Fox News: How the Network Spun The Final Chapter of the January 6th Committee

Fox News decided that a Congressional committee voting to issue criminal referrals to the Department of Justice against former President Donald J. Trump was really no big deal. Both legal analysts and news anchors predicted that the Department of Justice would ignore this brazen Democrat political theater. Fox hosts called the final meeting theatrical, partisan, repetitive and legally dubious.

No one at the network acknowledged that nearly all of the witnesses who testified during the proceeding were Republicans, some even once loyal supporters of the former president. The network downplayed the severity of the riot and Trump’s role in inciting and encouraging violence.

There was a slight pivot as the word “disturbing” was used exactly once to describe the riot during the 36 minutes of commentary.

The Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol - Day 10

Fox News references included as evidence - Day 10

Rep. Elaine Luria (D-VA) quoted Fox News as part of the evidence against former President Donald J. Trump.

“For several hours that followed people at the Capitol, people inside President Trump's administration, elected officials of both parties, members of President Trump's own family, and even Fox News commentators who were sympathetic to President Trump all tried to contact the White House to urge him to do one singular thing. The one thing that all of these people immediately understood was require instruct his supporters to leave the Capitol,” said Luria.

Fox News - Commentary

Duration of Hearing: 1 hour and 9 minutes

Duration of Commentary:

• Pre-hearing - 7 minutes

• Post-hearing - 29 minutes

Fox News Panel

• Sandra Smith - Fox News

• John Roberts - Fox News

• Martha Ma cCallum - Fox News

• Jonathan Turley - Fox News legal analyst

• Andy McCarthy - Fox News legal analyst

• Chad Pergram - Senior Congressional correspondent - Fox News

Fox News surprisingly focused more airtime to talking about today’s hearing than they have for previous installments.

Jonathan Turley, a Fox News legal analyst, had a very surprising take on the attempted insurrection at our Nation’s Capitol building.

“I think that that's a shame because there is material that has come out of this committee that's deeply disturbing. You know, this is not the proprietary ownership of the Democratic Party. That riot on January six was a desecration of our constitutional process. And yet it's been weaponized to some extent by this committee, which did not pursue other issues in these public sessions,” said Turley.

Turley’s assessment that the riot was being used as a weapon by the Democrats to smear Republicans was some of the most creative spin I’ve seen on the network.

There was a rare moment of recognition that President Joe Biden actually won the last presidential election.

“This is the first time in the history of the country that we've seen a president try to halt the process of moving from the president who was in office to the president who has been elected,” said MacCallum

Since I’ve started covering Fox News in mid-February I haven’t seen outright election denial. Most of the anchors on Fox News have hinted at election interference or made vague signals to The Big Lie that Trump was the true winner of the 2020 election.

The $1 billion defamation lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems is the most likely reason Fox decided to stop overtly pushing conspiracy theories about voter fraud.

What I haven’t seen however is a blatant rebuke of Trump’s ridiculous theories that the election was stolen from him. I haven’t seen a single Fox News host look into the camera and say,

“Trump didn’t win the last election.”

MacCallum’s statement is a baby step forward to accepting reality.

Chad Pergram, the Fox News senior Congressional correspondent threw some not so subtle shade towards some Republicans.

“Republicans next year have said we're going to call an Anthony Fauci. We're going to call in Alejandro Mayorkas. We want them to comply with subpoenas. And these members, including McCarthy and Jim Jordan, who's going to be central to those investigations, never complied with those subpoenas. And you have even some Republican members of Congress, Nancy Mace, who indicated at one point that she thought that Republicans were basically talking out of both sides of their mouth, not complying with those subpoenas yet saying we're going to subpoena everybody from the Biden administration next year,” said Pergram.

Both of the Fox News legal analysts both seemed to think that the Department of Justice would completely ignore the Committee’s referrals even though a Special Counsel has already been appointed to investigate former President Donald J. Trump.

“But if I were defense counsel for President Trump, my eyes would still remain fixed on Mar-a-Lago. I just don't see this as a as much of a threat of something that could be actually defended at trial or on appeal. The Department of Justice could ultimately just reject this. And I really contradict the claims of many that the criminal conduct here is obvious. It's not obvious that this committee again promised that there would be new evidence being displayed today,” said Turley.

Andy McCarthy, former federal prosecutor, repeated the sentiment.

“The Justice Department, Jonathan, mentioned that this is not binding and, you know, the Justice Department could reject it. My sense is the Justice Department will ignore it, which is what the Justice Department generally does when Congress grandstands in this fashion,” said McCarthy.

Martha MacCallum also echoed the same theory.

“I think in many ways they would be best to sort of ignore, even to say, you know, we thank you for your referral and we appreciate your right to make a referral Congress. But we are keeping that separate from the investigation, which we've had going on for quite some time,” said MacCallum.

As far as the rest of the commentary was concerned it was quite similar to how Fox spun past hearings.

John Roberts complained about the lack of opposing voices.

“There was no rebuttal really whatsoever. And we've talked about this before, like a very one sided, politically motivated action,” said Roberts.

“Well, the committee really did destroy its own credibility in how it proceeded. So members effectively appointed by the opposing party, they could have allowed for more witnesses to give opposing views, alternative views or interpretations,” said Turley.

Andy McCarthy brought up the one time Trump said to “March peacefully and patriotically” in an emotionally heated speech that preceded the riot.

“In connection with Trump's speech. He took pains in the speech to say that, you know, he wanted them to march peacefully. The fact that the committee doesn't broadcast that, he said that. Does it make that go away,” said Turley.

Just as with the previous nine hearings the entire endeavor was described as theatrical and performative.

“Act is a good way of putting it, Sandra, because it's theater,” said McCarthy.

Jonathan Turley continued.

“We're going to see if they will finally produce real, direct evidence of a criminal conspiracy or whether this is a performative act,” said Turley.

Turley went on to repeat almost verbatim criticism he had previously expressed about the entire process.

“The needle hasn't moved despite this focus of the January 6th Committee, these highly produced videos, the repetition, the reading from these prompters, the producer they brought in. It really is singing to the choir, said Turley.

This next clip is a great example of how Fox News uses repetition to push a talking point. In the span of 20 minutes, John Roberts repeats the same idea with slightly different wording.

The first instance.

“You could interpret what he didn't say there as being as long as Donald Trump is a candidate for president of the United States, that threat is still out there,” said Roberts.

The second time the wording is more specifically targeted at Democrats but it’s a similar idea.

“Would a Democratic White House really seek to prevent a former Republican president from seeking public office ever again,” said Roberts.

Chad Pergram also repeated the same idea.

“That this was all about trying to keep former President Trump out of the White House,” said Pergram.

Roberts picked the idea again with a slight twist.

“A Democratic run Department of Justice to prevent a former Republican president from trying to run for a second term? What would really be political dynamite and something that President Trump could exploit? All the while he is running for president again. I'm on his Truth Social. He hasn't talked about this. Just yet. But but just speak to that real quick before we leave you that it's a Democratic White House preventing a former Republican president from running for office,” said Roberts.

Roberts brought it back up a final time.

“Former President Donald Trump. That would be a Democratically run Department of Justice seeking to prevent a former president who was a Republican from ever seeking public office again. That that seems on the surface to be very fraught politically,” said Roberts.

I didn’t compare the words used on Fox to PBS since the two networks had incredibly uneven coverage.

PBS NewsHour - Commentary

Duration of Commentary:

• Pre-hearing - 7 minutes

• Post-hearing - 10 minutes

PBS NewsHour Panel

• Judy Woodruff - PBS NewsHour

• Lisa Desjardins - PBS News Hour

• Mary McCord - Director of Georgetown Univeristy Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, former Justice Department official

• Jamil Jaffer - Law professor, George Mason University, former associate counsel to President George W. Bush

PBS dedicated far less time to the meeting but they handled the criminal referrals with much more gravity.

Jaffer set the tone for the PBS NewsHour commentary as he started the segment.

“It absolutely is historic. I mean, the idea of a committee of the House voting to recommend criminal charges against a former president, United States for activities he conducted while president and many other and a number of others to the Justice Department is, you know, shocking, as were the events of that day,” said Jaffer.

Jaffer also challenged his own party.

“Question for the Republican Party becomes, do you nominate a man who now all this evidence has been has piled up demonstrating the role he played, the advice he got for other Republicans to not engage in this behavior. Do you nominate him as your party's candidate? My party's candidate once again,” said Jaffer.

Mary McCord gave her insight on how the Department of Justice might move forward.

“The Department of Justice, I think if I were there, what I'd be most eager to get my hands on is all of the evidence that the committee amassed, because obviously the department has its own ways of gathering evidence. Probably a lot of it is going to be repetitive. But I think there will be new materials there that they will have access to.

And significantly, as was mentioned during the hearing, you know, the 2383 insurrection charge, if if that is brought and I don't know that it will be. And if there is a conviction that disqualifies former President Trump from holding public office,” said McCord.

Coming up…

Tomorrow I’m going to publish my weekly overview of Fox News. I thought the January 6th Committee meeting deserved immediate attention. I will take one week off due to the upcoming holidays. There will be no weekly newsletter on 12/26/22.