Fox News coverage of the Jan. 6th Committee - Day 7
A comparison of how Fox News coved Day 7 of the Jan. 6th Committee Hearing
Fox News has decided the best argument against the mounting evidence in the January 6th Committee Hearings is that it’s all meaningless since there’s no cross examination and no opposing voices. They’ve also concluded that the riot really wasn’t that big of a deal, that Trump and no one close to him will be criminally indicted and this is all one big smokescreen to hide the many flaws of Pres. Joe Biden.
Fox has a lot of reasons to downplay this investigation. So far Fox News has been included as some part of the evidence or testimony in every day of this proceeding.
In pre-taped testimony during the last hearing on Tuesday, Fox host, and former White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, stated didn’t think the election was stolen and that Trump should concede.
Another Fox reference was a clip of InfoWars host Owen Shroyer. Two weeks ago during an episode of “Tucker Carlson Tonight” Carlson claimed the charges against Shroyer were based on his speech rather than his actions.
It appears in this clip that Shroyer was more of a ringleader than merely another member of the mob.
The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Day 7
Duration of Hearing - 2 hours and 50 minutes
References to Fox News - Kayleigh McEnany (Fox Host)
Duration of Commentary: 33 minutes
Recess - 20 minutes 30 seconds
After hearing - 2 minutes 30 seconds
1st news segment “Your World with Neil Cavuto” - 10 minutes (The hearing coverage flowed directly into this program)
Panel
Sandra Smith - Fox News
John Roberts - Fox News
Martha MacCallum - Fox News
Jonathan Turley - Fox News legal analyst
Andy McCarthy- Fox News legal analyst
Chad Pergram - Fox News (Your World with Neil Cavuto)
Neil Cavuto - Fox News (Your World with Neil Cavuto)
Tom Dupree - Former Deputy Asst. Attorney General (Your World with Neil Cavuto)
At no time during any of the discussion of Tuesday’s hearing did anyone on Fox News concede that Trump lost the 2020 election. This is despite countless witnesses and overwhelming evidence that there was no widespread voter fraud. They also never brought up once that Trump wanted the military to seize voting machines.
On the other hand, no one on Fox News declared the election was stolen, they just avoided the topic all together.
The closest they got to addressing Trump’s denial of reality was when Andy McCarthy brought up the many legal setbacks the Trump campaign has faced.
“There were 61 legal challenges by the Trump administration by President Trump's campaign, during the course of the ‘Stop the Steal’ campaign challenging the election results, and they lost 60 times,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy then made a dramatic pivot,
“The Justice Department has indicted 800 people, and defendant after defendant after defendant has gone into district court and tried to shift the blame from himself to President Trump, that he was following President Trump's orders and that President Trump is a co conspirator and should be the one who should be the most liable or deemed to be the most culpable. And time after time, the Justice Department has opposed those motions, and the courts have rejected them,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy uses some extremely specific language in that statement. By saying Trump should be the “most liable” or deemed the “most culpable” in each of the 800 or so criminal cases would be incredibly difficult to prove.
That doesn’t mean that Trump bears no responsibility. Trump was the President of the United States when he planned the event, encouraged his followers to attend the rally and then directed them to march towards the capitol building while promising them he would join them. This was after Trump used language such as,
“If you don't fight like hell you're not going to have a country anymore.”
“We will never give up. We will never concede. It doesn't happen.”
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore and that’s what this is all about.”
Another take on the hearing came from Tom Dupree, a former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, who appeared during the first segment of “Your World with Neil Cavuto.”
Whereas the Fox News anchors and regular contributors minimized and deflected what was revealed in the hearing, Dupree saw the President at a victim of nefarious and shady characters who were steering him down a dark path.
“We always knew there was a little bit of crazy in the White House, said Dupree. “But now we hear that there was a lot of crazy in the days before January 6, with people giving the President just absolutely insane, in my opinion, legal advice.”
Andy McCarthy has repeated the claim he made after past hearings that the committee somehow all of this should have been brought up in the second impeachment of Donald J. Trump.
The second impeachment of Trump started seven days after the riots on Jan. 13th through February 13th, 2021. It would be absolutely impossible to gather this amount of evidence and interview over 1000 witnesses in the span of a week.
It was also pretty much accepted that the second impeachment was largely done for ceremonial purposes as the Democrats knew they probably wouldn’t get enough Republican senators to vote for conviction.
The Fox anchors started to look visibly uncomfortable as the expected 10-minute recess stretched into a 20-minute one.
At one point John Roberts seemed to intentionally try to cover time as he simply described the upcoming witnesses and give what he knew about their background.
“But Stephen Ayers, the fellow again on the left, actually was there and could probably speak with a greater degree of knowledge of exactly what was being said among these groups leading up to January 6th.” said Roberts.
PBS Coverage
Duration of Commentary - 24 minutes
Panel
Judy Woodruff - PBS
Lisa Desjardins - PBS
Laura Barron-Lopez - PBS
Mary McCord - Former Assistant Attorney General for National Security for the Obama administration, currently Executive Director for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.
Jamil Jaffer - Former Associate Counsel to President George W. Bush, currently George Mason University - Law Professor
In stark contrast to Fox News, Woodruff started her segment by focusing on the fact that Trump was listening to arguments about the presidential election that were not borne out by fact, and that Trump summoned his supporters to Washington based on a lie.
Mary McCord immediately got to the core of the matter when she focused on how the White House staff tried to steer Trump in the right direction.
“Then his decision, after his White House advisors had really gone to the mat to say you cannot do these crazy things,” said McCord. “We cannot steal these voting machines, you've lost the election, you should concede.”
Woodruff even read off a list of the White House advisors and staff who had been cited by the committee for telling Trump to concede, including Fox News host Kayleigh McEnany.
Lisa Desjardins pointed out how the tone of yesterday’s hearing took a much darker turn from previous hearings,
“Something else important that this committee is doing that I haven't heard them do yet,” said Desjardins. “At this hearing, they are clearly tying all of this to white supremacy. They're talking about racism in this hearing in a way that I haven't heard them do until today.”
This chart compares words used during the recess commentary on PBS and Fox News.
Coming up…
I’m capturing and analyzing “Tucker Carlson Tonight” and “Hannity” this week. The next January 6th Committee Hearing is supposed to be next week. I have little faith at this point that they won’t move it at the last minute. The next podcast/newsletter should be next Monday. Stay tuned….