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FOX NEWS: UNFAIR ND UNBALANCED: PART ONE (OF THREE)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Law, Politics, Social commentary on September 22, 2026 at 12:05 am

In the beginning was the audience. And the audience was filled with Fascistic hate and prejudice, and sought always to have its beliefs confirmed.                

And then came Fox News Network, which sought to capture that audience—and, with it, huge ratings and profits. 

At the center of both Fox and its audience stood Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as President.

In him, Right-wingers found their ideal representative: He promised to destroy all those groups they hated.

Among these: Blacks, Asians, “uppity” women, Muslims, liberals, Hispanics, Democrats. 

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Donald Trump

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election—by 81,284,666 votes for former Vice President Joe Biden versus 74,224,319 for Trump-–the Right was devastated. And furious.

Unlike its defeats in past Presidential elections, this time the Right refused to accept the will of the electorate.

Trump had often “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—as was the case in China.

This time the Right intended to make that a reality.

Central to making that happen was the Fox News Network.

In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.

By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.

In prime time,  Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.

MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.

As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.

Fox News - Wikipedia

In 2015, Trump launched his campaign for President. His chances for success seemed impossible at the time—even to many mainstream Republicans.

But as he won victory after victory in Republican primaries, Fox News stuck with him. And stayed with him through the four years of his Presidency.

Fox was Trump’s favorite network. It gave him unstinting praise and sought to put a favorable spin on everything he did. As a result, Trump rarely gave interviews to CBS, NBC or ABC News.

In turn, Fox profited hugely as its audience—and advertisers—eagerly tuned in. 

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, he and Fox decided they must get him back into the Oval Office.

Trump did his best—or worst—by filing about 60 lawsuits to overturn the results of the election. But none of his attorneys could prove their claims that widespread fraud had robbed him of victory. The suits were dismissed by judges or withdrawn by Trump’s own attorneys.

Fox News couldn’t file fraudulent cases on Trump’s behalf. But it could poison the public mind by claiming—endlessly and falsely—that Trump had been cheated by massive voter fraud.

Fox didn’t even wait for the final results of the 2020 election to be called before it intervened on the side of what would soon be dubbed “The Big Lie.”

On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channel. was the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt.

Tucker: Biden and his donors don't want you to think about this - YouTube

Tucker Carlson

“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Fox host Tucker Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

For Carlson, credibility didn’t mean ensuring integrity in news reporting. It meant telling Fox’s Right-wing audience what it wanted to hear—whether the “news” was true or not. 

Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were “highly upset.”

In a January 26 Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stirewalt wrote: “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally.

“The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.” 

Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in January, 2021.

Trump was furious about the Arizona call. After the election, he attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.

Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.

For Fox, this was the ultimate catastrophe. The company began cracking down on its employees who had dared tell the truth on Election Night. 

One case involved White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. Her sin was fact-checking a Trump tweet accusing Dominion Voting Systems of election fraud.

Heinrich wrote that top election officials had determined “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

“Please get her fired,” Star host Tucker Carlson texted his fellow told host Sean Hannity: “Seriously….what the fuck? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” 

Hannity replied that he had already spoken to Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive. The next morning, Heinrich’s tweet had been deleted. 

THE AMERICA THAT HATE PRODUCED

In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on September 21, 2026 at 12:08 am

Every four years, Republican voters search for a Presidential candidate who promises to humiliate and destroy those they hate among their fellow Americans.  These include:

  • Blacks
  • Hispanics
  • “Uppity” women
  • Liberals 
  • Atheists
  • Non-Christians
  • The highly educated
  • Asians
  • Muslims
  • The legitimate news media

In 2016, Donald Trump was unquestionably the candidate who got—and kept—their blood-lust running. His campaign took off early in the polls and never lost momentum—or high ratings.

This was especially true among rural, evangelical voters—for whom sex-drenched issues such as abortion and birth control are an obsession. 

And they have continued to enthusiastically support him during his second term in office. 

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Donald Trump

On August 30, 2017, an article in Salon examined why Donald Trump’s base supports him so fanatically: “Most Americans Strongly Dislike Trump, But the Angry Minority That Adores Him Controls Our Politics.”

From the article:

“They like Trump’s coarse personality, and approve of the fact that he treats women like his personal playthings. They enjoy it when he expresses sympathy for neo-Nazis and neo-Confederate white supremacists.

“They cheer when he declares his love for torture, tells the police to rough up suspects and vows to mandate the death penalty for certain crimes. (Which of course the president cannot do.)

“…This cohort of the Republican party didn’t vote for Trump because of his supposed policies on trade or his threat to withdraw from NATO. They voted for him because he said out loud what they were thinking. A petty, sophomoric, crude bully is apparently what they want as a leader.”

Image result for Images of people giving the "Sieg heil" salute to Trump

Supporters giving the Nazi “Sieg Heil” salute to Trump

Georgia’s 14th district offers a vivid example of the mentality of hardcore Trump supporters. From 2021 until her resignation in 2026, it was represented by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Among the highlights of her career: 

  • Slandering Democrats as Nazis.
  • Attacking masking and social distancing—then the only safety measures against COVID-19—to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany.
  • Attacking Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, for daring to contradict Trump’s ignorance- and lie-riddled statements.
  • Supporting Trump’s efforts to illegally overturn the 2020 Presidential election, claiming it had been “stolen” from him.

The residents of that district feel left behind by years of change. As the U.S. becomes more urban, secular, and diverse, they feel culturally oppressed.” 

“They see themselves as great Americans, proud Americans, Christian Americans, and that doesn’t fit the American model anymore as they see it,” said Jan Pourquoi, owner of Global Works LLC. 

Their top priority: Stick it to those who are urban, secular and non-white.

 Georgia’s Congressional districts 

Lisa Adams, a fervent supporter of Greene, called her: “Our stand-up person. Look at her stance on transgenderism. That’s a big one.” 

Suppressing the rights of others has long been a hallmark of Republican politics. Republicans have accused transgender men of posing a menace to women. But according to a new study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law:  

  • Transgender people are over four times more likely than cisgender people to experience violent victimization, including rape, sexual assault, and aggravated or simple assault.
  • Transgender women and men had higher rates of violent victimization (86.1 and 107.5 per 1,000 people, respectively) than cisgender women and men (23.7 and 19.8 per 1,000 people, respectively).

In late 2025, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation aimed at criminalizing gender-affirming care for minors. 

And then there’s abortion. To quote Lisa Adams: “That’s a big one.”

Republicans sought to re-criminalize abortion since the Supreme Court legalized it in 1973. On June 24, 2022, the Supreme Court eliminated the federal constitutional right to abortion and returned regulatory authority to individual states. 

This has led Right-wing states to prosecute women who obtain abortions even in cases of rape, incest or when their lives are endangered by pregnancy. Thirteen states have a total abortion ban; 28 states have abortion bans based on gestational duration.

Thus, so long as Greene supported attacking those groups her constituents hated—such as transgenders and abortion-seekers—her constituents loved her.

“The biggest thing that Marjorie contributed wasn’t even in legislation,” said Gavin Swafford, who worked on Greene’s initial campaign. He didn’t care that she had failed to cut bipartisan deals and bring federal money back home.

“She was unwavering in ‘America First,'” said Swafford, referring to cultural issues she championed.

Nor did her supporters care that her lies about COVID-19 had led untold numbers of men and women to forego wearing masks and social distancing in 2020 when no vaccines were available. Or to forego getting vaccinated once vaccines became available in 2021.

Those lies—along with those told by Donald Trump—cost the lives of 400,000 Americans during 2020, his last year in office.

Interferon Plays Pivotal, Inflammatory Role in Severe COVID-19 Cases

COVID-19

Like Greene, her base is equally motivated by hatred—of the same persons and organizations whom Trump regularly attacks. During the 2016 campaign, countless such voters told interviewers: “He says what I’ve long been thinking!” 

Which speaks volumes about the mentality of Stormtrumpers.   

The Beatles’ 1969 album, Abby Road, ends with: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”

For the vast majority of Republican voters, that lyric could be rewritten: “The hate you live is equal to the votes you give.” 

WHY THE POOR VOTE REPUBLICAN: PART TWO (END)

In Bureaucracy, Business, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary on September 18, 2026 at 12:08 am

Republicans have long tried to prevent or eliminate programs that aid the poor and middle-class, including:   

  • Social Security (since it began in 1935)
  • Medicare
  • National health insurance
  • Food stamps
  • WIC (Women, Infants, Children).

So why are so many poor Americans now flocking to this party’s banner?

Two reasons: Racism and greed. There are historical parallels for both.

First, race:

In 1999, historian Victor Davis Hanson noted the huge gap in wealth between the aristocratic, slave-owning minority of the pre-Civil War South and the vast majority of poor white Southerners.

Victor Davis Hanson (@VDHanson) | Twitter

Victor Davis Hanson

“Before the war in the counties Sherman would later ruin, the top 10% of the landowners controlled 40% of the assessed wealth.”

In contrast, “more than half of those who were lucky enough to own any property at all still possessed less than 15% of the area’s valuation.”

So Hanson asked: “Why did the millions of poor whites of the Confederacy fight at all?”

He supplied the answer in his brilliant work on military history, The Soul of Battle: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, How Three Great Liberators Vanquished Tyranny.

One of those liberators was General William Tecumseh Sherman, who led 62,000 Union troops in a victorious “March to the Sea” through the Confederacy in 1864.

So why did so many poor Southern whites literally lay down their lives for the wealthy planter class, which despised them?

According to Hanson: “Behind the entire social fabric of the South lay slavery.

“If slavery eroded the economic position of the poor free citizens, if slavery encouraged a society of haves and have-nots…then it alone offered one promise to the free white man—poor, ignorant and dispirited—that he was at least not black and not a slave.”

And the planter class and its allies in government easily fobbed off their poor white countrymen with cheap flattery. Said Georgia Governor Joseph Brown:

“Among us the poor white laborer is respected as an equal. His family is treated with kindness, consideration, and respect. He does not belong to the menial class. The negro is in no sense his equal. He belongs to the only true aristocracy, the race of white men.”

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Arlington House and plantation, former home of Robert E. Lee

Similarly, poor whites now flock to the Republican Party—which holds them in equal contempt—in large part to protest the 2008 election of the first black President of the United States.

According to a Pew Research Center study released on July 22, 2011: “Notably, the GOP gains have occurred only among white voters; a 2-point Republican edge among whites in 2008 (46% to 44%) has widened to a 13-point lead today (52% to 39%).”

Since the 1960s, Republicans have pursued a campaign policy of “divide and rule”—divide the nation along racial lines and reap the benefits at election time.

  • Republicans opposed the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
  • Republicans opposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
  • Republicans, with Richard Nixon as their Presidential candidate in 1968 and 1972, pursued what they called a “Southern strategy”: Use “code language” to stoke fear and hatred of blacks among whites.
  • Republicans have falsely identified welfare programs exclusively with non-whites. (Of the six million Americans receiving food stamps, about 42% are white, 32% are black, and 22% are Latino–with the growth fastest among whites during the recession.)

Thus, in voting Republican, many of these poor whites believe they are “striking a blow for the white race.”

And they can do so in a more socially acceptable way than joining a certified hate group such as the American Nazi Party or Ku Klux Klan.  

Since 2015, openly racist groups such as the Klan and the American Nazi Party have flocked to the banner of Presidential candidate mogul Donald Trump. By enthusiastically courting their support, the real estate mogul has made it possible for Republican candidates to openly display their own racism.

Now greed:

In the hit play, 1776, on the creation and signing of the Declaration of Independence, there is a telling exchange between John Dickinson and John Hancock. It comes during the song, “Cool, Cool, Considerate Men.”

Dickinson, the delegate from Pennsylvania, urges Hancock, president of the Second Continental Congress, “to join us in our minuet.”

By “us” he means his fellow conservatives who fear losing their property and exalted status by supporting American independence from Great Britain.

John Dickinson

Hancock declines, saying: “Fortunately, there are not enough men of property in America to dictate policy.”

To which Dickinson replies:  “Perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor. And that is why they will follow us.”

Today,  poor whites generally identify with the CEOs of powerful corporations. They believe the Republican gospel that they can attain such wealth—if only the government will “get out of my way.”

They forget—or ignore–the truth that government, for all its imperfections, is sometimes all that stands between them and a wide range of predators.

In return, the CEOs despise them as the privileged have always despised their social and economic “inferiors.”

Unless the Democratic Party can find ways to directly address these bitter, Politically Incorrect truths, it will continue its decline into insignificance.