Category: Fox News

Kamala Harris Bombs in Fox Interview

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The three deadliest bombs in world history:

  1. Hiroshima;
  2. Nagasaki;
    and
  3. The Kamala Harris interview with Brett Baier.

By now, I’m sure everyone has seen the indescribable awfulness of Kamala’s Wednesday appearance on Fox News, which was as bad, in its own way, as Joe Biden’s performance in the June 27 debate with Trump.

If Democrats weren’t already hitting the panic button — and, in fact, they were — before Wednesday’s interview, they’re in full-on hysteria now.

To explain why Kamala was so bad, beyond her own personal attributes, it helps to reference something Mark Halperin said in an interview this week with Tucker Carlson, namely that a Trump victory in this election will cause “the greatest mental health crisis in the history of the country.”

Liberals simply can’t cope with it — it would be “traumatic,” Halperin said, because to them, Trump is the very worst person in the world. Liberals dwell inside a self-created bubble, insulated from criticism or negative feedback by the vast machinery of what the late Andrew Breitbart called the Democrat-Media Complex. Inside that bubble, there is no information that contradicts the liberal narrative, not only about Trump, but about everything else — economics, immigration, crime, etc. This consensus of opinion pervades our education system. As Thomas Sowell has quipped: “The next time some academics tell you how important diversity is, ask how many Republicans there are in their sociology department.” Therefore, the liberal believes that all educated people — all smart people, all the experts — share his opinions (which, so far as he is concerned, are facts). Therefore, a liberal seldom encounters contradiction or criticism from anyone he considers to possess intellectual prestige. “All the smart people agree with us,” liberals tell themselves, “and therefore only stupid people disagree.”

All of this I relate to explain that, from Kamala’s point of view, it’s insulting — offensive, rude — for Brett Baier to ask her to defend her record, or to give specific replies to specific questions. She is running against Trump, and all the smart people agree that Trump is the worst person in the world, so what other qualification does she need? If you don’t think she should win, you’re just a bad person.

That’s why she reacted the way she reacted. Brett Baier’s questions angered her, because she thinks it’s wrong to question her at all.

It’s important to realize that, no matter how bad Kamala did in that interview, she’ll still get at least 47% or 48% of the vote, and maybe an absolute majority of the popular vote, simply because that’s how pervasive liberalism has become in 21st-century America. Democrats could nominate a turnip and get 47% of the vote. And Harris will probably do a point or two better than a turnip.



 

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Why Is Ex-Fox Producer Abby Grossberg Trying to Encourage Anti-Semitism?

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Today I was scanning headlines at Memeorandum, when I spotted this one from Rolling Stone:

Producer Tells All: How Tucker Carlson Became the GOP’s MAGA Puppeteer
A former producer on Tucker Carlson’s show is revealing just how far the Fox host went to bully top Republicans to come on his show and bend the knee to the MAGA agenda.
Carlson terrified top Republicans with threats to “destroy” them if they failed to do his bidding and used his platform to push a personal agenda on the party’s leadership, Abby Grossberg, who worked as a producer for Carlson’s show starting in August 2022, tells Rolling Stone.
Grossberg says Carlson pressured Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to militarize the southern border, tried to threaten Rep. Michael McCaul over military aid to Ukraine, and pushed Kevin McCarthy — then the aspiring House Speaker — to create the Republican-led committee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government.”
Grossberg, a former senior producer for Tucker Carlson Tonight, filed a lawsuit in March against the right-wing TV host and Fox News, alleging Carlson and Fox fostered a workplace climate of misogyny and toxicity during her tenure at the company. . . .

You can read the whole thing, but the details don’t matter nearly so much as the glaring fact — which I’m sure anti-Semites must be feasting on — that Tucker got sabotaged by a Jew. It’s just a bad look, OK?

Is there any awareness within the Jewish community of how important it is that they avoid acting in ways that might be interpreted as confirming the worst anti-Semitic stereotypes? Because if so, somebody forgot to tell Abby Grossberg, who might as well be an AI simulation of the Untrustworthy Jew stereotype. If she didn’t actually exist, some neo-Nazi propagandist would have invented her. Being a philo-Semite myself, I hate to see Jews giving aid and comfort to their enemies, which is basically what Abby Grossberg has done by backstabbing Carlson.

As a member of the Appalachian-American community (we can call ourselves “hillbillies,” but consider it an insult if others use “the H-word”), I try to be conscious about avoiding stereotypical hillbilly behavior. There’s a reason why I never learned to play the banjo, and why I don’t drink moonshine whiskey. There are no broken-down old trucks up on blocks in my front yard, and my wife is not my cousin.

Concern for the reputation of my own frequently stigmatized ethnic group inspires me to strive to avoid certain behaviors, and I would hope that other Southerners share my sense of the importance of not acting like redneck trash. Why then do some Jews seem to be oblivious to the way their behavior might encourage anti-Semitism? I mean, a belief isn’t a prejudicial stereotype if you can illustrate it by actual examples, and any Jew-hater can now point to Abby Grossberg and say, “See?”

Truly, she is a shanda fur die goyim.



 

 

Major (and Also Minor) Media News

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Today I was watching CNN (so you don’t have to) when, just after noon, they reported that Tucker Carlson and Fox News have “parted ways.” Then they brought on the despicable Oliver Darcy to engage in unsubstantiated speculation as to why Carlson — the top-rated host in cable news for the past six years — had left Fox. But does anyone actually care what Oliver Darcy thinks? Because you might think that if Darcy’s opinions were so valuable, more people would be watching CNN, which has been mired in third place among cable news networks for at least the past 15 years. CNN sucks, and they spend an inordinate amount of time “reporting” about what’s happening on Fox News.

The Daily Caller (a publication founded by Carlson) offers no clues for the reasons behind his departure from Fox, which leads me to suspect that nobody yet actually knows why he left, but Glenn Reynolds at least offers some informed speculation (as opposed to Oliver Darcy’s bizarre theories). As for me, my best guess is that Tucker had gotten tired of having to put up with the uptight “don’t-be-too-right-wing” concerns of Fox News management, which is no doubt pining for the good old neocon days of Chris Stirewalt, Bill Kristol, Stephen Hayes, et al. However, the Los Angeles Times asserts as a fact that Carlson was “pushed out by Rupert Murdoch,” which may be true, as far as I know.

So, that is the major media news of the day, and as for the minor media, well, Don Lemon finally got fired from CNN:

Don Lemon has been terminated by CNN, the anchor announced on Monday just hours after he’d ended his morning broadcast.
“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN. I am stunned,” he tweeted in a fiery post announcing his exit. “After 17 years at CNN I would have thought that someone in management would have the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network. It is clear that there are some larger issues at play. With that said, I want to thank my colleagues and the many teams I have worked with for an incredible run. They are the most talented journalists in the business, and I wish them all the best.”
CNN CEO Chris Licht confirmed the news in a memo to network staffers: “CNN and Don Lemon have parted ways. Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years,” he wrote. “We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”
CNN disputed Lemon’s characterization of his termination in a statement. “Don Lemon’s statement about this morning’s events is inaccurate,” wrote the network’s PR shop. “He was offered an opportunity to meet with management but instead released a statement on Twitter.”
CNN anchor John King seemed surprised by the news during Monday’s broadcast of Inside Politics. “I don’t know the details happening while I’m sitting in the chair here, but I work here. I love this place,” King said. “Certainly wish Don the best. He’s always been good to me as a colleague.”
“I’m just relieved,” one female on-air CNN personality told The Daily Beast. “I really never thought that there wouldn’t be any accountability right. I mean, these guys are untouchable for the most part.”
The sudden exit ends a tumultuous year for the star anchor, who has seemingly generated one negative headline after another for a network under siege by financial losses and leadership changes.

Nice touch with that adverb, “seemingly.”



 

 

J6 Videos Shatter ‘Insurrection’ Narrative

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“We need a complete catalog of all of the feds who were there. Tell us who they were. Let’s watch the videos and let’s see what they did, because there’s some really strange behavior on those videos.”
— Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky Republican

As Stephen Kruiser says, Tucker Carlson has begun the process of nuking the narrative from orbit (classic movie allusion) by releasing some of the thousands of hours of Capitol riot surveillance video that the Democrats on Nancy Pelosi’s J6 witch hunt committee tried to make sure the public would never see. Among other things, the video Tucker released Monday night showed that Officer Brian Sicknick, the Capitol policeman who Democrats claim was “murdered” by the protesters, was walking around just fine after the time of his supposedly fatal encounter with the pro-Trump crowd. And there was much more than that:

Newly revealed surveillance footage from Jan. 6, 2021, shows two Capitol Police officers escorting Jacob Chansley, the behorned so-called “QAnon Shaman” who has come to symbolize the riot, through the halls of the Capitol and to the very door of the US Senate.
The footage aired on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show Monday night shows the officers closely following Chansley as he wanders the corridors of the Capitol, bare-chested and wearing face paint and a luxuriant fur hat with Viking horns.
“Virtually every moment of his time inside the Capitol was caught on tape,” says Carlson, who was granted exclusive access by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to 40,000 hours of surveillance footage from that day inside and around the Capitol, which has never been seen before by the public.
“The tapes show the Capitol Police never stopped Jacob Chansley. They helped him. They acted as his tour guides.”
At one point, the officers are seen walking Chansley past seven other police officers milling around outside the Senate chamber, who barely give him a second look.
Then they escort him to various entrances of the chamber that appear to be locked. Eventually, they help him open a door, and he enters the chamber.
Chansley, a 33-year-old Navy veteran from Arizona, has been jailed for almost four years for “obstructing an official proceeding.”

(Actually, it’s been 26 months, not “almost four years.”)

In a jailhouse interview played by Carlson, he says: “The one very serious regret that I have [is] believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable.”
In a statement, the Capitol Police suggest that one of the officers with Chansley was trying to “de-escalate” the situation because he was outnumbered.
But that does not explain why Chansley, who was unarmed, was able to walk past seven more officers without being apprehended.
“Not one of them even tried to slow him down,” says Carlson.
He “understood that the Capitol Police were his allies. … If he was in the act of committing such a grave crime, why didn’t the officers standing right next to him place him under arrest?”

Just askin’ questions, you see. This was why Pelosi rejected Kevin McCarthty’s choices for the J6 committee and instead handpicked two noxious Trump-hating RINOs to be the “Republican” members of the committee: Pelosi couldn’t let anyone on the committee who would challenge the “violent insurrection” narrative that Democrats were using the committee to push. It was a Soviet-style show trial, not an “investigation,” and the media were in on the scam.

The New York Post is one of the few publications that questions the Democratic Party narrative nowadays, and it’s astonishing how such once-respected newspapers as the Washington Post and the New York Times have simply looked the other way, rather than trying to investigate the “strange behavior” to which Rep. Massey referred: Clearly there were plainclothes and/or undercover agents at the Capitol during the riot, and they appeared to be communicating with the uniformed cops in ways that seem suspicious. If, as Merrick Garland’s DOJ prosecutors have asserted, the rioters who entered the Capitol were guilty of serious crimes — “seditious conspiracy,” no less! — then why did police not arrest them?

Tonight, Tucker Carlson has promised another hour’s worth of J6 riot videos, and his ratings will probably be through the roof.



 

 

Tucker Carlson Douses Frank Luntz in Gasoline and Lights Him on Fire

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Figuratively speaking, of course:

For quite some time now we’ve wondered what’s going on with congressional Republicans. There are a lot of nice people in the Republican Party, but the point of a political party is not to be nice, it is to represent the interests of its voters. . . .
However, it remains true that the priorities of the people who run the Republican Party are very different — in some cases, completely different — from the priorities of the people who vote Republican. Why is that? Well, there are lots of reasons, probably, but Frank Luntz is definitely one of them. . . .
The problem is that Frank Luntz’s views are very different from those of your average Republican voter. Frank Luntz is a conventional liberal. His main clients are left-wing corporations like Google. When Frank Luntz gives advice to congressional Republicans, he’s got Google’s perspective in mind. That’s a huge problem. . . .
Not long ago, when Donald Trump called for boycotting Coca-Cola and Delta Air Lines after they interfered, in a very shocking way, in Georgia’s political system, Luntz came to their defense. Of course he did. They’re his clients.

Tucker’s immolation of Luntz continued from there. Watch the video:

 

What inspired this? Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson gave a speech in which he name-checked Luntz as one of the advisers steering congressional Republicans to embrace open borders — which is true — and when the video was posted to Twitter, Luntz lashed out:

Enjoy your bonfire. Did anyone bring marshmallows?




 

FNC Fires Scapegoat Chris Stirewalt — and Their VP for News ‘Retires’

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You’ve got to hand it to Trump — he’s like Obi-Wan Kenobi. Strike him down, and he becomes more powerful than ever. We all remember the catastrophic moment on Election Night, when Chris Stirewalt called Arizona for Biden, and Bret Baier was like, “WTF, Fat Boy?”

Bret Baier: “But Chris, we haven’t called Texas yet. Why haven’t we called Texas?”
Chris Stirewalt: “Because it’s too close to call.”

That was what poker players would call a “tell.” When all the votes were counted (and I don’t mean to say that these numbers are entirely legit), the official tallies for Arizona and Texas looked like this:

Arizona …. 3.4 million total votes …… margin 10,457 (0.3%)
Texas …… 11.3 million total votes …. margin 631,221 (5.6%)

You see what I’m saying? Trump won Texas by nearly 6% — a margin of more than 600,000 votes — but Texas was “too close to call,” according to Chris Stirewalt who, at the same time, claimed to know that Biden would win Arizona, where the margin proved to be microscopic.

So now Chris Stirewalt has been “laid off” by Fox in a “restructuring” of their staff — did you see me roll my eyes at that? Meanwhile, the vice-president in charge of the news division at Fox has decided now is a good time to “retire” (my eyes just rolled completely out of my head).

Don’t look now, but Ace of Spades is dancing like the Ewoks in the final scene of Return of the Jedi. Shizzle done got fo’ real, bro.

UPDATE: Not to take pleasure in the misfortune of others, but Emerald Robinson just called Stirewalt “the Liz Cheney of Chuck Todds” and that there’s funny, I don’t care who you are.




 

Millions Stopped Watching Fox News

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The big news this week is that, for the first time, Newsmax got a bigger audience than Fox News. “Newsmax’s Greg Kelly Reports beat Martha MacCallum’s Fox News program in the 7 p.m. hour, bumping MacCallum down to No. 4 in cable news, behind Erin Burnett on CNN and Joy Reid on MSNBC.” The reason is simple: If you’re one of the 74 million Americans who voted for Trump, Martha MacCallum hates you.

Martha MacCallum is a liberal activist employed by a liberal organization.

Rupert Murdoch handed over control of his business to his children, who do not share their father’s conservative beliefs; quite the contrary, they all supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden this year. The ascendancy of the younger Murdochs has emboldened people like MacCallum (and Chris Wallace) who were always liberals, but spent years pretending otherwise for the sake of luring in a GOP-leaning audience.

Fox News committed suicide. Lou Aguilar writes their obituary:

Like a million loyal former viewers, I disgustedly watched Fox install disgraced Democrat hack Donna Brazile as their new liberal commentator (to back up the insufferable Juan Williams). Watched them boost the China virus doomsday panic. Watched fake objective anchor Chris Wallace transform into a rabid Trump-sniping chipmunk. Watched normally staid anchor Melissa Francis block Newt Gingrich from linking George Soros to riot-supportive blue state AGs. Watched business anchor Neil Cavuto cut off a White House press conference because he disapproved of Kayleigh McEnany’s address. Watched them call Arizona for Biden on Election Night before anyone else did, with the final count still days away. Watched them call a Democratic House expansion before the party lost many seats instead. Watched them call the election for Biden and refer to him as president-elect minus any official recognition. Watched them ridicule the Trump campaign’s perfectly valid remedial fight, with reporter Kristin Fisher openly insulting the Trump legal team’s press conference. Read the tweet by Kathryn Murdoch, wife of Fox News co-owner James Murdoch (son of Rupert), on Biden’s apparent victory, stating, “We did it.” Then, like a million former Fox News viewers, I turned off the channel, probably for good, adding to its current ratings meltdown. . . .

Read the whole thing.

It is with a certain measure of sadness that I report this suicide, and of course I’ll miss certain people I used to watch, but that’s not my fault. They have made a choice — to be loyal to a media organization that hates its own audience — and they must live with the consequences.




 

Tucker Carlson’s Tightrope Walk

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Scott Johnson at Powerline ponders the plight of Tucker Carlson, who finds himself stuck at a network that has declared war on its audience.

What has surprised me most about Carlson’s tenure at Fox is what we might call his Buchananite streak. He’s far more paleoconservative than I had any reason to imagine prior to 2017, and this populist, “America First,” Old Right tendency puts him at odds with Fox News management.

Have you ever noticed that Fox News has a lot of Catholics from Long Island? The network started with Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity as its biggest stars, and this New York Irish-Catholic vibe — a throwback to the Al D’Amato era — has persisted for 25 years, almost unnoticed. To a large extent, I believe, this explains a lot about the particular brand of “conservatism” that Fox News sells its audience. In New York politics, “conservative” almost always means Catholic, because Northern Protestantism (the National Council of Churches type) drifted leftward on a tide of Rockefeller foundation grants, embracing liberalism and especially becoming “pro-choice” back in the 1960s and ’70s. Meanwhile, led by the Southern Baptist Convention’s Paige Patterson, conservative Protestants put their foot down in defense of the Bible, at almost the exact same time that saw the conservative political triumph that put Ronald Reagan into the White House. But there is nearly zero representation of Southerners at Fox News, because the network was based in New York and so many of the guys Roger Ailes hired in the network’s early years (e.g., Brian Kilmeade, from Nassau County) were Long Island Irish-Catholics. And one thing you must know about such people is that they have a misty-eyed sentimental view of America as a “nation of immigrants,” getting choked up at the mere thought of those “huddled masses” coming through Ellis Island in the early 20th century, and they quote Emma Lazarus as if her poetry were more force of law than the Constitution. And then there’s Tucker Carlson.

He’s not from Long Island and he’s not Catholic, and while there seem to be no hillbilly Bible-thumpers in his family tree, Carlson doesn’t have the reflexive sentimentality about immigration that is typical of so many personalities on Fox News. That distinction has gotten him tagged as a “white nationalist” — welcome to the SPLC hate list, pal — and the departure of writer Blake Neff from Carlson’s staff brought to light the possibility that Tucker has been reading samizdat.

The way Fox News went in the tank for Democrats on Election Night has almost certainly widened the breach between Carlson and the network’s management. While I’m basically done with Fox News — any network that employs Chris Stirewalt is not to be trusted — I still try to catch Carlson’s opening monologue, which remains the best 15 or 20 minutes of TV anywhere. My suspicion is that Carlson will keep pushing the envelope in an attempt to force the network to fire him; that way, he won’t be saddled with a “non-compete” clause when he leaves, and can immediately hire on at NewsMax or some other outfit.