As Trump Implodes Fox Disses Democrats

A condensed overview of 19 hours of Fox News for the week ending 3/9/25

Mar 12, 2025

As the stock market tumbled and Trump’s approval ratings continued to drop the folks on Fox cherry-picked biased polls, mislead their viewers about tariffs, repeated the president’s lies about immigration and demonized Democrats.

Although members of the minority party did not bring noise makers and egg cartons to the president’s joint speech to congress as predicted by the folks at Fox News they were still criticized at length for not standing or applauding Trump’s invited guests.

During his speech Trump chose to honor the family members of victims of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants, anti-transgender advocates, a pediatric cancer patient, a victim of cyberbullying, the relatives of Corey Compertore, the man who was murdered during an attempted assassination of the president and Marc Fogel, an American who until recently was held prisoner in Russia.

Fox News hosts repeatedly expressed outrage and indignation that Democratic lawmakers did not stand and applaud as Trump told the stories of his various guests. The Democrats’ choice to sit silently during most of Trump’s speech was portrayed as an insult to every American.

There was no mention of Trump’s many exaggerations and lies during his address including false statements about the Social Security administration sending checks to long deceased Americans.

Multiple Fox News hosts also rewrote history as they claimed that President Donald J. Trump had always. warned that tariffs issued on imports from our largest trading partners would cause “temporary pain.”

While he was campaigning for president Trump promised prosperity, the end of foreign wars and lower prices on day one of his presidency. So far the American people have gotten a weakened NATO, higher prices, financial markets in turmoil and massive layoffs in the federal government.

The world has seen draconian cuts in needed foreign aid, trade wars looming on the horizon and an empowered Russia.

Anyone watching Fox News exclusively last week might have missed out on stories about Trump’s falling approval ratings, political unrest in Serbia, and a plan by wealthy Arab countries that would weaken Hamas and rebuild the Gaza Strip.

Shows I watched last week on Fox:

Fox & Friends
The Five
The Ingraham Angle
Special Report with Bret Baier - Tuesday
Jesse Watters Primetime - Tuesday
Hannity - Monday and Tuesday
Fox News special coverage of the joint speech to Congress

Al Green - The Ultimate Democrat Demon

The folks at Fox News had their latest villain, a 78-year-old cane wielding Black congressman. who has represented the 9th district of Texas since 2005.

Rep. Al Green (D-TX) interrupted President Trump during his speech to a joint session of Congress. After his outbursts Speaker Mike Johnson ordered the sergeant-at-arms to remove Green from the House chamber.

Every Fox News employee seemingly completely forgot that both Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) aggressively heckled President Joe Biden during his more than one of his State of the Union speeches.

Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) also screamed, “You lie!” during President Barack Obama’s joint session of Congress in 2009. None of the Republican disruptors were removed after their outbursts.

No one on Fox News seemed to know much about Green as their insults amounted to petty remarks about his appearance more than anything else.

The day after Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress Greg Gutfeld referred to Green as a hood ornament on “The Five.”

“Al Green was the perfect hood ornament for this. He's a party with no room left except ugliness. And he is. You know, you couldn't find a better bad guy if you scoured all the Quentin Tarantino movies. He looks the part. He's a seething boil of a man,” said Gutfeld.

Judge Jeanine Pirro mentioned a cancer patient Trump celebrated during the speech.

“Al Green is a congressman from the same district where a D.J., the 13-year-old cancer victim, is from. Grace would have been being a little more tolerant of that whole speech. And I think it's an insult that that little boy's congressman walked out of that speech,” said Pirro.

Green did not walk out of the speech he was removed from the House chamber by the sergeant-in-arms.

The following night on “The Ingraham Angle,” Laura Ingraham gave the congressman a nickname.

“Hence Al Green's new nickname, ‘The Raging Cane.’ . . . “You don't do what Al The Raging Cain Green did. They celebrated him,” said Ingraham.

On Friday Judge Jeanine Pirro brought up a comment made by Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster.

“And Frank Luntz is warning that the left is going to be worse off if they side with cane shaking losers like Al Green,” said Pirro.

Democrats are Part of an Evil Circus

The day after Trump’s speech Laura Ingraham made several blanket statements about the minority party.

“Trump's just driven the left stark raving mad. Well, but the truth is, as we've said for many years . . . this Democratic Party has next to nothing in common with the party of JFK or even Bill Clinton. It's morphed into an amalgam of fringe ideologues and radical anti-American maniacs, and most of them truly loathe this country, which is why they insist that America is systemically racist and why they treat criminals like George Floyd, like folk heroes and drag queens like cultural icons,” said Ingraham.

Earlier that day Dana Perino openly admitted that producers on “The Five,” were producing back-to-back segments trashing Democrats.

“And we have led the show for two days now after the speech about how terrible the Democrats are. We're not. I mean, that is that's a pretty remarkable thing when President Trump makes news every other minute,” said Perino.

The segments Perino referred to included criticism of various protest video and demonstrations organized by Democratic lawmakers along with Green’s removal from during Trump’s speech.

The segments were not exactly newsworthy especially as Trump was causing havoc in the world markets with his indecisive policies towards tariffs.

On Thursday Ingraham wrote an extended monologue about the Democratic Party.

“The Democrats have the same problem they've had for a long time. They fundamentally loathed the American tradition. Didn't used to be that way . . . The Democrats seem like a sad circus, sad clowns where the performers just sulk as the tent collapses around them,” said Ingraham.

During the same episode Democratic strategist and frequent Fox News guest Doug Schoen also criticized his own party.

‘I disagree with the Republicans on a lot of things. They go further than I would go. So I cling to my membership in the Democratic Party. But it's not the same party. It isn't. C.J. said the party of John F. Kennedy or Bill Clinton,” said Shoen.

Ingraham still wasn’t done as she brought up Democrats again later in the episode of “The Ingraham Angle.”

“Corruption. Fraud. Abuse of power. Well, those, of course, is exposing all of this, but it's got one obstacle, sort of mini obstacle. The Democrat Party,” said Ingraham.

We Must Give Elon Musk Taxpayer Money

On Tuesday on “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Fox News correspondent, Kelly Saberi presented a short segment about the shortage of air traffic controllers.

“The FAA is short 3600 air traffic controllers. The agency now in a surge hiring period until March 17th. There is a high turnover rate in this profession, thanks in part to a mandatory retirement age of 55. Applicants must be younger than 31 years old before that closing date of the application period to apply. The process to hire will now be four months shorter than typical. Plus, the FAA plans to incentivize the job by raising Academy hourly pay by 30%. Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy says companies like SpaceX are helping modernize their infrastructure, and that their agency is up against the clock,” said Saberi.

Producers then cut to a heavily edited un-dated segment from “America Reports,” also on Fox News.

“We have to move at the speed of business, not at the speed of government, and they're helping us think through the procurement process, the time process. We're not there right now, but we can get there if we have the help from the private sector and the Congress gives us the money,” said Duffy.

Verizon already has a 15-year $2.4 billion contract with the FAA to modernize the air traffic controller system.

According to reporting by Yahoo! Finance Musk's SpaceX said its Starlink satellite unit has no intent to take over any FAA telecommunications contract, rejecting media reports.

Reuters has reported the FAA is reviewing the Verizon contract.

It’s unclear why Fox News or Sean Duffy would imply that SpaceX was part of any effort to upgrade the air traffic controller system.

Katie Pavlich - Trump Wants to Replace Taxes with Tariffs

While appearing on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Katie Pavlich, a Fox News contributor, brought up Trump’s plans to have revenue from tariffs replace income taxes.

“One thing that has been under discussed with this whole tariff, argument and debate is that President Trump's vision for tariffs is to eventually remove the income tax from America and replace the way that we pay for the federal government with tariffs. That's a deep principal belief that he has,” said Pavlich.

Last month, on the PBS News Hour, Paul Solman produced an extended segment about Trump’s plans for tariffs.

“President Trump insists tariffs were once the great revenue source for the United States. And it's true,” said Solman.

Producers cut to Douglas Irwin, a professor of economics of Dartmouth College

“Right up until the Civil War, tariffs raised 90% of the revenue for the federal government. But the federal government was very small. Spending was like 2 to 3% of GDP. So there wasn't much to fund except for the debt and the current expenditures. And the tariff did it,” said Irwin.

“Today, government spending is almost a quarter of GDP. How much do tariffs bring in?” said Solman.

“Today it's only about 2% of federal revenue comes from the tariff. It's just been swamped by corporate taxes, income taxes, Social Security taxes and things of that sort,” said Irwin.

“But the point is to replace those taxes. So how much more money can higher tariffs raise?” said Solman.

Producers then cut to Kimberly Clausing, of UCLA School of Law and former Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Biden administration.

“If you look at total federal revenues in a typical year, there over $4 trillion, almost $3 trillion of that is a combination of the individual income tax and the corporate income tax. Whereas we think the maximum you could get out of tariffs if you really push them to the highest level, you could go would be in the neighborhood of $800 billion. Right. So that's not going to come anywhere near what you need to even replace the individual income tax. Let alone the corporate tax, payroll taxes and other types of tax on income,” said Clausing.

According to the nonpartisan nonprofit Tax Foundation tariffs are a regressive tax that would harm the lowest income Americans the most.

“Tariffs directly increase the cost of domestic sales by artificially increasing the price on imports. The distributional effects (the economic burden it places on households across income levels) tend to be regressive, burdening lower-income households more than higher-income households. . .Analysis of imposed and threatened US tariffs (as of December 2018) shows that lower and middle-income households experience relatively larger drops in after-tax income.

Trump Gets Fact Checked by PBS

On Friday Geoff Bennett, a co-anchor of the PBS News Hour, swiftly fact checked President Donald J. Trump during a segment about the latest Jobs Report.

“The U.S. Labor market made solid gains again last month, adding 151,000 more jobs just before the biggest federal layoffs began to hit,” said Bennett.

“Unemployment crept up to 4.1%. More than 7 million Americans are unemployed. Manufacturing had its best record in months with 10,000 new jobs. Which President Trump held at the White House,” said co-anchor Amna Nawaz.

Producers then cut to a pre-taped statement from President Trump.

“We've not only stopped that manufacturing collapse, but we've begun to rapidly reverse it and get major gains. We created 10,000 manufacturing jobs in February alone. That hasn't happened in a long time. And these aren't government jobs, which actually we cut. These are private sector manufacturing jobs. So we gained all of those jobs, 10,000 jobs, and we barely started,” said Trump.

Without skipping a beat Bennett corrected the president.

“The economy actually last added more than 10,000 manufacturing jobs just a few months ago back in November of 2024,” said Bennett.

Pete Hegseth Also Gets Fact Checked by PBS

The day after Trump’s speech Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, repeated one of the president’s false statements about immigration.

“Over 20 million people, as the president pointed out last night, poured in across our open border policy,” said Hegseth.

Later that night on “The PBS News Hour,” Laura Barrón-López corrected this false statement along with many others from the speech.

“Let's just start with some of the biggest claims of the night. What stood out to you in terms of the areas that President Trump focused on?” asked co-anchor Amna Nawaz.

“So this is not an exhaustive list, but these are some of the key misleading, exaggerated or false statements that the president made, starting with the fact that he said 21 million undocumented immigrants entered the United States under Biden. It was actually under 11 million, and many were rapidly expelled,” said Barrón-López.

Several other media outlets, including Daniel Dale at CNN, also corrected the president’s false claim that entered the United States during the Biden administration.

During his campaign rallies Trump would often change the number of migrants from anywhere from 15 million to 21 million in the same speech.

Jesse Watters Doesn’t Seem to Know Who Watches Fox News

On Friday, on “The Five,” Jesse Watters went on a short tirade about the baby boomer generation.

“The baby boomers. This is what happened. The greatest generation comes back from war. They're all bent out of shape after the Depression too. And they had lots of kids and they spoiled them. And they get everything. And all of these children just competed for attention. And you get the 60s, and they're all like, me, me, me. Look at me. I'm going to sing. There's no consequences free love. And then they got lucky because you hit the Reagan 80s. And then all the way up until now, they wrote out the greatest stock market rally in the history of civilization. So now they're at the top of their game, and they're all rich. And they drove this country into a ditch. Look at the border. Look at the debt and what they've done is they've turned every program into their own personal piggy bank because it's theirs.
Everything is theirs. USAID. That's my money printing scam. Give me, give me, give me even open borders. What did they do? All they did was like, buy a place to house the migrants. And they got a $6 billion grant from Joe. This is what's happening. This is the last gasp of the baby boomer generation. They're going to sing. They're gonna do a little folk song. But they have not groomed the younger generation and the younger generation is just as stupid. And this is where the Democratic Party is,” said Watters.

There’s a lot to unpack with that nonsense.

During his rant Watters insulted approximately 76.4 million Americans.

The baby boomers also lived through economic turmoil and punishing recessions in the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Inflation and interest rates were quite high as the country grappled with stagflation.

Over 2.2 million men, most from the baby boomer generation, were drafted and forced to serve in the Vietnam War, a conflict that cost the lives of 58,200 Americans. Countless others suffered from physical and psychological injuries.

Watters is paid millions of dollars to host “Jesse Watters Primetime,” and “The Five.” His net worth is likely much higher than the average baby boomer.

The most stunning part of Watters insane diatribe was that he was unwittingly insulting his own audience. According to reporting by Politico and the Los Angeles Times the median age of a Fox News viewer is 68 years old. Baby boomers are anywhere from 61 to 79 years old.

*There is some debate on where each generation starts and stops. Some label younger baby boomers as being a part of a subgroup called Generation Jones.

Baby boomers also have the highest voter participation rate of any age group in the country. The U.S. Census Bureau found in 2020 that Americans ages 65 to 74 had the highest voter turnout at 76%.

Stories Fox News Ignored

Every week I compare the hours I’ve watched on Fox News to five hours of the PBS News Hour. The following list are stories PBS covered that Fox News did not. Source - PBS News Hour transcripts.

In Illinois, the man accused of killing seven people and injuring dozens more at a July 4th parade in 2022, pleaded guilty. Twenty-four-year-old Robert Crimo III withdrew his earlier plea of not guilty just minutes before his trial was set to start. He faced 21 counts of first degree murder. (PBS News Hour)
Police in Germany say at least two people are dead after a driver rammed a car into a crowd of people in city of Mannheim about 400 miles southwest of Berlin. Authorities say a 40-year-old German citizen is in custody. They did not immediately call the ramming an intentional attack, though cars have been used as weapons in Germany several times in recent months.(PBS News Hour)
PBS produced a segment about a recent PBS News NPR Marist poll that showed Trump had a 45% approval rating. (PBS News Hour)
Arab leaders from across the Middle East endorsed a plan to rebuild the Gaza Strip. The measure would allow the territory's two million Palestinians to remain in Gaza. It's a counterproposal to President Trump's vision, which calls for removing Palestinians from the area and creating a beach destination. Experts warn such a plan would be a war crime under international law. At today's summit in Cairo, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi laid out his $53 billion plan under which Hamas would cede power to an interim independent administration. (PBS News Hour)
In Serbia, at least three lawmakers were injured after chaos erupted in the country's parliament. Opposition lawmakers threw smoke bombs and flares as the chamber was set to vote on a measure that would increase funding for universities. They say the session was illegal and that parliament must first confirm the resignation of the prime minister and his government. Milos Vucevic, stepped down in January after months of anti-corruption demonstrations related to the collapse of a train station canopy that killed 15 people. (PBS News Hour)
An investor group led by U.S. firm Blackrock is buying two ports at either end of the Panama Canal. Those terminals are currently operated by the Hong Kong based group C.K. Hutchison. They've been at the center of a dispute between the Trump administration and Panama, as President Trump accuses China of influencing the critical waterway. Last month, Panama's president denied that China had any control over canal operations. The roughly $23 billion deal requires approval from Panama's government. (PBS News Hour)
NBA superstar LeBron James is finding new milestones to hit. James became the first player in NBA history to surpass 50,000 points across regular season and playoff games. That's 6000 more than his nearest rival, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The 40-year-old James is playing in his 22nd season. He's now tied with Vince Carter for the most years played. (PBS News Hour)
A judge in Baltimore agreed to reduce the sentence for Adnan Syed to time served. That means the 43-year-old will remain free, even though his murder conviction still stands. Syed’s case gained worldwide attention through the “Serial” podcast. He was sentenced in 2000 to life in prison for the murder of his former high school girlfriend. Syed also always maintained his innocence and was released from prison in 2022 after prosecutors found problems with the case. (PBS News Hour)
In South Korea a pair of fighter jets accidentally dropped eight bombs on a civilian area during a joint military exercise with U.S. forces. The incident took place in the city of Port Pune, near the country's heavily armed border with North Korea. Camera footage caught the moment of impact. At least eight people were injured, four of them seriously. South Korea's air force has apologized and offered compensation to the victims. (PBS News Hour)
A World War Two era bomb was found near tracks at a Paris train station. Police released a photo of the device, which contains more than 400 pounds of explosive material. Workers stumbled upon it overnight while working near tracks north of the station, as crews worked to defuze the bomb. Passengers for high speed and commuter services were stranded for hours. Officials say it's not uncommon to come across vestiges of the war, though this one was bigger than most. (PBS News Hour)
Last Friday, a South Carolina man was put to death by a firing squad after being convicted in a 2001 double homicide, to which he pled guilty. The execution of 67-year-old Brad Sigmon marks the first time since 2010 that a firing squad has been used in this country. And it comes as the Trump administration works to expand capital punishment, calling for the restoration of federal executions. (PBS News Hour)
Former Houston mayor and U.S. Congressman Sylvester Turner has died. Turner spent 27 years in the Texas House of Representatives before serving as Houston's mayor from 2016 to 2024. He was elected this past November to the congressional seat long held by the late Sheila Jackson Lee. Turner took office two months ago. He announced that he had undergone treatment for bone cancer and last year said he was cancer free. Sylvester Turner was 70 years old. (PBS News Hour)
Roy Ayers has died. He was a master of the vibraphone, as well as an accomplished keyboardist and vocalist, who brought a whole new sound to jazz.
His 1976 hit “Everybody Loves the Sunshine” has been sampled by artists like Tupac, Doctor Dre and Mary J. Blige. Known as the Godfather of neo soul, Ayers had 12 albums land in the Billboard charts over his six decade career. His family said he passed away from a long illness. Roy Ayers was 84 years old. (PBS News Hour)
Robert Clark has died. He was elected Mississippi's first black lawmaker of the 20th century in 1967. A teacher and descendant of enslaved people in a deeply segregated state, Clark was ostracized by his colleagues, forced to sit by himself in the House chamber and at official dinners. But Clark rose to the second highest leadership role in the state House, a position he held until he retired in 2004. His son, Bryant Clark, who took over his father's seat, says Robert Clark died of natural causes. (PBS News Hour)