal consequences of abortion bans at the state level.}: Media Matters, [11/4/24]|

The Five* co-host Jeanine Pirro argued that more women were concerned about the combined issues of economy and immigration than abortion: “When women talk about immigration, when you put the economy and immigration together, it beats abortion by 32 points.” Fox News, *The Five*, [10/16/24]

Denying that Trump supported a national abortion ban, co-host Ainsley Earhardt suggested that people in Alabama don’t want abortion rights,}: saying, “If you live in New York, you probably always get an abortion. If you live in Alabama, maybe not. I don't know, but it’s whatever you decide as the voter of the state.” Fox News, *Fox & Friends*, [10/22/24]|

Fox News contributor Kellyanne Conway claimed that “Tim Walz himself allows babies that survive an abortion — it’s rare, but it happens — allows them to not have standard of care, warmth, food, water, liquids. You just have to let them ‘expire.’”}:She continued, “That’s not what pro-choice women say they mean when they call themselves pro-choice.” Fox News, *America’s Newsroom*, [9/13/24]|

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no lnx

alternet-Fox News is the reason the race is close

Sabrina Haake, Raw Story November 02, 2024

This is my last column before the election. I am as tired of writing about politics as most Americans are tired of reading, thinking, and hearing about it. The stress of this make-or-break Democracy test feels cruel and unusual. Cruel because of what’s at stake, unusual because it is unrelenting.

For people who inform themselves through fact-based media outlets, the most commonly heard question is, how is this race even close? Of all the craziness we’ve seen and heard, the Nazi-adjacent rhetoric, the venomous threats, the crazed narcissist making the nation’s struggles all about himself, how can half the country still support him? How can half our fellow citizens vote for him, knowing what they know about him? Are they crazy? Are they hateful?

The short answer, IMHO, is no. Most Trump voters are not Nazis, voting for Trump because of who Trump is. MAGA mostly just wants to be entertained, they enjoy the carnival of camaraderie. They don’t know who Trump really is, what his policies really are, because Fox News, again, deliberately hides it from them.

People who watch Fox News support Trump

Forty-three percent of the country watches Fox News, which correlates directly with the percentage of voters who support Trump over Harris.

ALSO READ: The 101 worst things about Trump's sham presidency

More telling, most Fox viewers don’t diversify the information they consume: Viewers with consistently conservative political views get them from a single outlet—Fox News—to a much greater degree than independents and liberals, who inform themselves from a variety of sources. According to the Pew Research Center, nearly half (47%) of consistently conservative Americans get their government and political news just from Fox News.

Fox News topped primetime viewership in August 2024. According to a recent Deadline Report, Fox News’ The Five was “the top regularly scheduled program in cable news, averaging 3.29 million viewers, followed by Jesse Watters Primetime with 2.97 million, Hannity with 2.61 million, Gutfeld! with 2.55 million and The Ingraham Angle with 2.44 million.”

Voters can’t act on what they don’t know

The high percentage of Americans hooked on Fox entertainment-sold-as-news escalates the risks inherent in Fox’s pro-Trump propaganda from fraudulent, to dangerous, to a national security threat. It elevates the stakes from “political speech,” protected by the 1st A, to weaponized disinformation. The difference is substantive, and both legislature and courts need to deal with it in a meaningful way.

For now, whenever there’s a news cycle unfavorable to Trump, Fox hosts either spin it in the opposite direction to help him, or, more frequently, they redirect their viewers to election topics deemed favorable to Trump, like the border. Over the past several months, Fox has focused obsessively on our broken immigration system, featuring dog whistles meant to frighten white people, but Fox hosts almost never mention how Trump intentionally killed the border bill just so he could campaign on it.

When Fox tires of showing black and brown people committing crimes, and lying about violent crime rates that have actually fallen, Fox programmers switch to pablum like popular hairstyles, dog breeds, and who eats ketchup on their omelets. Meanwhile, ominous and unprecedented national security warnings about the dangers of a second Trump administration, coming in from Trump’s own advisors, are hidden from Fox viewers.

Fox buried warnings from Trump’s own brass

Last week when news broke that John Kelly, Trump’s own Chief of Staff, wanted to warn Americans about Trump, including that Trump wanted generals more like Hitler’s and exhibited fascistic urges, Fox News re-directed viewers to Trump’s publicity stunt where he cosplayed at McDonalds. Fox ran dozens of insipid articles about Trump at McDonalds (Trump standing at the fry counter, Trump claiming Harris never worked there, Trump charming the customers at the drive-through window, etc.) Meanwhile, they reported almost nothing about John Kelly’s warning.

In one of two articles I saw about Kelly’s statements, Fox packaged it as a Harris ploy, reporting last week that, “The Harris campaign on Friday put out a letter penned by 13 ex-Trump administration officials seeking to bolster claims made by former President Trump's former chief of staff John Kelly…” The article then identified 13 fairly low-level Republicans who signed a letter warning about Trump, instead of the hundreds of high ranking Republican advisors issuing the same warnings.

Fox focused on Trump smiling in an apron to bury dire statements from heavy hitters including Mark Milley, the highest ranking military officer and Trump’s own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Fox News articles about other Republicans against Trump, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter, former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, are mostly led with misleading headlines against Democrats and Harris because the vast majority of people- 70 to 80%- read only the headlines.

Even after Trump said Liz Cheney should have 9 rifles pointed at her (execution squad style). Fox headlines spun the story against both Cheney and Harris.

Over 300 high ranking Republicans, including military and political leaders, have issued warnings against another Trump administration. As the NYT reports, the list includes “former defense secretaries Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen; Robert B. Zoellick, former World Bank president; ex-CIA directors Michael V. Hayden and William H. Webster; former director of national intelligence John D. Negroponte; and former Massachusetts Governor William F. Weld,” and former Trump administration officials Miles Taylor and Olivia Troye.

Or, as Fox described the letter from 13 Republicans, “Mike Pence who has signed multiple letters from Republicans attacking Trump, signed this letter, as well.”

No matter what happens Tuesday, we need fairness in the news

One thing we know for sure about domestic politics is that when the pendulum swings, it always swings back, the question is when, and after what.

When the day finally comes that our Supreme Court isn’t ethically compromised—and that day will come— voters will challenge Fox News (and likely Elon Musk) for aiding and abetting election fraud, as Dominion did. The next time around, the outcome for Fox won’t just be the cost of doing business.

We’ve legislated truth in the news before, and we were better for it. In 1969, the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Fairness Doctrine, which required all news broadcasters to give fair coverage and opposing views on matters of public importance. Balancing publishers’ first amendment rights against the right of the public to be well informed, the Red Lion Court ruled that the public’s right to access full information takes priority over the First Amendment concerns of broadcasters.

“It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited market-place of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market.” This is the same legal analysis that should be applied to today’s “political speech defense.” Bottom line, there’s a difference between free speech and weaponized speech, and the law needs to catch up with rapidly changing social media, AI, and monopolized town squares.

Legal change will eventually come, it’s not if but when. We aren’t meant to hate our neighbors, as much as Putin, Xi and Trump want us to. As Harris said, there’s a better way. In the meantime, take a walk in the woods. Leave your phone at home. Vote, speak up, write a column, drive your neighbors to the polls. Then let it go.

ALSO READ: A stupefying poll shows Harris breathing down Trump’s neck in Kansas. Here’s what that means.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25 year litigator specializing in 1st and 14th Amendment defense. She writes the Substack, The Haake Take.

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mma

Fox News' Greg Gutfeld praises the educational value of racist jokes told at Trump rally

10/28/24

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Fox News' Greg Gutfeld says Democrats are “planning something” to corrupt the 2024 presidential election results

10/14/24 mma

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did he read WND BS version?

October 3, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): They're trying to revive the corpse of January 6.

I have to say, though, this is an improvement over 2020, because in this case this election interference is done right in front of you, you know, from a combination of lawfare and the media embrace. You've got to go back to February 4th, 2021, when Time magazine published an article boasting of the conspiracy of business titans and left-wing activists to oppose what they called Trump's assault on democracy.

You know, they described it as a vast shadow effort, an organized collection of operatives that changed voting systems and laws, secured hundreds of millions of dollars in public and private funding. They recruited, you know, armies of poll workers, got millions to vote by mail. Then they went after disinformation, they pressured social media companies, they called that election protection.

So we -- Republicans, Independents, libertarians -- were suspicious when we're told that our side or the person we support is an existential risk. We were told that everything was on the table. That in fact, if you didn't cheat, that would be immoral. So what they did was they suppressed Hunter's laptop, which ushered in Joe's ill-gotten victory. So the suspicion of a rigged election is more than justified, because you told us that. You told us what you were going to do. So I think that's an important context when you approach January 6. It wasn't an attempt to overthrow the government, it was just like, 'We're just reacting to what you guys said.'

mma

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mma

Fox News misrepresented ICE data on immigration and crime in over 50 segments

85% of Fox segments about the Immigration and Customs Enforcement statistics included misrepresentations of the data even after multiple Fox personalities attempted to debunk the falsehoods

Written by Rob Savillo

Research contributions from Tyler Monroe & Harrison Ray

Published 10/01/24

Since September 27, when GOP Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-TX) released data on immigration and crime that he requested from Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Fox News has misrepresented the meaning of the statistics over and over: In 53 of 62 segments about the data (or 85%), Fox spun the information to promote a number of falsehoods about immigration and crime in the U.S.

Video

Media Matters found at least two instances of Fox News personalities or reporters attempting to debunk the false claims about the ICE statistics that were spread widely on the network: one from The Five co-host Jessica Tarlov and another from Los Angeles-based correspondent Bill Melugin. Both instances occurred the same day the data were released.

Moreover, the Department of Homeland Security subsequently issued a statement to media outlets September 28, which was included in a fact check by CNN the following day, properly contextualizing the numbers from ICE:

The data in this letter is being misinterpreted. The data goes back decades; it includes individuals who entered the country over the past 40 years or more, the vast majority of whose custody determination was made long before this Administration. It also includes many who are under the jurisdiction or currently incarcerated by federal, state or local law enforcement partners.

When Fox did include the proper context from DHS or ICE — or even from their own reporters — the network continued to push false narratives about immigration and crime. Fox personalities and guests downplayed, undermined, or dismissed the clarifications in more than half of such segments: 17 segments, or 57%.

* Right-wing media ran with those false characterizations of the data, and they were bolstered by former President Donald Trump's misrepresentations in several social media posts.

Trump posted the false claim that “13,000 convicted murderers entered our Country during her [Kamala Harris'] three and a half year period as Border Czar,” followed up with another falsehood, “almost 14,000 MURDERERS to freely and openly roam our Country,” and finally double-downed on both false statements with another post, writing, “14,000 CONVICTED thugs and slimeballs who have committed MURDER have been allowed to enter our Country, totally unvetted and unchecked, and roam free.”

Such rhetoric is not only false and misleading; it intentionally stokes unwarranted fears about immigrants and crime, specifically those who have crossed the southern U.S.-Mexico border. The Trump campaign has been using these misrepresentations to unfairly attack Vice President Kamala Harris' record — despite the fact that immigrants in general are more law-abiding than native-born Americans and that studies have consistently shown that undocumented immigrants do not commit more crime than U.S. citizens.

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116 KIA

mma

September 30, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I'm going to pay some credit to the media. Because I think this is the first -- and I don't say this is a bright side to a disaster because a disaster is horrible. But from somebody who looks at the media, this is really the first time that the climate change narrative has fizzled, you know? It used to be instantaneously, a horrible thing would happen and everybody would blame it on man-made climate change.

And I think it goes down to people like Bjorn Lomborg, you know? These are people that have tirelessly pointed out the facts. You know this is an interesting fact. The U.S. population has risen fourfold since 1940, but it has risen fiftyfold in coastal areas. So, a hurricane that might have hit in 1940 would hit 800,000 homes, now it's 11 million. So when you adjust for wealth and population, the hurricane damage has not increased over the past 100 years. And the total hurricane energy has actually decreased since 1980. So it's -- at least there's some progress in the way we report these things. But politically, we will never change.

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): And she didn't mention it either, Kamala Harris in her statement.

GUTFELD: No, she didn't. And I think it's because -- I think we have turned a corner in the climate change narrative because so many people have wised up on the climate models being inaccurate. And reading and understanding the research and also looking now towards how we demonize our mainstream energy sources and now with nuclear coming along.

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LATE NITE POUND BLK NAZI SO TRUMP PRIASE GUTF AND JOHHNY C

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FASHY MMA

September 25, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Let's not forget, there is a story to be told about January 6th. It's -- days before it, Trump met with senior Pentagon officials with a directive to protect property and people, and -- including using the National Guard, and it was ignored. This is a contradiction of the DOD IG report, so people need to know that. If you're going to ask questions about that, you know -- the whole commission was designed for this election. It was all designed for this. And they've squeezed the juice out of this lemon. Now it's time to squeeze the commission. Put those jerks behind bars.

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mma 9 24

September 11, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Five

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Well, I don't know who won, but I know who lost. It was the American people. You know, you could say, "If you complain about the refs, you're losing." Well, if the refs are corrupt, you've got to complain, because everybody lost. I actually got dumber watching it. I felt like my brain was being waterboarded by the sheer nonsense of these idiot moderators. But we were so sidetracked by the mechanics of the debate, the muted mics, that we forgot about them. I honestly don't know how anyone could decide who won the debate. That's like trying to guess the price of a painting that you suspect is a forgery. You can't objectively decide a winner in a sham competition.

This is truly the first DEI debate, where one candidate was subjected to a high standard, and the other was held to no standards at all. They removed the essence of fairness to achieve an outcome that could not be scored. You cannot score that. That is why you can't say who won or who lost. A liberal should be ashamed that your candidate needed the odds to be stocked so heavily in their favor.

You know, for many Americans, Harris entered as a mystery and exited as a mystery, and that was the goal, to keep her under wraps. So anyone who attributes that to Kamala's skill is an idiot. Congratulating Kamala for the debate is stolen valor. You should be congratulating David Muir and Linsey Davis who did the heavy lifting. And so calling that a debate is disinformation.

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an 8 24

April 12, 2024

On Friday, former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) gave a joint press conference at Mar-a-Lago to introduce an initiative aimed at preventing non-citizens from voting. But one Fox News host slammed that policy proposal as a red herring.

Johnson joined Trump for the press conference in the wake of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) threatening to bring a motion to vacate to the floor of the House of Representatives in protest of Johnson's bipartisan efforts to keep the federal government open. Trump made it clear that Johnson had his support, despite Greene saying on Friday that the speaker was "full of sh--" during an interview with former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

During the press conference, with Trump scowling behind him, Johnson promised to introduce legislation "to require that every single person who registers to vote in a federal election must prove that they're an American citizen first."

READ MORE:['Chaos': MTG moves to oust Johnson as Gaetz says Democrat Jeffries could be speaker

Of course, as Punchbowl News' John Bresnahan tweeted, US residents who lack citizenship "can’t vote in federal elections [and] haven’t been able to do so for decades." During a Friday segment on Fox News' The Five, panelist Richard Fowler echoed that sentiment, casting doubt on the need for a new law on the books to ban non-citizens from voting.

"This press conference was billed as an 'election integrity' press conference," Fowler said. "In 1996 congress passed the illegal immigration reform and immigration responsibility act. That act makes it explicitly illegal for noncitizens to vote."

"According to The Heritage Foundation's database on voter fraud, there’s been fewer than 50 cases of noncitizens voting in elections since 2002," he continued. "Not only has the Heritage Foundation said this, the Bipartisan Policy Center has said this, the Brennan Center for Justice has said this, the FBI has said this."

"Over and over and over again, people keep saying there's 'voter fraud,' and there's no evidence of voter fraud. There's no evidence of non-citizens voting in federal elections. " Fowler added. "And until they prove that, this press conference to me was null and void."

READ MORE:[(Opinion) 'By design': Johnson falsely claims Democrats are trying to turn 'illegals' into voters

Under current law, any non-citizen that tries to vote in a federal election can be charged with a felony, fined heavily and potentially deported. And as Fowler explained, the Brennan Center for Justice debunked the phantom issue of non-citizen voting, breaking down what it would entail in a recent post to its website.

"Imagine you’re an undocumented person living in the United States," wrote the Brennan Center's Sean Morales-Doyle. "Would you risk everything — your freedom, your life in the United States, your ability to be near your family — just to cast a single ballot?"

"It’s a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in federal elections. It’s also a crime under every state’s laws," he added. "In fact, under federal law, you could face up to five years in prison simply for registering to vote."

Watch the video of Fowler's remarks below, or by[clicking this link.

READ MORE:[Wife of Iowa Republican primary candidate convicted on 52 counts of voter fraud from 2020 election

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an 5 24

'Is board member Paul Ryan alive?' Conservative slams Fox News host suggesting Dems will rig election
Maya Boddie

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Greg Gutfeld claims Democrats are “cooking up” ways to illegally steal the presidential election

05/13/24

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Greg Gutfeld says Black people "didn't earn" reparations | Media Matters for America

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Greg Gutfeld says “it’s now acceptable” to use slur on Fox News | Media Matters for America

Greg Gutfeld says Nikki Haley talking about race and gender "turns me off and turns off Republicans" | Media Matters for America

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Greg Gutfeld says Rep. Ocasio-Cortez supports immigrants because she's “horny” for “young, virile men who are coming here in droves” | Media Matters for America

Greg Gutfeld calls Nikki Haley "a pandering phony" because she talked about experiencing racism | Media Matters for America

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https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-claims-98-accusations-racism-are-false

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new bad trinity all in for trump

mma 7 23

fox News’ evening lineup reshuffle, which rolls out next week with Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld joining Sean Hannity in prime time, shows that the network’s executives are determined to stave off its recent ratings collapse by doubling down on its fealty to Donald Trump. Together, the trio secures Fox’s most-watched hours as a safe space for the former president that will help keep him on a glide path to the 2024 GOP presidential nomination.

Fox’s programming typically reflects the leading elements and ideas of the Republican Party, and the new lineup reflects its reinvention as a Trumpist personality cult.

Tucker Carlson, the longtime prime-time star Fox cut ties with in April, was another Trump partisan, to a point. But he also had an independent, preexisting reputation and drew notoriety for his particular set of noxious ideas. Carlson championed foreign autocrats and the blood-and-soil nationalism undergirding their regimes, became perhaps the nation’s most prominent and pernicious opponent of COVID-19 vaccines, led the right’s vicious smears of LGBTQ people, and trumpeted white nationalist views on race and immigration, including the blood-soaked “great replacement” conspiracy theory. Carlson used his prime-time show to manipulate Trump into adopting his positions and even offered veiled criticism when he thought Trump undermined his aims. (Privately, Carlson claimed of Trump, “I hate him passionately.”)

While Watters, Hannity, and Gutfeld all have long records of toxic commentary, no one would describe them as men of ideas. Hannity is a down-the-line Republican Party propagandist, devoted to the success of his party above all else. And Gutfeld and Watters are associated more with a mean-spirited, sarcastic affect and an own-the-libs mentality than any distinct viewpoint.

What Fox’s new prime-time triumvirate demonstrates is that hardcore support for Trump remains the ingredient that unites the right. All three are Trump loyalists, albeit in somewhat different flavors, who have proved willing to defend the authoritarian former president across two impeachments, two indictments, an attempted coup, a series of attacks on the rule of law and constitutional order, and innumerable bigoted eruptions. And unlike Carlson, the three hosts are much more likely to fall in line with whatever Trump decides to do, no matter how abhorrent, rather than try to push him in any particular direction.

Sean Hannity, Trump’s “shadow” White House chief of staff

vid ]

hannity, who retains his 9 p.m. ET time slot in the shakeup, needs no introduction as anotorious Trump sycophan**t who has had Trump’s back in virtually every major controversy since Trump announced his run for president in 2015. A right-wing media mainstay billed by his network as “the longest-running current primetime host in cable news in television history,” Hannity came around to Trump early in the 2016 primary, helped him to win the nomination and then the White House, and reached new heights of power and influence as a Trump presidential adviser.

The Fox host regularly offers Trump a platform for fawning interviews and generates (occasionally contradictory) talking points in his defense at a furious rate. The sprawling conspiracy theories Hannity concocts to explain away Trump’s flaws have dominated right-wing media discourse, spurred fruitless Justice Department inquiries, and even attracted enough of a response from Trump himself to trigger his impeachment.

All the while, Hannity has served Trump as a political operative of unprecedented scope for a member of the press, to the point where he was once deemed the “shadow” chief of staff by White House staffers. If you can imagine an unethical conflict of interest a TV host might have, Hannity has done it for Trump: policy adviser and communications guru, advertisement participant and script doctor, rally speaker and secret back channel, private confidant sharing nightly phone calls with the then-president and public shill taking coverage orders from his White House.

The depth of Hannity’s bootlicking loyalty to the former president can perhaps best be seen in his reaction to a January 2018 report from The New York Times that Trump had previously tried to fire Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Hannity spent much of his show that night claiming that the Times’ reporting was likely wrong, stressing that his own sources were “not confirming that tonight.”

But by the end of the broadcast, after Fox News published a report lining up with the Times story, Hannity backpedaled furiously. He adopted a new talking point wholly inconsistent with his old one to maintain the position that Trump had done nothing wrong.

“So we have sources tonight just confirming to Ed Henry that, yeah, maybe Donald Trump wanted to fire the special counsel for conflict,” Hannity said. “Does he not have the right to raise those questions?”

“You know, we’ll deal with this tomorrow night,” Hannity added, before changing the topic to discuss a high-speed police chase.

Hannity will now be bracketed in the Fox lineup by Watters and Gutfeld. The new prime-time hosts and longtime Fox employees share not only his penchant for incendiary conspiracy theories and toxic commentary but also his Trumpist zeal.

Jesse Watters, an O’Reilly crony turned Trump loyalist [vid]
watters joined Fox as a production assistant in 2002 and spent years stalking and harassing the subjects of ambush interview segments for Fox star Bill O’Reilly’s show. But he catapulted to prominence during the Trump years, garnering a weekend show and a slot on The Five in 2017, before landing a weeknight program in Fox’s 7 p.m. hour in January 2022.

The timing of Watters’ ascension is no coincidence: He has provided the pro-Trump commentary Fox’s viewers demand. Trump drew rebukes for launching his 2016 presidential campaign with unhinged xenophobic vitriol — even from Fox founder Rupert Murdoch. But Watters, attuned to the sentiment among the network’s audience, praised Trump for having “tapped into the collective backbone of this country” and said that as president, he wouldn't “let illegal aliens come to the country and murder our women.”

He never looked back, declaring that Trump couldn’t be racist because he has socialized with Black people, defending his most bigoted comments, praising his immigrant child separation policy, and standing up for his family, his cronies, and his responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and police brutality protests.

As the Trump presidency wound down, Watters falsely told his viewers that fraud had permeated the 2020 presidential election, adding that “we used to storm the castle over abuses of power like this.” Days later, a violent mob of angry Trumpists stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to subvert the election.

Watters continued standing by Trump following his 2020 election defeat, the subsequent insurrection he summoned, and the waves of evidence of his criminality. He called for Americans to take to the streets in protest after the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, offered thinly veiled suggestions of a violent recourse to his indictment, and urged Republicans to impeach President Joe Biden and for a reelected Trump to indict him in response.

Watters’ sycophantic commentary helped him climb the ranks at Fox, but it also gave him entry into the Fox-obsessed Trump’s social circle. He dined at the White House with the then-president, a fan of his on-air commentary. Trump congratulated him on his 2019 engagement to Emma DiGiovine, and Trump’s adult sons attended their wedding later that year. (Watters had cheated on his first wife and the mother of his twin daughters with the bride, a former low-level employee on his show who is 14 years his junior; he later said on-air that he had “let the air out of her tires” when he “was trying to get Emma to date me,” though he subsequently claimed to have been joking.)

Greg Gutfeld, a Trump critic who became his champion [vid]
unlike Hannity and Watters, who were early, stalwart Trump supporters, Gutfeld was a convert. A Trump critic during the 2016 Republican primary, Gutfeld had decried the racist former game show host as a “RINO” and a “conspiracy freak,” calling out his “crass” behavior and his mockery of Sen. John McCain’s military service.

But after Trump sewed up the primary and the general election loomed, Gutfeld’s commentary shifted. “Gutfeld was in the position he had previously warned against: the position of defending and excusing Trump,” Brian Stelter wrote in his 2021 book on Fox.

Gutfeld himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that Fox CEO Suzanne Scott had counseled him to leave himself room to evolve his view of Trump. “She was like, ‘Greg, you should maybe prepare for what happens if he wins,’” he told The New York Times.

Gutfeld flipped to become a diehard Trumpist.

Like Watters, he defended Trump’s vicious immigration policies, election subversion efforts, misogyny, deadly pandemic response, and racist comments. He is particularly devoted to mainstreaming Trump’s refusals to denounce his most extreme supporters, from the Proud Boys to white supremacists, including those whomarched in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. And he distinguished himself with particularly absurd remarks about the then-president, like claiming that “he’s the president, he can do whatever he wants,” and, “I can't recall a single instance of Trump actually aggressively going after an individual.”

Gutfeld is particularly clear-eyed about Fox’s relationship with Trump. He repeatedly noted on-air the influence his network had on the man he dubbed “the Fox News president.” And Trump, in turn, warmed up to the Fox host as he became increasingly pliant, touting Gutfeld on the campaign stump and in afawning interview with him:(style="background-color:#ffff66;"/maxresdefault.jpg). 

“Even Greg Gutfeld; he wasn’t good to me two years ago,” Trump said in 2019. “Now he sees all I’ve done, and he said 'Would you rather have a great President or a nice guy?’ I don’t know, I think I’m a nice guy.”

Without Gutfeld’s flip to Trump, and Trump’s subsequent support for him, it is difficult to imagine that the host would have continued climbing the ladder at Fox. As Stelter wrote:

The alternative could have hit Gutfeld in the wallet. Fox made him a millionaire several times over — between his TV shows, the books he promoted on TV, his ticketed speaking gigs across the country — so “Greg has made a cynical calculation,” an insider said. “There’s no point in being anti-Trump.”

For a taste of what the prime-time newcomers bring to the table, consider a July 2019 exchange between Gutfeld and Watters on their panel show, The Five, regarding Democrats’ criticism of then-President Trump’s friendly visit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

“Let’s be honest,” Gutfeld admitted. If a Democratic president had met with Kim, “we would do the same thing.”

“How dare Obama meet with a dictator with no preconditions!” Watters replied, and the pair broke into giggles. Even they can barely believe the absurdity of their pro-Trump hypocrisy.

Fox’s Trumpist retrenchment will help him secure the GOP nomination

fox’s prime-time shakeup comes as the network faces the most sustained challenge to its dominance over the right-wing press in years. The new lineup suggests the network’s strategy for shoring up its right-wing hegemony relies on restoring its Trumpist credentials.

Fox ratings took a dive after the network cast off Carlson. Would-be rivals have responded to its weakness with relentless criticism in hopes of stealing away its viewers. Twitter’s Elon Musk seems to fancy himself as a potential successor to Rupert Murdoch as the right’s media empire builder and is amassing allies, albeit with what are at best significant growing pains.

The network's vulnerability is heightened by criticisms from Trump himself, who has used it as a foil. As I noted last month at MSNBC.com, the network’s posture toward the 2024 presidential primary has been an open question:

Fox’s alliance with Trump is currently in flux. After some initial ill will, the network’s endless promotion helped Trump to the presidency in 2016, and it effectively became state TV for his administration. Fox hosts gained unprecedented influence as the president regularly watched their shows, tweeted about their commentary in real time and took their advice. In turn, their assistance gave Trump a powerful propaganda tool. And since he left office in 2021, the network has continued rushing to the former president’s defense in his times of legal peril. But its support for his presidential bid has waxed and waned amid reports that the Murdochs prefer a fresher face for the Republican Party.

The decision by Fox executives to feature three Trumpists in what are traditionally its most-watched hours may help the network repair its relationship with the former president — but it will certainly shape the contours of the 2024 presidential race. Trump had already all but sewn up the GOP nomination, in no small part thanks to the work Fox hosts had done over the years in shoring up his vulnerabilities. A revamped Fox prime-time slate dedicated to supporting Trump at all costs now brings him ever closer to a return to the White House.

Fox prime-time hosts serve as tastemakers for the right-wing media and key validators for their large and loyal followings. Their support can make or break the Republican politicians who strive to win them over. Trump himself used hours of Fox appearances to win over viewers and seize the nomination in 2016.

Any of his GOP challengers who hope to replicate his achievement must somehow win over the network’s top talents, who owe their own prominence to the former president. That is a tall order, particularly with Trump already holding a large and steady lead in the polls. With Fox rallying behind him, Trump garnering the GOP’s nomination for the third consecutive election and running as a full-fledged authoritarian remains the most likely outcome.

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// bs?

Greg Gutfeld says rooting out white supremacy in the military hurts national defense | Media Matters for America

GREG GUTFELD (HOST): Tyler, I think, last night Trump called for Austin to be fired immediately. What do you think Trump would say if one of his cabinet members suddenly went missing for four days.

TYLER FISCHER (GUEST): Well, frankly I wouldn't hire somebody so incompetent. It wouldn't happen. It wouldn't happen. But this guy was, we call it a diversity hire, right? He was a diversity hire. He was the mentally retarded hire, right?

Sure, you can't say that, you can't say that. Yes, you can. You can say it. You can say it. But, no, Biden doesn't even know that he's gone missing. No, he doesn't know he's gone missing.

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Greg Gutfeld says rooting out white supremacy in the military hurts national defense | Media Matters for America

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war on xmas

On Fox’s The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld said, “This is just another example of how the White House just plays to the optics of wokeness and they don't do any research.” Gutfeld added: “This dance troupe is a Marxist organization … they came out in support of defunding the police, abolishing prisons, and they quote Marxist terrorist Angela Davis. They have an entire section on the website devoted to anti-white literature like why white feminists are racists. They want to defund the NYPD and get them out of public schools. I don't think Jill Biden did her research.” Fox News, *The Five*, [12/14/23]

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Fox News' Greg Gutfeld calls for "impeachment-palooza" of Joe Biden | Media Matters for America

Fox prime-time host Greg Gutfeld hosts race war fantasizer Kurt Schlichter | Media Matters for America

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The Bowman “insurrection” farce | Media Matters for America

Right-wing propagandists have used Rep. Jamaal Bowman’s (D-NY) local criminal charge for pulling a fire alarm to reignite their bogus claims that he is an “insurrectionist” and argue that he should spend “years” imprisoned in “the DC Gulag.”

As you may or may not recall, the right spent the end of September diligently trying to construct a major scandal out of Bowman pulling the fire alarm in a House office building. Right-wing media propagandists alleged that the congressman’s (admittedly boneheaded) move was actually a calculated attempt to stall action on the House floor, which they described as an “insurrection” comparable to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The story receded amid the chaos of the past weeks in the House of Representatives following Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) removal, but came roaring back on Wednesday, as House Republicans anointed Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and prosecutors in Washington, D.C., charged Bowman with a single count of setting off a false fire alarm.

Bowman will plead guilty to that single count, agreeing to publicly apologize and pay the maximum $1,000 fine for pulling the alarm on September 30. At the time, he explained that he had been rushing from his office in the Cannon House Office Building to the Capitol for a vote, came to a door that was usually open but at that time was locked, and “activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door.” Those claims were consistent with reports that members of Congress often go outside to get from their offices to the Capitol for votes, and Cannon’s doors are closed and alarmed on weekends, when members of Congress are typically not present.

The Capitol Police investigation into Bowman’s actions further supports his statements. An affidavit by the investigator included in the charging documents states that “security camera footage showed Bowman attempting to open the door before pulling the alarm” and subsequently “attempting to get out of the building through several other exits before making his way out of the building and … to the Capitol for the vote,” Axios reported.

“Based on the evidence presented by Capitol Police, we charged the only crime that we have jurisdiction to prosecute,” a spokesperson for the D.C. attorney general’s office said.

But right-wingers have ignored or rejected all this in the hours since news of the charge against Bowman broke, instead doubling down on their initial claims. They have continued to describe the New York representative as an “insurrectionist” and complained that, unlike the January 6 defendants, he is facing “gentle treatment” when he should face serious prison time.

Video

CitationFrom the October 25, 2023, edition of Fox News' The Five.

=“He should go to jail just like the massive number of January 6 protesters,” Fox News host Greg Gutfeld claimed on The Five, adding that Bowman’s stint in prison for pulling a fire alarm should last “years.”

Co-host Jeanine Pirro argued that Bowman’s actions had been a “political thing” by Democrats.

“They wanted to shut down so they could trash the Republicans. He was trying to delay it,” she jeered. (In reality, Bowman and every other member of the Democratic caucus but one voted for the bill to avert a shutdown and fund the government through mid-November.)

Right-wing influencers chimed in on social media with a similar schtick.

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This treatment of Bowman’s fire alarm snafu shows the continuation of three general trends on the Trumpist right.

First, many influential figures are either too lazy to examine the facts before commenting, or have total contempt for their audiences and assume they will not do so.

Second, they desperately want political prosecutions. If Republicans have faced legal accountability, in their worldview, Democrats must be made to face it as well, even if they haven’t committed the same crimes.

Third, Tucker Carlson’s twisted view that January 6 was no big deal has spread throughout the movement. The insurrection is treated as either a cudgel or a joke, not a horrifying disaster that should be prevented from repeating in the future.

That's how you end up with members of Congress jeering reporters for asking the newly-minted House speaker about his past role trying to overturn the 2020 election. Donald Trump’s efforts to toss the results are simply old news that they don’t want to talk about, even as they install one of the architects of the former president’s election subversion plot at the highest level of government.

The laughable right-wing effort to compare Rep. Bowman to January 6 insurrectionists

10/01/23 3:42 PM EDT

Fox host claims Rep. Bowman thought “he could get away” with pulling fire alarm because he is the “right race”

10/01/23 10:49 AM EDT

Tucker Carlson preemptively blames Rep. Jamaal Bowman for any future attempts on his life by right-wing extremists h

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note same time as razor wire kia texas

https://www.alternet.org/bombing-mexico-shoplifting-terrorist-activity/

an 7 23 no lnx

Fox hosts: Bombing Mexico 'a good idea' because shoplifting is 'terrorist activity'

Maya Boddie July 26, 2023

During the Wednesday, July 25, segment of Fox News' The Five, the conservative co-hosts Jesse Watters, Jeanine Pirro, Dana Perino and Greg Gutfeld suggested Mexican drug cartels are behind a shoplifting surge in America, and to combat the alleged issue — the U.S. military should bomb them.

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Host Jesse Watters began the conversation saying, "While the liberal media gets a crash course on crime, we're learning that Mexican drug cartels are fueling America's shoplifting surge. They're selling the stolen stuff online and then laundering the profits through, guess where? Chinese brokers. So, Dana, CNN finally discovered crime is a crisis in San Francisco."

Dana Perino replied, "This is after they made fun of us for pointing it out last year...On this point, I think that finding out that there areMexican cartels behind this, makes me feel maybe there's hope that we could figure out a way to do something about it. So the state attorneys general are banding together and they're like let's go after it. But also they need help from the retailers. The retailers don't want to be looted like this either. But the problem, to me, is that all this stuff gets taken and then it's resold online. Like on Amazon, for example. So can Amazon help us out? Somehow, can they figure out a way to track them? We've got AI, we've got all these other tools. There must be a way to try to prevent all of this from happening."

READ MORE: Donald Trump complains that 'somebody leaked' his plans to launch Patriot missiles at Mexican cartels

In April, CNN interviewed Mission Local managing editor Joe Eskenazi about San Francisco's surge in crime, and the editor noted, "There is crime in downtown San Francisco, but there always has been.I think the notion that these businesses were driven out by crime is frankly dishonest. That's always been a factor."

Eskenazi later added, "San Francisco also has lots of property crime because there's a great divergence of wealth and people steal things. But San Francisco’s violent crime rate is at a near historic low right now."

Watters then said, "You can put up the task force, maybe with the FBI, bring in the DEA, make it transnational Greg, since the cartels are involved."

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Greg Gutfeld replied, "It's weird to see these cartels diversify. They're almost like Amazon now. They're doing drugs, smuggling and theft, pretty soon they're gonna have their own podcast. There's another thing that we said a long time ago and I bet we don't -- bombing the car-- remember we said we were talking about bombing the cartels? And people were going, 'No, no, no, that's an act of war, that's in another country.' Yeah, but we do that to terrorists as well, and this is kind of a terrorist activity. And the thing is, now, we see this at least on the Republican side, a lot of candidates are talking about doing it and I think it's a good idea. I think we need to elect a president who values a border. That's the important thing. Bomb these. And there's, like, one cartel we can cooperate with, let them kill the rest. Encourage them to kill the rest."

READ MORE: MTG says U.S. should be 'bombing Mexican cartels' and 'Antifa BLM rioters' instead of 'aiding' Ukraine

Watters then asked Pirro, "Remember when the Chinese were ripping off our DVDs and we sent the entire federal government after them and we actually were pretty effective. This is pretty similar in terms of now it's shoplifting.

She said, "Yeah, and I remember prosecuting a case for the Motion Picture Association because what they were doing was people were going in and they were just making copies of movies," to which Watters replied, "I've watched a few movies like that where the guy just holds the camcorder and the finger? I mean, my friend watched it."

Pirro added, "This is part of a, you know, global organized criminal activity. The problem is that this organization is not just doing retail theft. They're also doing human trafficking. They're doing fentanyl. They're doing all kinds of crime and so they're expanding their criminal network. And now they're going to be so powerful, I don't know if we're ever going to be able to defeat them. Because we've got a president right now, who, you know, with the border -- and they're in charge at the border -- there is nothing going on that's preventing the fentanyl from coming in. We hear about an arrest every now and then. It's usually the locals making the arrests, not the federal government. But the issue is whether or not these criminals are being prosecuted. That guy walked out, right, and then the person in the store says it's a police state for everyone. So for the victims it's a police state, with the criminal, it's not a police state.

That's the actual problem. It's low risk and it's high reward. Low risk because the employee's not gonna punch you out, you're not gonna get arrested, you're gonna make a fortune. You're gonna start this business and you're gonnalaunder your money through China. And unless we get serious about this, whether it's bombing or whatever -- you have to come up with something. These organizations are dangerous. They are absolutely dangerous. And for everybody at home, your insurance is gonna go up because of it. The cost of retail and consumer products are gonna go up. You're paying for this."

The New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported last year that "President Donald J. Trump in 2020 asked Mark T. Esper, his defense secretary, about the possibility of launching missiles into Mexico to “destroy the drug labs” and wipe out the cartels, maintaining that the United States’ involvement in a strike against its southern neighbor could be kept secret, Mr. Esper recounts in his upcoming memoir. When Mr. Esper raised various objections, Mr. Trump said that 'we could just shoot some Patriot missiles and take out the labs, quietly,' adding that 'no one would know it was us.'"

READ MORE: 'Bomb the Mexicans' is the GOP’s new 'build the wall': columnist

However, Haberman wrote experts argue that, "Patriot missiles are the primary surface-to-air missile used by the U.S. military, which is designed as anti-aircraft and anti-ballistic missile interceptors.As there are no reports of airborne drug labs in Mexican air space.

Trump supporter U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) complained earlier this year that American is "not bombing the Mexican cartels who are poisoning Americans every single day. And I know that sounds extreme. I'm not talking about the Mexican government or the Mexican people. I'm talking about the cartels. They're murdering Americans."

Miami Herald columnist Jean Guerrero notes the "Calls for U.S. attacks on Mexican drug cartels, recently discussed in secret if at all, have become a loudly expressed talking point for Republicans who are trying to exploit the violent rhetoric for political gain," highlighting Trump's 2024 GOP opponent and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis' "recent promises to deploy the military against drug cartels, along with his support for executing smugglers and his assertion that 'you absolutely can use deadly force.'"

She argues, "Republicans aren't making a good faith argument, and that their rhetoric has more to do with racism than finding solutions to the ongoing opioid crisis."

Axios reports earlier this year, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas) said, "If my colleagues were serious about addressing the cartels, they would start with addressing guns here in America," noting that the cartels "are able to outgun Mexican local law enforcement because of American guns."

READ MORE: 'Time to reverse course': NYT Editorial Board endorses ending the War on Drugs

Watch Media Matters' video below or at this link.

READ MORE: Lawmakers readying bipartisan bills to authorize Pentagon resources to combat fentanyl: report

CNN's full report is available at this link. Axios' report is here.

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pretty sure i called it, he was clearly auditioning  no lnx an 6 23

Fox News has just announced it is revamping its primetime lineup in the wake of firing far-right host Tucker Carlson and as the 2024 presidential election approaches – and it’s handing the 8:00 PM hour to Jesse Watters, current co-host of its show “The Five.”

Variety reports the Watters move, and adds, “Fox News will also move Greg Gutfeld into the primetime block, giving him the 10 p.m. hour, while the current occupant, the conservative firebrand Laura Ingraham. takes up the reins of the early-evening 7 p.m. hour. Sean Hannity will keep his perch at 9 p.m., a slot he has held since 2017.”

Watters is the largely expected choice. A profile from Insider earlier this month revealed, “Jesse Watters likes picking fights. And he is fiercely loyal to Fox News, his professional home of two decades, starting when he was 24.Though best known as [Bill] O’Reilly’s attack dog until O’Reilly was pushed out of the network in 2017,Watters was also key to the launch of the right-wing Fox Nation blog. As cohost of ‘The Five’ and on his own 7 p.m. show, Watters delivers the network’s talking points with a grin and a touch of levity.”

READ MORE: ‘No Dead Bodies’: Fox News Hosts Suggest Trump Indicted for ‘Carelessness’ and ‘Where a Piece of Paper Goes’

Insider added, “Watters has found a far larger pool of libs to trigger” than just his parents, “but he continues to delight in the consternation his politics provoke in his mom. He’s known to occasionally read aloud the texts sent by his mom on ‘The Five.'”

“‘You end up presenting a lack of a moral compass honey,’ Watters quoted her saying in response to a 2018 segment on the Mueller investigation. ‘We all know you are a Trumpet — you need not scream it.'”

The same day as Insider’s profile of Watters ran, Variety reported on Watters’ week.

“Here’s a quick list. (1) He pissed on helping the homeless: ‘You can’t subsidize antisocial behavior you have to stigmatize it. These are people that have failed in life and they’re on their deathbed.’ 2. He casually explained that Donald Trump was just ‘sifting through [documents] and determining which were personal and which were presidential.’ 3. He compared not letting RFK Jr. come on his show to making a girl beg for a date. 4. He misidentified ‘The Five’ panel member Jessica Tarlov as ‘Katie.’ 5. In another episode, Watters cut off Tarlov, aka Katie, and threatened to ‘smack’ her with his copies of the Presidential Records Act.”

READ MORE: ‘Wrong and Dangerous’: Another Republican Former US Attorney General Lays Out the Case Against Trump

Responding to the news of Watters being promoted to the important 8 PM hour, MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan wrote, “Watters gets the Carlson slot. No reduction in racist fearmongering or Trump adulation at 8pm then.”

NPR’s David Gura posted video from 2016 that made Watters famous. It was widely criticized at the time as racist.

Watch the Watters video below or at this link.

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Fox guest: 'Somebody is going to have to pull a trigger' to stop Trump prosecutions ›

'Coulda shoved this down their throats': Jesse Watters scolds Lindsey Graham over timing of abortion ban ›

Fox News’ Jesse Watters boasts about his own reporting after claiming child rape report was actually a hoax ›

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Greg Gutfeld, during a Wednesday segment of The Five, insisted conspiracy theorist and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., was right about his "nonbinary" theory.

Media Matters for America shared a video of Gutfeld's conversation with his Fox News colleagues, including host Jesse Watters, about testosterone.

Gutfeld said, "It's okay to cry, my fellow guys. A survey finds that 71% of modern men confess to being in touch with how they feel and 82% of women are saying the same thing. I can't even see who this survey is. 37% of men say being called sensitive would be a compliment versus just 23% of women. I know. First, I'm going to go to Jesse: I think we're learning that RFK Jr. was right. There's substances in the water that reduce testosterone and when you reduce testosterone, you get these weepy men and this rise in nonbinary affiliations."

READ MORE: Journalist details RFK Jr.’s appeal to a 'crackpot collection of fascists and anti-progressive leftists'

Watters replied, "Yeah, so I'm not drinking water anymore because you told me it turns you trans."

Gutfeld emphasized, "Yeah, it turns you trans, especially if you're a frog."

The right-wing commentator highlighted his book, How to be Right, in a 2015 article for The National Review, citing "fracking" as something he is "for."

Describing a conversation he had with his friend, Gutfeld wrote:

"That's the weird thing about fracking: What are we fracking? Natural gas. That's why I am for it. I am pro-environment, and most environmentalists were for natural gas because it was natural. Natural gas was the alternative to all those dirty fuels." Then I explain that environmentalists changed their tune as we found better ways to access it. So the only difference among environmentalists, before the boom and after — was the boom: We found more of this amazing clean fuel. In short, the greenie would be for fracking, if we did less of it.

READ MORE: Tucker Carlson rewrites history with claim Big Pharma 'PR campaign' silenced RFK Jr.’s anti-vax lies

In 2020, Penn Medicine News reported the dangers of fracking, noting assistant professor of Informatics in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Mary Regina Boland, PhD, said, "The chemical mixtures used in fracking are known to regulate hormonal pathways, including testosterone and estrogen, and can therefore affect human development and reproduction."

She added, "Knowing about these chemicals is important, not only for researchers who may be studying health outcomes in a community, but also for individuals who may want to learn more about possible health implications based on their proximity to a well. They can then potentially have their water tested."

Furthermore, regarding "nonbinary affiliations," the National Center for Transgender Equality reports:

Nonbinary people are nothing new. Non-binary people aren’t confused about their gender identity or following a new fad – nonbinary identities have been recognized for millennia by cultures and societies around the world.

Some, but not all, nonbinary people undergo medical procedures to make their bodies more congruent with their gender identity.  While not all nonbinary people need medical care to live a fulfilling life, it’s critical and even life-saving for many.

READ MORE: Naomi Klein: The 'Democratic consultant class' ignores RFK Jr.’s campaign at its own peril

Watch the Media Matters video or at this link.

READ MORE: 'Amen': Caitlyn Jenner praises Nikki Haley’s anti-trans attack

The National Review's full report is available at this link. Penn Medicine News' report is here. The National Center for Transgender Equality's report is here.

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https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/greg-gutfelds-toxic-and-extreme-commentary-now-moving-fox-news-prime-time

Gutfeld's show has moved up to the 10 p.m. slot from 11 p.m. amid the latest shakeup in Fox News’ prime-time scheduling. He’s spent years at the network spouting bigotry, making sexist comments, and spreading misinformation – literally. This comes as Fox News is under immense pressure following a record defamation lawsuit, and with ratings down following the departure of Tucker Carlson.

Joining Fox in 2007, Gutfeld first hosted the late-night/early-morning talk show Red Eye, which crudely satirized current events and pop culture. He then joined Fox’s program The Five in 2011 as a co-host and panelist, headed The Greg Gutfeld Show from 2015-2021, and eventually began hosting his own weekly late-night program, Gutfeld! Over the years he’s developed an on-air reputation as afar-right bomb-thrower and full-time bigot.

Gutfeld defended former President Donald Trump after he refused to disavow the neo-fascist street gang the Proud Boys in 2020 and has dismissed violence from far-right militias as “a lie” and “easily disprovable.” Additionally, Gutfeld has minimized attempts by Trump to overturn the election results in Georgia, called for a “peaceful revolution” against mask mandates, and likened climate activists to mass shooters. In 2022, Gutfeld said he wouldn’t go to college now because he doesn’t find the students attractive enough and blamed young girls who “want to look sexy and hot” for their own body image issues.

More recently, Gutfeld and other hosts of The Five reportedly bombed with audience members while making jokes about the Writers Guild of America strike in New York during Fox Corp.’s upfront presentation to media buyers.

Gutfeld’s incendiary and oftentimes downright false statements have covered a variety of topics throughout the years, including guns, abortion, and crime, and he’s trafficked in racism, xenophobia, sexism, and other bigotry.

racism

On May 15, Gutfeld claimed Democrats are lying about the threat of white supremacy to “keep Blacks angry.”

On May 4, Gutfeld blamed George Floyd for the killing of Jordan Neely.

On May 1, Gutfeld stated that “wokeism is every bit as racist as white nationalism.”

On April 12, Gutfeld claimed that “the first rung onto the ladder of capitalism often is drug dealing for Blacks.”

On March 13, Gutfeld said that “white leftists do worse things to Blacks than the Aryan Nations ever could.”

On January 10, Gutfeld suggested that President Joe Biden is hiding “Barack Obama’s real birth certificate” and using it for blackmail.

In February 2022, Gutfeld argued that podcaster Joe Rogan’s repeated use of a racial slur is acceptable because “Blacks see that the word is being used as a tool.”

In January 2022, Gutfeld accused Democrats of “race warfare” which he said would lead “towards revolution.”

In November 2021, Gutfeld said that Virginia Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears “dared to leave the plantation of ideology.”

Also in November 2021, Gutfeld claimed Democrats are teaching children that “being white at birth is bad.”

In June 2021, Gutfeld said the U.S. military has adopted a “racist theology” against white people.

Also in June 2021, Gutfeld argued that “police go to where the crime is. That's high crime areas where decent people of color live, but also riffraff.”

Reacting to Derek Chauvin’s guilty verdict in April 2021, Gutfeld said, “I’m glad that he was found guilty on all charges, even if he might not be guilty of all charges."

Also in April 2021, Gutfeld attacked the media for supposedly not covering “positive interactions” with police and creating a perception it’s “hunting season for Blacks.”

In March 2021, Gutfeld said that Meghan Markle cynically exploited “the racial obsession embraced by Western media.”

In September 2020, Gutfeld defended Trump's refusal to denounce white supremacy and right-wing extremist groups. One month earlier, he declared that mentioning Trump's remarks about “very fine people” at Charlottesville isn't “healthy for America.”

​​In June 2020, Gutfeld dismissed police brutality against Black people and instead blamed videos of such brutality for sending America toward “a race war.”

In May 2020, Gutfeld blamed “the unbending mind” for the killing of George Floyd and questioned what happened before the video started.

Also in May 2020, Gutfeld compared disgraced Gen. Mike Flynn to the Central Park Five, who were wrongly convicted of rape.

In April 2020, Gutfeld attacked Michigan’s governor for criticizing swastikas at a social distancing protest, claiming they were being displayed ironically.

In September 2017, Gutfeld suggested Black NFL players should devote more time to talking about violence between Black men instead of police brutality.

In August 2017, Gutfeld asked, “Do we really need to push for an increase in diversity anymore?”

In June 2016, Gutfeld suggested shortening the Muslim holiday of Ramadan to decrease terrorism.

In March 2016, Gutfeld claimed Obama received political “immunity” because he was “the first Black candidate.”

In January 2016, Gutfeld said liberals don't want to enforce gun laws because “that means there will be more Blacks in jail.”

In September 2012, Gutfeld used the racist birther smear against Obama to criticize Daniel Day-Lewis’ casting in Lincoln because “we’re outsourcing our presidents”: “First, we have a Kenyan in the White House, and now we have a Brit playing Lincoln.”

In August 2012, Gutfeld said Democratic policies have “infantilized” Black Americans and “made them addicted to crappy programs.”

In July 2011, Gutfeld claimed some Black Americans voted for Obama “because it would sound traitorous if they didn’t.”

Sexism and misogyny

On May 23, Gutfeld applauded a high school teacher charged with engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a 16-year-old student, adding, “Come on! 16 years old — I would have died for that!”

On March 16, Gutfeld said that Vice President Kamala Harris sounds like “a woman at the bar on her fourth skinny margarita.”

On February 1, Gutfeld called climate activist Greta Thunberg “that bug-eyed brat.”

In October 2022, Gutfeld said he wouldn’t go to college now because he doesn’t find the students attractive enough.

In September 2022, Gutfeld called Thunberg one of the “shrieking psycho brats” who have “poisoned the dialogue with hysteria.”

Also in September 2022, Gutfeld called support for reproductive rights a “psychosis” led by “young, angry single women.”

Responding to the Supreme Court vacancy in January 2022, Gutfeld and other co-hosts mocked reports of sexual assault.

In September 2021, Gutfeld blamed young girls who “want to look sexy and hot” for their own body image issues: “This is a girls problem created by girls.”

In April 2021, Gutfeld compared CNN to a date rapist.

In October 2020, Gutfeld called Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and then-Sen. Kamala Harris “petty” and “jealous” “mean girls.”

In April 2017, Gutfeld told a colleague on air that she was giving America an erection.

In March 2016, Gutfeld accused Hillary Clinton of “bigotry against men” and said she “sounds like the product of two car alarms mating.”

Also in March 2016, Gutfeld said Clinton's greatest “sin” was that she “doesn't care about men's concerns.”

In July 2011, Gutfeld said Congress raising the debt ceiling is “like a wife and her credit cards. Americans have to be the husband that takes the credit card and breaks it up.”

Xenophobia

In January 2022, Gutfeld called immigration a “slow rolling insurrection.”

In September 2021, Gutfeld said the Geneva Conventions are “overrated” and called for the execution of enemy prisoners of war.

In June 2021, Gutfeld fearmongered that a 5-year-old immigrant who was abandoned at the border could be connected to drug dealers.

In April 2021, Gutfeld said refugees seeking asylum at the southern border are in a “win-win” situation.

In March 2021, Gutfeld compared living in America with increased immigration to living in a “rough neighborhood” without an alarm system.

Also in March 2021, Gutfeld said it's “a load of hooey” that any families were separated at the border under Trump.

In September 2017, Gutfeld claimed that Trump got a lot of his ideas about immigration from watching The Five.

Anti-LGBTQ hate

In December 2022, Gutfeld said he uses the label “groomer” in retaliation for being called a racist.

In August 2022, Gutfeld used a study about self-driving cars to make transphobic comments.

In June 2019, Gutfeld claimed LGBTQ advocates are transitioning kids to be trans in order to eliminate gay and lesbian people, comparing the practice to dangerous and discredited anti-LGBTQ conversion therapy.

In May 2016, Gutfeld complained Obama “is declaring war on bathrooms” as ISIS “works 24/7 on our demise, while we're sitting here wondering about gender pronouns.”

In February 2012, Gutfeld said the media would love NBA player Jeremy Lin more “if he was a transgendered female.”

Election denial

In May 2021, Gutfeld made a pathetic, bumbling dodge when asked if Biden was the legitimate winner of the presidential election.

In April 2021, Gutfeld claimed that opponents of Georgia’s voter suppression think “photo IDs are worse than slave labor and genocide.”

In January 2021, Gutfeld dismissed Trump’s attempt to change Georgia election results as “the latest media hoax.”

Climate denial

On April 28, Gutfeld likened climate activists to mass shooters.

On April 21, Gutfeld said the concept of “environmental justice” was designed to bully people into believing in climate change.

On April 12, Gutfel claimed climate change “improves people's lives.”

In February 2022, Gutfeld put blame on Greta Thunberg for the Ukrainian invasion: “Maybe she'll drop solar panels down into Kyiv to save people.”

In September 2021, Gutfeld claimed that the data to prove climate change is “never there.”

In August 2021, Gutfeld dismissed climate change: “Warming temperatures saves more lives in other parts of the world.”

In May 2021, Gutfeld said the climate crisis “does not exist.”

Opening The Five, Gutfeld in June 2013 said climate skeptics “were right all along” and said Obama was “denying science” in his climate change speech.

In October 2016, Gutfeld said climate change consensus is the “radical Islam of science,” adding, “You have to wonder about a belief system that doesn't want any challenges, that doesn't want any of their theories to be questioned.”

In April 2016, Gutfeld said that climate scientists “have a lot in common with ISIS cause they both wanna go back to the 7th century.”

In August 2011, Gutfeld promoted drilling for oil in the Everglades, saying, “It’s just a big swamp. … I would drill everywhere.”

Guns

In July 2022, Gutfeld claimed the media “can decrease these shootings by 30%” by ignoring them.

In June 2022, Gutfeld falsely claimed that no person with a concealed carry permit has ever committed a mass shooting.

In April 2021, Gutfeld blamed gun violence on “the defund movement and the Ferguson effect.”

In January 2022, Gutfeld said, “We are a country of fighters, and we will do it again by February 1. Because, you know what? We can. We've got the Second Amendment. We run this country.”

In September 2020, Gutfeld said that if protests continued, “that Second Amendment starts looking miraculous.”

Also in September 2020, Gutfeld dismissed violence from right-wing militias as “a lie” and “easily disprovable.”

In August 2019, Gutfeld said that nothing can be done to stop mass shootings and blamed the media for amplifying the massacres.

In June 2016, Gutfeld declared “It's homophobic” not to allow guns in gay bars following the Pulse nightclub mass shooting.

In January 2016, Gutfeld suggested “we return to the days of the Wild West” and promoted more guns to stop terrorism.

January 6

In July 2022, Gutfeld made the ridiculous claim that the January 6 hearings were “exonerating Trump.”

In June 2022, Gutfeld whined that “no mercy” was “being shown for the January 6 protesters.”

In July 2021, Gutfeld described the January 6 insurrection as merely politicians having their jobs “disrupted for two hours.”

Abortion

In November 2022, Gutfeld dismissed the importance of abortion rights to voters.

In September 2022, Gutfeld called support for reproductive rights a “psychosis” led by “young, angry single women.”

In May 2022, Gutfeld said it “seems pretty gross” to state that abortion access impacts the poor.

In May 2012, Gutfeld questioned why the public knew how Obama felt about same-sex marriage but not abortion, saying: “I wonder if its because gays have deeper pockets than fetuses?”

Covid misinformation

While isolated from his colleagues as a COVID-19 precaution In January 2022, Gutfeld declared that “the pandemic is over.”

In September 2021, Gutfeld called for a “peaceful revolution” over mask mandates.

In August 2021, Gutfeld blamed Obama's birthday party for low vaccination rates among Black Americans.

In February 2021, Gutfeld predicted that “history is going to be kind to Trump” for his coronavirus response.

In January 2021, Gutfeld called Biden “the angel of death” of coronavirus messaging.

In March 2020, Gutfeld dismissed Trump's coronavirus press briefing lies: No one “takes Trump word for word.” 

On The Five in May 2020, Gutfeld responded to a report that 66% of roughly 600 new COVID-19 hospitalizations in New York State by saying the statistic shows that “the disease came and got them” in their homes, and “staying home doesn’t help anymore after we flattened this curve.” He also warned the media to now “be super, super careful” about criticizing people who violate stay-at-home orders.

In August 2020, Gutfeld suggested it's “tyrannical” for Biden to urge governments to enact mask mandates.

In November 2020, as the country hit a crisis moment with COVID-19, Gutfeld declared: “We're not in a crisis moment."

https://www.mediamatters.org/jesse-watters/jesse-watters-foxs-new-8-pm-host-advertisers-should-beware

https://www.mediamatters.org/angelo-carusone/angelo-carusone-foxs-new-prime-time-lineup-network-going-back-out-sea-leaning-their

// BTB rush BO white kids will get beat up now

https://www.mediamatters.org/five/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-joe-biden-has-put-target-whites

"biden all in on ej"

mma 4 23  note victim rev discrim BS

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): What does environmental justice mean? AOC laid out perfectly: the environment is now tied to racism, which is what they did with ESG -- environmental social governance. It's a scorecard, another scorecard that takes measures on how companies act responsibly. So, they marry the environment to race because it couldn't be believed alone, the numbers weren't working. The projections weren't working. But you know what works? Being scared of being called a racist.

So, environmental justice, if you do not agree with it, if you don't swallow the climate agenda, if you don't agree with AOC, you probably don't just hate the planet, you probably hate non-white people as well.

And the consequences of that, we've talked about it before, with every aspect of life being filled with racism or injustice. The roads are racist we found out this week. Pollution is racist, we just found out. Cheap energy, fossil fuels, that's racist because it hurts non-white people. If you don't want to be looted, that's racist, too, because looting is mere redefinition of justice.

Basically, you're telling people that they can -- you're sanctioning crime. You're sanctioning riots. That's why the politicians in Chicagosaid as much and said that this was their way of evening the score. Because when you tell everybody, and you program their brain with this language that the world sucks and it's this group of people behind it, now it's in climate. Now it's in climate. 

https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-claims-climate-change-improves-peoples-lives

mma 4 23

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): The green movement is tied up in knots right now.Electric cars exploit cheap human labor in Africa and in China. The climate predictions are falling apart. The smart folks are flocking to nuclear andidentity politics stole the thunder from the climate agenda. And how do you know that?

You've got to look atESG, right? Equity social governance. Why are they packed together like that at companies? It's because you couldn't do climate on its own because no one bought it. So what they did is they married it to race and they married it to gender, so if you come out against ESG, it's about you being a bigot, not about you being smart about the climate.

None of their predictions have come true. None of them. They are fighting. They are forcing America to do this crap over one -- less than a percent Celsius, less than a percent Celsius. It has no effect.

And in fact, as this climate gets warmer, people's lives improve. That's a fact. That's a fact.People die from cold weather more frequently than warm weather, so give me your cancer B.S. 

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-first-rung-ladder-capitalism-often-drug-dealing-blacks

an 3 23

fox News anchor Greg Gutfield on Thursday unleashed a diatribe against proposals to provide reparations to eligible Black residents of San Francisco, California to atone for the United States' history of enslaving human beings.

The potential benefits – of which there are more than a hundred, according to a Tuesday PBS News Hour report – include a $5,000,000 payment, the chance to purchase a home for one dollar, tax breaks for Black-owned businesses, andopportunities for free or nearly free higher education.

Conservatives have complained that the program is unnecessary and wasteful. Gutfield's argument on The Five, however, went much further.

READ MORE: Watch: Tucker Carlson believes that 'Nazi race science' will be used by California’s Reparations Task Force

"This is near to your home city where you grew up and it's a place that you used to love," co-host Dana Perino commented.

"Yeah this is, uh, Harold is right. No one should be taking this seriously at all. This is hilarious. It's probably one of the funniest things I've ever heard. So why is it so ludicrous? Why, why did – they did this on purpose. They don't want this. What they want is to divide people, to create another commotion over race. If you had an actual, practical plan over this, it would be modest, it would probably include – it probably wouldn't even include payouts at all.It would be about education. That’s what it would be.It would be about, okay, part of this reparations, and we got to trace it back to who had slaves, who didn't have slaves, blah blah, this is going to take forever.But, if we can figure this out, you don't pay for education. You get the best education there is. That is called a – that’s a reparation. This is designed by people who don't – who are hiding their classism behind their racism," an incensed Gutfield said.

"I mean, they're hiding their classism by a race war. So, if we weren't sitting here talking about this, we'd be looking at Pelosi, we'd be looking at Newsom, we'd be looking at the crazy lady on the board,[svb bank?] " he continued. "These are all – it's amazing, white leftists do worse things to Blacks than the Aryan Nations ever could."

READ MORE: Conservative columnist regrets ever supporting the GOP and blasts its 'toxic discharge of bigotry'

GREG GUTFELD (HOST): But the thing is, I would not be doing my job if I didn't raise the important questions that need to be raised about what actually happened. Do we know that there aren't nuclear secrets in there? Perhaps he exchanged nuclear secrets to China for the 10 percent, that's a question worth raising. What if he has Barack Obama's real birth certificate, and that's what got him the VP job! He's been blackmailing the Black males.

mma 11 22

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): This stuff doesn't bother me anymore. I mean, if we get upset about this, then we're the snowflakes that we've been making fun of forever. I mean, what did Trump say to protesters when he came in?

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): Knock 'em out!

GUTFELD: Knock 'em out! And we found that magical.

WATTERS: We did, we did. I still do.

THE END OF strait? origin of greg g?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/blockbuster-report-fox-executives-and-top-anchor-bret-baier-tried-subvert-decision-desk

matt g

Top Fox News executives interfered with the election projections of the network’s vaunted “decision desk” due to blowback from then-President Donald Trump, according to a new book. The reports — and the actions Fox took with regard to its decision desk following the 2020 election — demolish the network’s argument that its “news side” is a credible journalistic operation walled off from the “opinion side’s” Republican Party propaganda machine.

InThe Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser report that while Fox’s decision desk had been comfortable with its election night call that Joe Biden had won Arizona, “Fox executives were freaking out” that week as the network came “under tremendous pressure from Trump and his allies.” Fox’s call made it more difficult for Trump to subvert the election after declaring victory on election night, and he responded by successfully encouraging Fox viewers to switch to its competitors.

Jay Wallace, Fox’s president and executive editor, took a direct action overriding the decision desk in hopes of avoiding further criticism from Trump supporters on the Friday after election day, according to Baker and Glasser.

Wallace “overruled the Decision Desk team including Bill Sammon,Arnon Miskin, and Chris Stirewalt, refusing to let them call Nevada for Biden even after other networks did, a level of interference that had been unheard of in past elections,” they write. “The reason had little to do with Nevada. Because of the Arizona projection, calling Nevada would give Biden enough electoral votes for victory. Wallace did not want Fox to be the first to call the election and declare Biden president-elect.”

Wallace’s act followed two other proposals from senior Fox employees to interfere with the decision desk for Trump’s benefit, according to the book.

First, “at 8:30 the morning after the election, Suzanne Scott, the chief executive officer, even suggested that Fox should not call any more states until they were officially certified,” they reported. As Baker and Glasser noted, “official state certifications typically took days or even weeks and no network had ever waited until then before telling their viewers who had won.”

“A couple other top executives backed up Scott,” while Sammon, the Washington managing editor who directed the decision desk, advised against the move, according to the book. (That Sammon, who slanted Fox’s reporting to the right and bragged about falsely portraying Barack Obama as a socialist during the 2008 election,was the voice of reason here shows how far the network had gone.)

But two days later, they report that Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier sent Wallace an email arguing that Fox should reverse its Arizona call and instead project that Trump had won the state — even though he trailed at the time by more than 10,000 votes.

“The Trump campaign was really pissed,” he wrote in an email to Jay Wallace, the president and executive editor at Fox. “This situation is getting uncomfortable. Really uncomfortable. I keep having to defend this on air.” He accused the Decision Desk of “holding on for pride” and added: “It’s hurting us. The sooner we pull it—even if it gives us major egg [on our faces]—and we put it back in his column the better we are in my opinion.

Fox executives sell ads by touting the purported firewall between the network’s right-wing “opinion side” and its respectable “news side.” But here we have the network’s top “news side” anchor imploring the head of “news side” programming to make the “news side” decision desk fraudulently award a state to Trump because his campaign was demanding it. That says more about Fox’s role as GOP propaganda than any “opinion side” monologue. (In a statement, Baier denied writing that the Trump campaign “was really pissed,” claiming that the quote was “from an external email that I referenced,” but complained only of the “context” of the remainder of the quotes.)

Wallace didn’t follow through on Baier’s proposal, but according to Baker and Glasser he blocked the decision desk’s Nevada call the following day.The day after that, Fox saw the writing on the wall and followed CNN, ABC, CBS, and The Associated Press in declaring that Biden had won the election.

But that wasn’t the end of it. The network’s brass subsequently established an incentive structure that would dissuade similar “news side” threats to Fox’s bottom line.

Baker and Glasser report that Sammon and Stirewalt were then “summarily fired,” with the announcement delayed until January and described as a “retirement” and part of a “restructuring,” respectively.

Over the months that followed,“opinion side” hosts Greg Gutfeld and Jesse Watters, who had both questioned the network’s Arizona call, were given their own weeknight shows. They each took over time slots that had previously been occupied by “news side” programs. Other prominent election deniers were also promoted and given increased prominence at the network.

Everyone who works at Fox now knows that if they help Republicans try to steal an election, they’ll be richly rewarded. If they try to interfere with that effort by accurately stating that the Democrats won, the network’s top executives may overrule them and they will find themselves looking for a new job.

Fox’s decision desk is now just another piece of the right’s election subversion machine— one its executives can deploy at will — and its projections should be treated as such. Any future Fox election calls that diverge from other networks to the benefit of the GOP should be treated with extreme skepticism.

note aha-ish parental rights is almost only issue gop has for midterms, and key to sweatervest win va

https://www.mediamatters.org/greg-gutfeld/fox-news-host-greg-gutfeld-says-he-supports-book-banning-including-beloved-which-he

mma 9 22

mehdi h: one word, projection

 GUTFELD (HOST): This is hilarious. You can't be like the media, you can't be like the Democrats when every time Donald Trump spoke or was at a rally or the inauguration, their hair was on fire. Right? And Trump supporters would be attacked.This is what the media wants you to do right now. This is what Joe Biden wants you to do right now. They're trying to goad you into an emotional state for violence. That is what they actually want.

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I am pro-disinformation because one man's disinformation is another person's fact, right? A censor never says they're a censor, they just say they're concerned about your health. And so, they use medical information now as kind of the -- as the weaponry to start curtailing information. So, disinformation has now become the new hate speech, right?

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an 7 22

no lnx

They're projecting': Fox News sparks outrage after calling teachers union the 'KKK with summers off'

Fox News host Greg Gutfield (screengrab/@justinbaragona/Twitter).

Meaghan Ellis

July 08, 2022

A co-host of Fox News’ The Five is facing deep criticism for her recent rant comparing the largest teachers union in the United States to the Ku Klux Klan.

During a recent segment of the show, Fox News' Jesse Waters and other co-hosts discussed a new published on Wednesday about the National Education Association's (NEA) latest proposal to "substitute the term “birthing parent” for the word “mother” in order to be “inclusive,'" according to The Daily Beast.

Although the association's members have not voted on the proposal, the Fox News headline displayed on the screen declared the proposal to be “woke insanity.” That's when Waters weighed in.

READ MORE: Fox News reported that Gavin Newsom violated California's travel ban. An analysis says otherwise

“You don’t change the English language to cater to 1 percent of the population, all right?” Watters said. “These people live in a very small fraction of this country, and I’m fine with it. It’s a free country. Do your thing. But that 1 percent has to accept that the whole rest of the country doesn’t do that thing. And they have to have a little humility and kind of jive with it.”

Co-host Dana Perino also chimed in with a claim about the term “birthing people” which she insists is “the new ‘Latinx.’” According to Perino, Democrats now realize that “didn’t make sense” it ultimately “alienated” potential voters.

:{

The co-hosts then moved on to discuss the actual role of the NEA as they criticized their perspective on “school choice.” That's when Greg Gutfeldattempted to compare the teachers union to the KKK.

“Anybody at this point who opposes school choice is protecting a destructive system that harms minorities who don’t have other options, and that makes them truly racist oppressors. The NEA is the KKK with summers off. It’s true. They’re racist,” claimed Gutfeld who previously expressed concern about comparisons of the KKK to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).}:

“If you are not allowing an opportunity for people who can’t afford a good education to have a good education, you are trapping kids in a life that does not get much better,” he continued. “You worry about gang crime and you worry about gun violence, but by that time it’s too late, right? Public school, man, they destroy a kid before he even gets there by opposing any kind of opportunity to escape it.”

READ MORE: Fox News could be subject to major financial setback as judge OKs lawsuit over false election claims: report

Shortly after the clip of Gutfeld's remarks began circulating on social media, Twitter users began weighing in with critical responses.

mma 7 22

PERINO (CO-HOST): I am a little concerned -- I was thinking today, you know, the Fourth of July is Monday. How long are we going to be allowed to celebrate it?

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): Some people won't.

JEANINE PIRRO (CO-HOST): That's a great question. Some people are talking about it now.

2 sides, fair and balanced as always

https://www.alternet.org/2022/03/greg-gutfeld/

yikes, pretzel logic, lotta rubber glue reverse, identity victim on left hypocrites taking the high moral ground, exposed at last those coastal elite bastards:

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): But the left prefers to fuel a war instead of a country. And the absurd is we have been instructed by the media, the Democrats for decades that energy is a moral issue. As far as the planet goes -- coal, fracking, fossil fuels -- these are immoral things. These are crimes against the environment. And yet, it's okay to buy the dirty oil from a war machine. So, it shows you that the moral stances of these people who had been telling us for decades how much better they were than us -- us evil right-wingers in our pickup trucks, in our gas-guzzling SUVs -- they're actually the most immoral people, because they were phonies and they were liars.

But there is an amazing -- Russia played us for the longest time. They love that we denigrated our energy prowess. They loved that we bought the idea that nuclear power was bad and that solar was good, and that Greta was a hero because that made us more reliant on Russian oil, and now,Iran's oilbecause we're sitting -- we were convinced, probably through the help of Russia, that our fuel industry was bad. So, now you look at Ukraine, there are fingerprints there of thehard green movementbecause Russia used the green movement to play us and preserve their own power by selling oil. 

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): Yeah, they funded all those campaigns: "Anti-fracking, anti-nuclear." They did it.

GUTFELD: Yes.

MARTHA MACCALLUM (CO-HOST):Yes.

THE LATEST

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03/07/22 2:44 PM EST

GOP nominee for Michigan legislature shared material blaming Jewish people for 9/11, presidential assassinations, and subjugation of “white men”

03/07/22 11:52 AM EST

On Fox, Stephen Moore blamed Putin's invasion of Ukraine on “a radical green energy policy by the Biden administration”

03/06/22 11:51 AM EST

Fox News hosts make evidence-free claim that green energy campaigns in America are funded by Russia to increase dependence on foreign oil

03/04/22 6:41 PM EST

Tucker Carlson’s history of pro-Kremlin, anti-Ukraine propaganda

03/04/22 2:02 PM EST

Pagination

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IN THIS ARTICLE

Greg Gutfeld

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Fox News' Greg Gutfeld defends Republicans for heckling Joe Biden as he spoke about his dead son

03/02/22

Fox News host puts blame on Greta Thunberg for the Ukrainian invasion: “Maybe she'll drop solar panels down into Kyiv to save people”

02/28/22

KATIE PAVLICH (CO-HOST): Greg, isn't this the reason we are in this situation in the first place, because they can't get themselves off of Russian oil because European countries and the United States are fine with -- they say we're not gonna drill here, but we'll still get oil from somewhere else. 

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I've been waiting for this segment for days. This is the irony of letting children like Greta Thunberg take up shelf space in your brain. Think about all of the adults that took her opinion over the – over the progress made in fracking or drilling or the necessity of coal in nearly every country. But – you know -- no, no, no no. "How dare you?" Remember that! "How dare you?" We all sat there, oh, maybe she'll drop solar panels down into Kyiv to save people. It's not going to happen.

China and Russia must have been laughing at uswhen we were allowed to be lectured on world affairs by a 14-year-old. Oil is a world affair, energy is a world affair, fuel's a world affair. We got to wake up, we also got to get back into the nuclear world – the anti-nuke ideology put us in a hole for many decades. It's probably the greenest fuel that we will ever see. The sooner we get back to nuclear, the sooner we – we were almost energy independent, remember the good old days?

Fox News' Gutfeld blames inflation on “wokeism and virtue signaling”

02/11/22 5:43 PM EST

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-host-every-one-us-who-uses-oil-russia-complicit-atrocities-committed-ukraine

GERALDO RIVERA (CO-HOST): I'll say this also: Any business person, any company that buys Russian oil is complicit. You are aiding and abetting a monstrous war criminal. You are just as guilty.

JEANINE PIRRO (CO-HOST): Does that include America? That includes America?

RIVERA: It includes every one of us.

PIRRO: America?

RIVERA: Every one of us.

PIRRO: America?

RIVERA: If we buy -- if we buy -- I don't know about the nations -- but, generally, but I'll talk about any business person in America or anywhere else who buys Russian oil, you are complicit. Your hands are -- there's blood in that oil. You may get a bargain on it. It will haunt you forever. Turn your back on it. This -- this has to be seen in the context of what it is. This man is attempting to wipe out the Ukrainian race.

gop has no problem w/ corp price gouging on even during pandemic constantly historically evoking bogeyman on inflation and national debt for anything Dems want to spend $ on social safety net, education, healthcare vs military

don't want to focus on supply chain aspect b/c shows dependence on china (tho they love sino bash?)

corps like free Fed $ so do not want ant-inflation action?

https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-gutfeld-blames-inflation-wokeism-and-virtue-signaling

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/fox-news/ comedy fail?

an 1 22

gutfeld fox News host accuses Democrats of using public schools to push ‘race warfare’ and ‘revolution’

David Badash

Influential **Fox News** host Greg Gutfeld is accusing Democrats of engaging in "an insidious transfer of power" by using America's public school system to indoctrinate children...

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/foxs-gutfeld-we-are-country-fighters-and-we-will-do-it-again-february-1st

https://www.mediamatters.org/climate-deniers/dozen-times-right-wing-media-said-something-ridiculous-about-climate-change-2021

no lnx mant vids

A dozen times right-wing media said something ridiculous about climate change in 2021

Special PROGRAMS

CLIMATE & ENERGY

WRITTEN BY TED MACDONALD

PUBLISHED 12/23/21

1. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro doesn’t think that 4 degrees Celsius of warming is an emergency

On the April 14 edition of The Daily Wire’s The Ben Shapiro Show, host Ben Shapiro stated that “I do not consider it a quote-unquote ‘emergency’ if the climate were to warm 4 degrees Celsius over the course of the next century. … It’s just a way for them to create a certain level of alarmism that is unjustifiable by the facts on the ground."

It’s a good thing that Shapiro, whose publication is backed by fracking billionaires, has no authority or credibility within the climate science community: 4 C of warming would be literally catastrophic for large swaths of the globe. As The Guardian reported in 2019, at 4 C of climate change, we’d have sea levels that would be around 2 meters higher than today (which would render many coastal areas obsolete), destruction of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, oceanic dead zones, temperatures in the equatorial belt so high that would make for impossible living conditions for most of the year, and the beginning of a potential mass extinction for many species. This is not the first time that Shapiro has said something ignorant about the climate crisis; he once theorized that people affected by rising sea levels could just sell their inundated homes and move.

2. Fox’s Dagen McDowell thinks that cold temperatures in certain parts of the U.S. entirely disprove global warming

Fox News personalities regularly conflate climate with weather, and they generally do it to dismiss global warming. On the April 21 edition of The Five, co-host Dagen McDowell mockingly suggested that “they stopped calling it global warming” because of abnormally cold U.S. temperatures.

Video file

CitationFrom the April 21, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five

In reality, our warming climate has not eradicated cold weather, and in some cases, it has even made cold weather more severe and unpredictable. Nor have abnormally cold temperatures caused a dent in the Earth’s alarming warming trend, in which the past decade was the warmest on record.

3. Ex-coal lobbyist Steve Milloy lies about warming temperatures on One America News: “The June 2021 temperature was actually below the 40-year average”

On the August 2 edition of OAN’s The Tipping Point, former coal lobbyist and Fox News contributor Steve Milloy stated: “The June 2021 temperature was actually below the 40-year average. … There’s just so much bad information going on around, and you know, you’ve just got to be careful with climate alarmists.”

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Video file

CitationFrom the August 2, 2021, edition ofOAN's The Tipping Point

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In reality, the U.S. suffered through its hottest June on record, while it was the fifth-warmest June on record globally (followed by the hottest July ever recorded in earth’s history). Milloy is a longstanding figure in the climate denial community, and viewers have really “got to be careful” with his objectively false information.

4. Fox's Laura Ingraham suggests that climate change is really “about controlling the people” and fearmongers that climate action will lead to pandemic-style lockdowns

On both the May 18 and 19 editions of Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle, host Laura Ingraham theorized that Democrats will use climate change to control Americans’ lives through pandemic-style lockdowns.

Video file

CitationFrom the May 19, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Ingraham Angle

This is a dangerous conspiracy theory being pushed by prominent climate deniers that has taken hold among far-right media figures. To be clear, the way to fight climate change is not via lockdowns (COVID-19 lockdowns “only marginally reduced greenhouse gas emissions”), but by bringing about systemic change in our energy system and reimagining our economy and the way we live.

5. Newsmax’s Chris Salcedo doesn’t believe in “proof” that CO2 emissions are contributing to climate change

There were multiple times this year when Newsmax host Chris Salcedo went on a perplexing rant claiming there’s somehow no proof that rising CO2 emissions affect temperatures in any meaningful way. On the August 18 edition of The Chris Salcedo Show, Salcedo called global warming a “religion” that “has not been proven through science” before going on to say, “There's no mathematical proof out there that states that X amount of man-made CO2 yields Y amount of temperature change.”

Then on the December 14 edition of his show, Salcedo stated: “From experts I have read and interviewed over the years, I can say that there is no proof that man's C02 emissions are destroying the planet.” Salcedo must be interviewing some pretty fringe climate deniers as “experts,” as there is effectively unanimous scientific consensus that “humans are changing Earth's climate, primarily through greenhouse gas emissions.”

6. Fox’s Tucker Carlson rants that climate change is somehow a conspiracy to shrink your children

While Tucker Carlson is no stranger to promoting weird conspiracy theories about climate change, one of his segments from June went completely overboard. On the June 22 edition of Tucker Carlson Tonight, the Fox prime-time host accused climate scientists of wanting to use “human engineering” to “make human children smaller than they are now” and thereby reduce their lifetime greenhouse gas emissions: “All we need to do is experiment on human children and we can solve climate change.”

Tucker Human Engineering

Carlson’s claim was based on a speech given by a bioethicist nearly five years ago. As Gizmodo reported, “The ideas are bad, but they’re utterly fringe. Activists are clamoring for transforming society, not individual humans. You’d never know that from watching the segment, though.” But taking a fringe remark out of context and repurposing it to claim that the government will take over our lives seems pretty on-brand for Fox News.

7. Dennis Prager thinks the simple solution to a warming climate is to just use more air conditioning

Conservative commentator Dennis Prager, who leads a nonprofit online “university” that promotes climate denial, among other conservative talking points, offered his own absurd “solution” to climate change during a talk on September 22: “Did you know that there is a solution to a warm climate? It's called air conditioning. It's very effective.”

Prager’s comments follow a concerning new form of climate denial in right-wing media: acknowledging the climate is changing but claiming there’s nothing we can do to prevent it -- we must learn to live with it instead. In Prager’s case, he suggests that well-off people can just adapt to the warming climate by using air conditioning when it gets hot (which would only increase emissions even further), while those without access to air conditioning will suffer.

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8. On Fox News’ The Five, Greg Gutfeld claims that the data to prove climate change is “never there”

On the September 2 edition of Fox News’ The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld criticized those who connect climate change to extreme weather events -- specifically to the destructive Hurricane Ida. He stated that the data is “never there,” and that “the severity” of such storms “has been on the decline.”

LOMBORGIAN?

Video file

CitationFrom the September 2, 2021, edition of Fox News' The Five

For one, science has shown that climate change is affecting hurricanes in a number of ways as storms are dumping more rain, moving slower, and rapidly intensifying -- all hallmarks of Hurricane Ida. Secondly, the data is indeed “there,” as climate models have been correct over the past 50 years. Additionally, Gutfeld talks about “severity” only in terms of decreasing deaths from natural disasters. However, focusing on this statistic obscures the many other reasons that climate change is a serious and deadly threat. As one scientist puts it, “climate change kills, from poor nutrition status and poor health linked to episodes of drought and harvest failures, the spread of infectious diseases, … increasing violent conflict, … and of course the impact of extreme events like tropical cyclones and flash floods.”

9. On Newsmax, Republican commentator Ford O’Connell claims that “climate change is the ultimate Trojan horse for socialism” before stating that the Earth “may or not be warming”

Newsmax had a wild year of promoting climate denial, and right-wing pundit Ford O’Connell’s claim that the Earth “may or may not be warming” on the October 25 edition of American Agenda is just another sad example.

Video file

CitationFrom the October 25, 2021, edition of Newsmax's American Agenda

The context behind this segment is noteworthy -- Newsmax was attacking its much larger rival Fox News for “going woke” and “making a permanent hard-left turn” by suggesting that the newly launched Fox Weather streaming service is taking climate change too seriously. In actuality, Fox Weather is just ignoring the issue altogether, but it’s funny to see Newsmax melt down over the fact that Fox is apparently not right-wing enough.

10. On Fox Business, Patricia Lee Onwuka of the Independent Women’s Forum claims that climate change is a “fallacy”

Discussing President Biden’s response to Hurricane Ida on the September 3 edition of Fox Business' Mornings With Maria, right-wing commentator Patricia Lee Onwuka suggested that climate change is a “fallacy” that Biden is using to advance his agenda; she also said that “the facts dispute” the idea that extreme weather events like hurricanes are connected to climate change.

Video file

CitationFrom the September 3, 2021, edition of Fox Business' Mornings With Maria

As noted above, we already know the ways in which climate change is affecting hurricanes and worsening their impacts on our warming world. Those facts don’t seem to matter to Onwuka or the Independent Women’s Forum, which has received both Koch and tobacco industry money and has a history of climate denial.

11. On OAN, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) says that “we have the cleanest environment anywhere in the world” because of the fossil fuel industry

A lot of stupid things were said by right-wing media regarding this year’s United Nations climate conference, known as COP26. One of the more head-scratching comments came from Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-NC), who was featured on a November edition of OAN’s In Focus With Stephanie Hamill to downplay the seriousness of climate change. He went on to hype up the U.S. fossil fuel industry by stating that “we have the cleanest environment anywhere in the world” because of “clean energy practices” like fracking.

While Cawthorn was alluding to the fact that natural gas obtained by fracking is cleaner than coal (it emits much less CO2 than coal when burned), it’s important to remember that fracking also releases methane, which is about 80 times more potent as a greenhouse gas than CO2. And like coal, there are numerous water and air pollution problems associated with its use. In any case, the side effects of fossil fuel operations involve literally polluting our air and waterways, so in no way are they responsible for making our environment clean and safe. Additionally, despite Cawthorn’s boast that “I’ll put our air [quality] up against anyone’s,” the U.S. is nowhere near the top of global environmental rankings by any metric.

12. Fossil fuel lobbyist Daniel Turner thinks concern about climate change is “so overblown that it is hyperbolic and silly”

On the November 1 edition of Fox News’ America’s Newsroom, Daniel Turner of the fossil fuel shill group Power the Future tried to throw cold water on COP26 by claiming that “climate change panic is so overblown that it is hyperbolic and silly” and suggesting that the U.N. tries to scare people by publishing “nonsense reports.”

Video file

CitationFrom the November 1, 2021, edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom

We’re not sure what’s so “silly” about being concerned with a planet that’s on track for over 2.5 C of warming, which will have devastating consequences for billions of people around the world. Turner, who has spent almost his entire career working for Koch-backed groups, has made similar ludicrous statements in the past, including claiming that climate activists are somehow thrilled with the COVID-19 pandemic because it’s supposedly accomplishing their goals of implementing a Green New Deal.

  1. ### :{Fox News host compares trial of Kenosha shooter to murder of George Floyd:(style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:#ffffff;;font-weight:normal;fill:#ffffff;"):}:

11/11/21 7:35 PM EST

  1. ### :{Fox News' Gutfeld praises Kenosha shooter for killing protesters and doing “what the government should have done”:(style="box-sizing:border-box;background-color:#ffffff;;font-weight:normal;fill:#ffffff;"):}:

11/11/21 5:52 PM EST

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/right-wing-comedy/

In August 2021, Fox News' “Gutfeld!," a late-night comedy-talk show hosted by right-wing pundit Greg Gutfeld, overtook “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" in overall ratings.

Surprised?

We weren't.

As media and comedy scholars, we've been tracking the recent ascension of right-wing comedy, which has flourished thanks to shifts in media industry economics and political ideologies.

Gutfeld's success might come as a shock because it punctures long-standing assumptions about what comedy is, who can produce it and who will enjoy it. These prejudices obscure an important truth: Right-wing comedy has become both a viable business strategy and a crucial element of conservative politics.

Yes, “Gutfeld!" is on Fox News, the cable channel known for partisan, right-wing political perspectives and news commentary. But it has all the markers of late-night comedy, too. The opening monologues are filled with Jay Leno-like punchlines that draw laughs from the studio audience, and the interviews with conservative politicians, pundits and other comedians frequently center on “owning the libs" with one-liners[vid]

[opening monologue of the Sept. 17, 2021, episode of 'Gutfeld!'

Then, of course, there are the silly “Saturday Night Live"-like sketches. One recent episode broke from a panel discussion on cancel culture in order to imagine what a politically correct James Bond would look like.In the prerecorded bit, a crudely costumed actor chases down a thief and pulls a banana on him instead of a gun. Then “Bond" heads to a bar to order a latte – a soy latte – instead of a martini. You get the idea.

Regardless of whether or not this comedy is to your taste, it's working for Gutfeld and his audience.

Hiding in plain sight

Despite its growing prominence, right-wing comedy remains largely invisible in both mainstream and scholarly discussions of media and humor. In part, this has happened because social media algorithms don't send users jokes likely to challenge or offend their political sensibilities.

There are also intellectual trends that make it possible for Greg Gutfeld to spend two decades sneaking up on the Colberts of the world. Comedy theorists tend to diminish, or at least distinguish, right-wing humor from what they deem to be more authentic, liberal humor.

Philosopher Umberto Eco, for example, demotes joking that fails to critique power structures to the status of mere “carnival."

Others make similar arguments, saying “true" liberal comedy is more likely to “punch up," while dismissing conservative comedy as mere mockery that reaffirms unjust systems of power.

This effort to use ideology in order to categorize comedy can lead audiences, political analysts and even comedians to downplay or outright dismiss right-wing humor.

But even if conservative comedy doesn't fit liberals' tastes, it's still comedy. And it's increasingly becoming a feature of right-wing politics. Even “Daily Show" host Trevor Noah noted how former president Donald Trump's performances at rallies mirrored those of stand-up comedians.

Some studies go as far as to identify innate, psychological differences that explain why liberals are more likely to laugh while conservatives are more prone to seethe. This research, often inspired by the success of liberal satirists such as Colbert, Jon Stewart and Samantha Bee, certainly provides intriguing looks into the relationship between politics, psychology and sense of humor. They are, without question, pleasing to the liberal reader's ego.

They do not, however, square with the way Trump changed the country's politics and culture.

The political comedy of the early 2000s, with its relatively big tent media companies and pre-Barack Obama politics, tended to joke primarily in the political direction of the largest audience segment interested in satire at that moment. “The Colbert Report" and “The Daily Show" became hugely successful during the years of president George W. Bush and inspired countless imitators, crowding the media marketplace for liberal laughs.

However, comedy's perceived political bias at the time was more likely driven by specific economic circumstances, which have now radically changed.

Since then, further audience fragmentation, along with the proliferation of podcasts and social media platforms, has made it possible for right-wing comedians like YouTuber Steven Crowder to rise to prominence beyond conventional cable television. And it's forced networks like Fox News to take comedy seriously.

On one level, Gutfeld succeeds today because he has virtually no competition from fellow conservatives in the late-night television comedy space. On another, he thrives because the current media industry moment is built not for a big tent of all viewers, but for audiences who share specific demographic, psychographic and political traits.

In this environment, the partisanization of comedy to the right was perhaps inevitable.

What's in a definition?

If you find comedians such as Gutfeld unfunny or, more to the point, offensive, you may ask whether he should be granted the honorific of comedian.

Failing to do so, we argue, obscures the ways in which the right-wing political world uses comedy as a recruiting tool and unifying force. Republican politics have long been built upon an uneasy fusion that aims to bind together libertarian and traditionalist values, despite their apparent contradictions. The crassness of Trumpism has only added to this conceptual tension.

Right-wing comedy, we argue, serves to iron out, or at least paper over, such philosophical divides.

In addition to his show's success, Gutfeld today resides at the center of a growing complex of comedians reflecting elements of right-wing worldviews, ranging from libertarian, libertine podcasts like “The Joe Rogan Experience" to Christian satire websites like The Babylon Bee to Proud Boys founder and Gutfeld-protégée Gavin McInnes. While the creators of this content don't always agree on specific issues, they are united in their motivations to hilariously own the libs. They strategicallycross-promote one another, while social media algorithms urge fans of one program to check out other flavors of right-wing comedy.

Gutfeld may be the biggest star, but a range of right-wing comedians are coming together in a constellation that allows young, right-wing-curious consumers to find a place in the universe of American conservative media and politics. The value, or danger, of right-wing comedy is a matter of political opinion.

Its reality, however, is no joke.

Nick Marx, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, Colorado State University and Matt Sienkiewicz, Associate Professor of Communication and International Studies, Boston College

==

random grab 920 mma

Week In Dumb
  • Fox host Jesse Watters claimed COVID-19 lockdowns cause an “explosion in cases and deaths."
  • Fox anchor Martha MacCallum claimed that “nobody is being supportive” of the Kenosha shooter one day after Trump himself defended the Kenosha shooter.
  • TPUSA's Charlie Kirk: “By historical standards, this is not a pandemic."
  • Rush Limbaugh claimed that the report of Trump disrespecting fallen troops was a plot to distract from the "Pelosi hair salon story."
  • Limbaugh also pushed a new conspiracy theory about mail-in voting, and his plan for Trump to steal the election.
  • Tucker Carlsonguest Eric Metaxas compared recognizing “white privilege” in church to having a “swastika on the altar."
  • Fox's Tammy Bruce claimed Donald Trump “never said” there were “very fine people on both sides." That's a total lie.
  • Fox host Greg Gutfelddismissed violence from right-wing militias as “a lie” and “easily disprovable.”
  • Trump encouraged his supporters to commit voter fraud, but too much of the media responded with a shrug.
  • Anti-vaccine figure Del Bigtree partnered with Roku after YouTube banned him for sharing dangerous coronavirus misinformation; he's still on Facebook as well.
  • After Kenosha shootings, former Sheriff David Clarke advised radio listeners on how to get away with killing protesters.
  • Mainstream media are whitewashing Patriot Prayer, a violent far-right group in Portland.
  • Facebook's political ad ban before Election Day is little more than a public relations stunt.

==

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/chaos-at-fox-news-as-some-refuse-to-believe-the-networks-own-reporting-on-trumps-contempt-for-troops/

ALL TWEETS not here

Bob Brigham / Raw Story September 5, 2020

On Friday, Fox News confirmed much of the reporting by The Atlantic on President Donald Trump disparaging American service members.

The network followed the Associated Press and The Washington Post in largely confirming the reporting.

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But even after Fox News reporters matched the reporting, Fox News personality Greg Gutfield falsely claimed on-air that the story had been “debunked.”

twt: As Fox's own reporters confirm parts of the Atlantic story, Greg Gutfeld refers to it on air as a "hoax" and a "scam"

The split continued throughout the day.

“Fox contributor knocks Fox reporter for noting Fox has now confirmed key details of The Atlantic’s reporting,” CNN senior media reporter Oliver Darcy noted.

Fox contributor knocks Fox reporter for noting Fox has now confirmed key details of The Atlantic's reporting.

Darcy also noted a bizarre headline on the Fox News website following the network’s confirmation of the reporting. This was noticed by his CNN colleague Jon Passantino, who used to manage the webpage for Fox News,

and suggested the editorial choice was “extraordinary and unusual.”

[I used to manage the Fox News dot com homepage. This would be an extraordinary and unusual decision to run this denial as the top story despite having confirmed key details of the reporting

Oliver Darcy

@oliverdarcy

Replying to @oliverdarcy @JenGriffinFNC and @BretBaier

Just remarkable that after Fox's own reporter *CONFIRMS* key details of The Atlantic's report, this is the headline on the network's website.]

But Fox News personality Laura Ingraham seemed to be bashing her colleagues for a “fake” story on Friday evening.

[

:{IngrahamAngle:(style="border:0px solid black;box-sizing:border-box;display:inline;font-style:inherit;font-variant:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-stretch:inherit;margin:0px;padding:0px;white-space:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;min-width:0px"):}:

It would save a lot of time if the Media would just tell us what fake stories they will be announcing over the next six weeks, and when each story will be released]

The uncomfortable position the network is in was hilariously driven home by Pete Buttigieg on Friday evening.

[PeteButtigieg

Even if you don't believe the multiple news organizations—including @FoxNews—that have confirmed these reports, believe your own eyes.

These comments are part of Donald Trump's pattern of disrespect for the military since he faked an injury to get out of serving in Vietnam.]

Chaos at Fox News as analysts refuse to believe the network’s reporting — because makes Trump look awful

Here is the Fox News reporting:...[twt]

mma

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/03/18/Dont-believe-right-wing-media-when-they-say-the-Green-New-Deal-would-cost-93-trillion/223140

no lnx twt

Don’t believe right-wing media when they say the Green New Deal would cost $93 trillion

Politico calls the analysis "bogus," and even its lead author won't defend it

Blog ››› March 18, 2019 9:44 AM EDT ››› EVLONDO COOPER

Melissa Joskow / Media Matters

Right-wing media outlets have repeatedly asserted that the Green New Deal would come with the absurd price tag of "$93 trillion" or "$94 trillion," uncritically repeating claims from a back-of-the-envelope, deeply flawed analysis produced by the American Action Forum, a conservative think tank. Politico recently determined that the $93 trillion figure was "bogus," and quoted the lead author of the AAF analysis, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, admitting that he had no idea how much it would cost to implement the Green New Deal.

American Action Forum has ties to the fossil fuel industry

The American Action Forum, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and its 501(c)(4) “sister organization,” the American Action Network (AAN), have been funded by a who’s who of the polluter syndicate.

AAN has received at least $250,000 from the American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil industry that has donated to groups in the Koch network. And AAN has received at least $35,000 from the American Natural Gas Alliance, a pro-fracking gas industry trade group. Dow Chemical has given at least $250,000. AAN has also been funded by other Koch-connected groups such as Americans for Job Security, Donors Trust, and the Wellspring Committee. It's gotten money from Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS too. AAN has in turn donated millions to AAF.

Though some information about its funding has been made public, AAN has generally refused to disclose its donors. In 2014, MSNBC called AAN a "dark money power player," noting that it had been running numerous attack ads against Democratic candidates. FactCheck.org noted that same year that AAN has spent tens of millions of dollars supporting Republican candidates. In 2018, a watchdog group filed suit against AAN for violating campaign finance laws and abusing its nonprofit status.

AAF's Green New Deal cost analysis is problematic from top to bottom

Considering the think tank’s connections to the fossil fuel industry, it’s not surprising that the American Action Forum’s report found the Green New Deal untenable. What is surprising is how flippant Holtz-Eakin, president of AAF and former head of the Congressional Budget Office, was about the rigor of the analysis he co-authored. When challenged about the accuracy of the report’s claim that the Green New Deal would cost some $93 trillion over 10 years, Holtz-Eakin told Politico, “Is it billions or trillions? Any precision past that is illusory.”

The Green New Deal resolution introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) on February 7 is just a broad, 14-page outline of goals with no policy specifics, so determining a price tag was a fanciful exercise. AAF's claims of a $92.9 trillion total cost, or $653,000 per household, have no basis in reality. As Politico reporter Zack Colman put it:

When they set out to put a price tag on the Green New Deal last month, Holtz-Eakin and his associates had no real policy or plan to evaluate, so they made one up to perform back-of-the-envelope calculations.

…

And the AAF study does not distinguish between government and private-sector spending, nor does it attempt to quantify the benefits of reducing pollution or other policies. For example, Stanford University civil and environmental engineering professor Mark Jacobson estimated that eliminating the electricity sector’s carbon emissions would avoid $265 billion in annual U.S. damages beginning in 2050.

Colman also pointed out that more than $80 trillion of the alleged $93 trillion total cost would come from implementing a jobs guarantee and universal health care -- policy ideas that have no direct relation to greening the economy, even though they are in the Green New Deal resolution.

Politico declared that the $93 trillion figure is "bogus" -- or, in an earlier version of the article published behind a firewall, "essentially vapor."

The fact-checking project PolitiFact also found the $93 trillion figure to be untrustworthy, calling it "only about as strong as a clothespin in high wind." It noted that "the [AAF] report itself is full of assumptions, qualifiers and caveats," and when a fact-checker reached out to Holtz-Eakin, the AAF president "made it clear to us that the report aims to provide very rough estimates on a plan that’s only partially developed." PolitiFact rated as "false" this claim from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA): "At $93 trillion, the Green New Deal would cost more than the entire recorded spending of the U.S. since the Constitution went into effect in 1789."

Other journalists have also pointed out major problems with the AAF analysis. Paul Blest at Splinter noted that AAF used cost estimates for a universal jobs program ("$6.8 trillion to $44.6 trillion") and universal health care ("$36 trillion") that are vastly higher than estimates produced by other think tanks. AAF also failed to account for how much money programs like universal health care could save. According to Blest:

[AAF's] ballpark estimate on a federal jobs guarantee has a range of $38 trillion. The centrist Brookings Institution’s estimate last year, by the way, put the high end on a job guarantee at $543 billion a year, or $5.4 trillion over 10 years.

On Medicare for All, too, the AAF’s number is substantially higher than previous estimates. The libertarian Mercatus Center’s estimate set out to prove last year that Medicare for All would bankrupt the country, and inadvertently found that Medicare for All would eventually save about $2 trillion in national health expenditures. Even Mercatus, however, put the cost of Medicare for All at $32.6 trillion over 10 years.

The ClimateDenierRoundup column at Daily Kos pointed out another problem with AAF's jobs-program estimates:

The jobs price tag is wrong because it’s double counting: many of those jobs would be created by the other parts of the GND. Improving energy efficiency and building a clean energy economy will create a lot of jobs, which are counted in the GND’s green policy price tag tally. But then AAF simply counts those jobs again in the jobs guarantee portion, as though none of those promised jobs would be used to put the green in the Green New Deal.

Green New Deal sponsor Markey called out major flaws in the report too, starting with the basic premise: "Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation." Markey pointed out that AAF calculated the cost of "policies that aren't even in the resolution," such as eliminating air travel:

Ed Markey

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@SenMarkey

The AAF analysis of the #GreenNewDeal spends some time doing basic multiplication on the impact of making all air travel unnecessary, a concept mentioned nowhere in the resolution text.

Ed Markey

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@SenMarkey

Any so-called "analysis" of the #GreenNewDeal that includes artificially inflated numbers that rely on lazy assumptions, incl. about policies that aren’t even in the resolution is bogus. Putting a price on a resolution of principles, not policies, is just Big Oil misinformation.

Markey also noted that AAF did not provide any support for its cost estimate for a low-carbon electricity grid.

Ed Markey

?

@SenMarkey

Another example, the $5.4 trillion it estimates to transition our electric grid comes seemingly from thin air, as NO SOURCES are documented for their generation cost assumptions.

Ed Markey

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@SenMarkey

The AAF analysis of the #GreenNewDeal spends some time doing basic multiplication on the impact of making all air travel unnecessary, a concept mentioned nowhere in the resolution text. https://twitter.com/SenMarkey/status/1100099740316942336 …

As The New York Times recently put it, "For now it’s impossible to pin down dollar figures on the plan." FactCheck.org agreed, writing that "the experts we spoke to said it’s not possible to put a specific price tag on the Green New Deal."

Perhaps most egregiously, AAF’s analysis of the Green New Deal completely ignored the enormous cost of not fighting climate change. Just last year, climate disasters and extreme weather events cost the U.S. an estimated $91 billion. According to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a 1.5 C rise in the global average temperature would cost $54 trillion. Things only get more expensive (and catastrophic) from there. According to Axios:

You think $54 trillion is a lot? That number comes from research that also says that a 2.0°C increase will cause $69 trillion of damage, and a 3.7°C increase will cause a stunning $551 trillion in damage.

$551 trillion is more than all the wealth currently existing in the world, which gives an indication of just how much richer humanity could become if we don't first destroy our planet.

Current policies in place around the world have us on track for about 3.3 C of warming by 2100 if we don't dramatically change course.

AAF's analysis also ignored the significant economic benefits that would come from taking addressing climate change. "Bold climate action could deliver at least US$26 trillion in economic benefits through to 2030, compared with business-as-usual," according to a recent report from the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

Fox News and other right-wing outlets have been hyping the $93 trillion figure

Right-wing media have been heavily citing the AAF report since its release on February 25 -- and they have often used the $93 trillion figure without noting that it's at the top end of a range AAF provided. Fox News has been particularly eager to amplify the huge estimate. Hosts and guests have cited price tags between $91 trillion and $94 trillion on Fox News shows including Fox & Friends, The Greg Gutfeld Show, and Watters’ World, and on Fox Business Network shows including Varney & Co., Trish Regan Primetime, Making Money with Charles Payne, and Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo. Sean Hannity has cited the AAF report at least three times on his Fox News show. He typified Fox's incurious reporting on AAF’s analysis during the March 5 episode of Hannity:

SEAN HANNITY (HOST): They are going to eliminate fossil fuels, gas, and oil. They're going to destroy the lifeblood of our economy. They're going to get rid of planes, mandate you rebuild your home. Who's paying for that? The estimates now are as high as $94 trillion in 10 years --that's their proposal.

Many other right-wing media outlets have also uncritically amplified AAF's enormous estimate, including The Daily Caller, The Daily Wire, and the Washington Free Beacon.

Some Republican politicians such as Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso have also latched onto the $93 trillion estimate and publicized it through mainstream and right-wing media. Barrasso issued a press release with the figure, wrote an opinion piece about it for USA Today, and made an appearance on Fox News to promote it. During Barrasso’s interview on Fox's America's Newsroom, co-host Sandra Smith falsely claimed that “the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office” was behind the $93 trillion figure and Barrasso failed to correct her error. (Fox & Friends co-host Ainsley Earhardt also falsely credited the report to the CBO.) From the February 28 episode of America’s Newsroom:

SANDRA SMITH (HOST): The Green New Deal, all the rage on the left. But a new study finds that it comes with a staggering price tag: the plan estimated to cost is as much as $93 trillion. That breaks down to $600,000 per household. Those are some big numbers. Joining us now, Sen. John Barrasso, a Republican from Wyoming who chairs the Committee on the Environment and Public Works. Been hearing you talk a lot about this, sir, and this price tag. It is a lofty one. This is the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that did a study on this and came up with those numbers: $93 trillion, $600,000 per household. What do you think?

SEN. JOHN BARRASSO:Well, this Green New Deal is a big green bomb that will blow a hole in our strong economy. It will destroy the energy independence we now have from foreign countries. It will destroy what we’ve been doing to actually lower emissions. The cost to families -- electricity alone would go up by about $3,600 per family, per year. This is something, Sandra, that we cannot as a nation afford. The economy can't afford it. Our nation can’t survive it.

Some Fox News personalities and Republican politicians, including President Donald Trump, have cited an even larger unsubstantiated figure for Green New Deal costs: $100 trillion. As Dave Anderson recently reported for the Energy and Policy Institute, that number originated from a flippant Twitter thread by a Manhattan Institute senior fellow. The Manhattan Institute has been funded by ExxonMobil, and the chair of its board is also the CEO of a hedge fund that is the top shareholder in Peabody Energy, a major coal company. The $100 trillion figure was mentioned by Fox host Charles Payne during an interview with EPA chief Andrew Wheeler on March 4 on Your World with Neil Cavuto, and it was also cited on other Fox programs and right-wing sites like Townhall.

Right-wing echo chamber amplifies misinformation by design

The spread of the $93 trillion figure is a textbook example of how the right-wing media sphere disseminates misinformation to stymie climate action (and the spread of the $100 trillion figure too, for that matter). Conservative media outlets have been freaking out about the Green New Deal since even before the resolution was unveiled. AAF rushed out a quickie estimate of its potential costs that even its lead author won't robustly defend. Surely the think tank knew that its ready-made, sky-high number would be quickly picked up and regurgitated by conservative commentators, writers, and politicians -- and it was. It is not likely to matter that AAF's report has been called out as “bogus” and poked full of holes. You can expect right-wing media to keep on promoting it.

Short Link

http://mm4a.org/4Br

Posted In

Environment & Science, Climate Change

Network/Outlet

Fox News, Fox Business

Person

Donald Trump, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Ed Markey, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Sean Hannity, John Barrasso, Sandra Smith

Show/Publication

Hannity, Politico, Daily Kos, Splinter, FOX & Friends, The Five, Your World with Neil Cavuto, Greg Gutfeld Show, Watters' World, Varney & Co., Trish Regan Primetime, Making Money with Charles Payne, Sunday Morning Futures, The Daily Caller, The Daily Signal, The Washington Free Beacon, Townhall

Stories/Interests

Climate Change

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https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/fox-news-guest-may-have-set-all-time-record-for-crazy-with-rant-about-aocs-green-new-deal-causing-cannibalism/

The Fox News infatuation with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortz (D-NY) continued on Saturday when a guest suggested that the Green New Deal would inevitably result in cannibalism.

Katherine Timpf, a National Review reporter, launched into a passionate rant about Ocasio-Cortez on “The Greg Gutfeld Show.”

“AOC has completely lost her marbles,” Timpf argued. “I think she’s living in bananaland.”

Less than a minute later, she had escalated to the point where Ocasio-Cortez’s “bullsh*t” was resulting in cannibalism.

Watch:

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After the ouster of Bill O’Reilly following public reports that he sexually harassed multiple colleagues (and a subsequent advertiser boycott), Fox News was forced to shuffle its evening lineup -- a move that elevated the show The Five to the coveted 9 p.m. time slot. Unfortunately, it didn’t take long for co-host Greg Gutfeld to take a page out of the O’Reilly playbook and call for anti-abortion violence.

O’Reilly spent years at Fox not only spreading misinformation about abortion and reproductive rights, but also openly bullying abortion providers. Dr. George Tiller -- who was assassinated in 2009 by anti-choice zealot Scott Roeder -- was a frequent target of O’Reilly’s. Prior to Tiller’s death, O’Reilly referred to the doctor as “Tiller the baby killer” and insisted there was a “special place in hell” for him. After a deadly shooting attack at a Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015, O’Reilly defended his previous attacks on Tiller, claiming his reporting on the doctor was accurate.

Although Gutfeld did not target an individual abortion provider like O’Reilly did, his call for violence in the service of the anti-choice movement is an inauspicious start to The Five’s new time slot.

Alongside co-hosts Kimberly Guilfoyle, Jesse Watters, Bob Beckel, and Dana Perino, Gutfeld engaged in an incendiary segment about abortion advocacy in the Democratic Party. After Guilfoyle falsely suggested that so-called “partial-birth” abortions or “abortion on demand” were issues Democrats must contend with (in reality, neither describes a medically accurate or extant procedure in the United States), Gutfeld compared abortion to slavery, saying that it would have been cowardly in the 1850s to have expressed opposition to slavery but said there's "nothing I can do about it" and that the same was true of what he called "pro-life cowards." He said he had “a problem with saying you’re pro-life but you respect the other side” because “if you are pro-life and you believe it is murder, you should be willing to fight” and “start a war” over this.

Fox host Kimberly Guilfoyle suggested that protesters who took part in the March for Science were motivated to do so by a “false narrative” about climate change dating back to the Obama administration.

During a discussion about Bill Nye the Science Guy’s climate activism and the March for Science on the April 24 edition of Fox News’ The Five, Guilfoyle claimed that Nye “doesn't want the facts and the science out there” about climate change, because “he might lose his show.”

Guilfoyle also argued that Nye’s actions mirrored those of researchers during the Obama administration who “refused to comply with requests to release the internal data and the information that, really, the public has a right to see, to back these claims up. … They do this thing to try to hide it because they want to put forward a false narrative so that they can get people to come out and march and go nuts about this, saying that the earth is going to be over, and the whole deal, and get upset about cumulus clouds.”

Guilfoyle was presumably referring to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which in 2015 refused House Science Committee Chairman Lamar Smith’s subpoena for internal communications on a study about climate change. The Hillreported at the time, “NOAA spokeswoman Ciaran Clayton said the internal communications are confidential and not related to what Smith is trying to find out. ‘We have provided data, all of which is publicly available online, supporting scientific research, and multiple in-person briefings,’ she said.”

From the April 24 edition of Fox News’ The Five:

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