Fox and Friends
It’s happening in Miami, but you can only watch the Super Bowl on Fox Sports. Twenty years ago I dated a woman who worked at Fox Sports and I don’t recall having my skin crawl at the mention of Fox, but things are different now. I don’t think it was Bombshell or even The Loudest Voice in the Room that did it to me, but they certainly helped to lock in the feelings. I can’t watch Fox without thinking about Roger Ailes, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, and I don’t mean in a good way. I find their fact-avoiding and consciously conservatively-biased coverage to be quite repugnant to my sensibilities. Yes, it’s true that some of the hosts like Chris Wallace and Shep Smith are more balanced and Andrew Napolitano as their legal analyst has certainly come over into the light. But much of Fox News has stayed in that dark place that its base of 2.5 million regular viewers (that’s only 3% of the 87 million households that subscribe to Fox News and thus have access.). That still topped the cable news charts right up until MSNBC moved ahead of Fox in the final quarter of 2018. Maybe it was the Ailes smarminess which came to light or maybe it was their severely botched Scott Pruitt interview that was unclothed as being a pack of lies.
I somehow feel that the Fox impact greatly exceeds the apparent 2.5 million viewer base. In 2018 the Census Bureau tells us that 153 million Americans (67% of the eligible voters) were registered to vote. However, only 122 million say they voted, which at 53% more or less agrees with the 53% that is reported by the election officials. That, of course, is still below the 126 million that voted in 2016 in the Presidential election. That outcome was a century-old low as a percentage compared to the 64% that voted Obama into office in 2008. If we achieved a 64% turnout in 2020 (some are predicting an even higher turnout) that would mean about 156 million voters of the 245 million eligible voters.
2.5 million are only 1.6% of the voting base, so why should Fox bother me so much? I suspect that regular viewership may not be the best indicator of impact in these days of social media. It’s estimated that Trump reaches between 87-100 million Americans with his social media outreach. His habit of retweeting or reposting Fox News pieces makes me think that even discounting the followers for opposition “researchers” means he probably allows Fox to reach all of his 63 million voters from 2016. Even though Hilary got 65.9 million popular votes, the Electoral College means there will need to be a considerably bigger volume of votes to overcome it. If we do get 156 million to vote, the popular vote margin could easily widen to over 10-12 million. Obviously I am assuming that the majority of voter increase comes in blue versus red, which I think most would say is a good assumption.
Does it sound like I’m trying to convince myself that Trump is history and that Fox News doesn’t swing things as much as it used to? If so, you would be right. If you think that sounds like wishful thinking, you would also be correct. Every time I see a Trump rally, I find myself in awe of the machine that Trump and Ailes built that brings these people out with such vehemence. In fact, many of my friends and I are seriously worried that the truly rabid pro-Trump crowd may get violent if their man does not stay in office. I wish that were an unlikely concern, but I fear that it may not be. The history of man stands historically against us on this one.
So, Fox and Friends may be the immediate hurdle for peace in our time in this country. They are quite vocal and from what I have seen, they don’t care as much about the ideology of democracy or the norms of a republic and care more about protecting what they consider to be their personal rights and possessions. Just this weekend a group of these people donned full battle gear and made a scene of advancing on the state capital building in Kentucky. Their stated purpose was just to say loudly (remember, the loudest voice in the room wins) that their second amendment rights as they viewed them included the ability to bear arms in whatever manner and wherever they chose. The comment passed by a friend when this was first aired was to wonder how they would react if the same action was taken by either a group of young African American men or a group of young Muslim American men. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for.
But one thing at a time. While I acknowledge the possibility and perhaps even the likelihood that there will be some very pissed off pro-Trumpers if he does not win in November. We can be fairly certain that he will cry foul, but first ask yourself what he will likely do. He will be 74 years old and he will have been President of the United States with all the pomp and circumstance that will afford him for the rest of his life. As they say, he can dine out on that for the rest of his days with lots (probably too many for national security purposes) of stories to tell indiscriminately. The path of barricading himself into the White House and rallying his forces of evil to stand guard so no one can force him out is simply too fraught with personal danger for his liking. That means he will sneer and leave the White House while keying the walls the way a disgruntled juvenile delinquent might do. He will not go quietly or gracefully, but he will say something like Colonel Jessup did in A Few Good Men, “you people don’t know how to defend a nation” and “you fucked with the wrong Marine”. He will quickly assume the attitude that he really didn’t want to do the job any longer anyway and the deep state was just too deeply imbedded with the fake news liberal media to be worth dismantling further and overcome.
I remember the story of when the Clinton team left the White House, one of them pulled the shrek of removing all the W keys from the keyboards. That was a cute and elegant trick that would likely be accompanied by a plastic bag full of W keys left in some obscure bottom drawer. I doubt that the Trump White House staff has the charm and light touch to be that funny and yet that impactful in their messaging. Nonetheless, I believe he will leave if voted out.
I cannot waste time worrying about those who might start the next civil war. Those people always exist and are always a risk and every once in a while break through and touch us in hurtful ways, but for the most part spend their time stewing in their own juices. There will be threats and there may be instances of domestic terrorism, but I have faith that many of the existing Trump supporters will draw the line at civil disobedience and violence. They are too rooted in the ways of law and order and won’t bring themselves to support it. Even Fox and Friends will be forced by rational business concerns to give way to the new order. I have no doubt that Rupert Murdoch and his boys care more about the profitability of Fox than about the ideology of Roger Ailes. Therein lies our salvation. No one is prepared to shoot themselves in the foot for the sake of a guy like Trump who never does anything for anyone else if he can help it.