Fox News Started the Week with Manufactured Drama and Ended with a Real-Life Tragedy in Israel
A condensed overview of 19 hours of Fox News for the week ending 10/8/23
Last week was a rollercoaster of false outrage, genuine panic, and gut-wrenching emotion on Fox News. The first segment on “Fox & Friends,” was a short piece about Taylor Swift and her latest love interest a NFL football player named Travis Kelce. It truly was the calm before the storm as Fox News producers had no idea how tumultuous the rest of the week would become.
By Tuesday evening every host on the network completely melted down after the news broke that eight Republicans and every Democrat in the House of Representatives voted to oust Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House. It was a self-inflicted wound on the party driven by extremist novice lawmakers run amok.
The removal of the Speaker of the House was a big deal of course as it was the only time in the history of the Republic that a Speaker has been removed by a floor vote. It was also evidence of a political party being dominated by egotists who seem more focused on media attention than governing.
Within 48 hours Fox News hosts calmed down a bit only to flip out after Hillary Clinton compared Trump supporters to a cult who needed a formal deprogramming during a CNN interview.
Multiple hosts on the network claimed Clinton’s statement would lead to North Korean style re-education camps filled with beleaguered Republicans forced to accept woke ideology.
The chief all powerful Democratic villainess had spoken - democracy was dead.
Along with the outsized hysteria about the retired Speaker of the House’s statements were segments about the president’s dog, a drunk monkey terrorizing a suburb, and an updated version of “Bambi” the classic Disney film.
By Saturday morning the network’s usual histrionics over nonsense looked absolutely trivial when horrific images from a surprise attack in Israel started flooding social media.
Although the network has neglected to cover similar horrors from Ukraine for months this new massacre could not be ignored.
Shows I covered last week
Fox & Friends and Fox & Friends Saturday
The Five
The Ingraham Angle
Special Report with Bret Baier, Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity - on Tuesday
When McCarthy Got The Boot Judge Jeanine Pirro Exploded
By Tuesday eight Republicans led by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) along with every Democrat in the House of Representatives voted to remove Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.
It was one of the rare moments on Fox when absolutely everyone had some sort of emotional breakdown over the news. I haven’t seen so much panic on the network since the GOP underperformed in the last midterm election.
On Tuesday on “The Five,” Judge Pirro began the segment at full throttle level of freakout.
“First of all, or without a speaker. This is historic. Something like this hasn't happened in well over 100 years. And now what we've got is total chaos when the Republicans are playing out their infighting on national television in a historic way. Instead of fighting Joe Biden's policies, the one time we are up in virtually every metric as it relates to the Biden administration, you've got the Republicans going out there and showing how dysfunctional they are as mandates, as engaging in fund raising.
And I got to tell you something, I am curious. There's no question that this is something that they have been trying to do for almost nine months that McCarthy spent speaker. And the truth is that they've done a lot in Congress. They've gotten a lot of bills passed. The fact that the Senate doesn't want to take them. They've done a lot in terms of oversight.
And, you know, now you've got the Democrats. This is a crazy thing. Democrats who hate the MAGA. Republicans are now joining with the MAGA Republicans to oust Speaker McCarthy. This is like the devil is in the middle of all of this chaos. And Donald Trump is worried. Why are the Republicans fighting with each other like this?” said Pirro.
Later that night on “The Ingraham Angle,” Ingraham asked Gaetz directly what Trump thought about his actions.
“He seemed to indicate that maybe he was maybe in favor of what you were doing but wasn't going to say so publicly. What can you tell us tonight, since he really is the leader of the party and you are a MAGA Republican and he's the top dog, so what do you say?” asked Ingraham.
Gaetz answered with a broad smile across his face.
“Absolutely. I support President Trump, eager to campaign with him. Probably are private conversations I'm going to keep to us, but I think I'm in pretty good stead with the former president.”
Things Got Awkward on Fox & Friends when Steve Doocy Made Wild Claims About Democrats
I have no idea if Steve Doocy is committing a slow career suicide at Fox News or if he’s being instructed to be the contrarian on morning program.
On Thursday he went right off the rails when he gleefully suggested that Democrats might support former President Donald J. Trump for Speaker of the House.
“So, with the 118th Congress, there is this rule, and this would apply to Donald Trump because Donald Trump, you know, if he's toying with the idea, apparently he he can't be Speaker. The article is in The New York Post this morning. Donald Trump can't be Speaker right now because there is a House rule that restricts people with felony indictments from House leadership because he's facing charges.
The House certainly could change it. But I was talking to somebody down in D.C. yesterday. You know, just imagine if somebody put Donald Trump's name into nomination, every Democrat would vote for Donald Trump because if you look at X (Twitter) right now, the White House and the DNC, they're talking about all the chaos on the Republican side with the Capitol coup.
They would love the chaos to continue. So, if Donald Trump were your nomination, every Democrat in the House would vote for him. And he only needs five Republicans. He could be. If they change that rule, the next Speaker which would be crazy,” said Doocy as his co-hosts look furious with. him as he spoke.
Greg Gutfeld Compared a Pulled Fire Alarm to the 9/11 Terrorist Attack
On Saturday September 30th Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) pulled a fire alarm in a building near the Capitol. He claimed he was rushing to vote on the floor and accidentally pulled the alarm thinking it would open an emergency door.
His Republican critics claimed he intentionally pulled the alarm to delay the vote on a 45-day spending measure to keep the government open. U.S. Capitol Police are investigating the incident.
On Monday on “The Five,” Greg Gutfeld compared Bowman’s actions to the 9/11 terrorist attack during a long rambling diatribe.
“I wouldn't dismiss the calling Republicans Nazis so lightly, because if you this has always been part of the strategy. If you call somebody Hitler or you call somebody a Nazi, why wouldn't you sabotage a vote? Why wouldn't you rig an election? Why wouldn't you create a witch hunt against the person that you've been calling Hitler? So they call them Nazis to justify this behavior?
Anything is possible, no question. He tried to interrupt a government official business. This is probably the worst deliberate act since 9/11,” said Gutfeld.
Chances are Gutfeld meant January 6th as several other lawmakers an pundits had made the comparison of Bowman’s actions to the attack on the Capitol.
January 6th was an attempt to interfere with the certification of electoral votes. The 9/11 terrorist attack was a direct assault on civilians. I can’t read Gutfeld’s mind or infer what he intended to say. He said 9/11 not January 6th and made no attempt to clarify his statement.
In the rest of his rant, he brought up January 6th not 9/11 but most of what he said was an incoherent mess of word salad.
“The question is, does he go to prison? It's for how long he was trying to initiate an insurrection on his own, and he should be treated just like the January Sixers. Which gets to my amazing comparison when you think about the extreme wacky participants of what happened on January 6th, that nutty conspiracists the QAnon suckers, the misguided pirates.
They weren't a sitting congressman. And, you know, and that's the key difference in these parties. On the right, the freaks aren't in power on the left. The freaks are in power. And if you want proof, compare how they create their own conspiracies, the conspiracies origins on the right. They bubble up from chatrooms, they bubble up from Reddit or nobody's in forums in chat rooms.
Right? And they're crazy and they don't really go anywhere but on the left. It's their conspiracies are created by a cabal of institutions, Right. And politicians who created the Steele dossier that didn't come from a QAnon that came from Hillary, right? The Russian collusion. Suppressing Hunter's laptop? These were all done by professionals, people that are high up in the party.
So, on the right, the nuts remain nuts. On the left, the nuts become elevated, and they end up running the country. I think we should be really, really frightened by that. This dude has to face the same consequences. He should not be, you know, he should be expelled. That's what he would do in his school. As a principal, you would expel a student for pulling that. So he should not be he should go to jail when,” said Gutfeld.
The Trump Gag Order - How Fox Covered it Compared to PBS
Last week Judge Arthur Engoron issued a gag order for former President Donald J. Trump in his civil fraud trial.
Trump personally attacked a court clerk involved with the case in a post on Truth Social claiming she was the girlfriend of Senator Chuck Schumer.
“This morning one of the defendants posted on (a) social media account a disparaging untrue and personally identifying post about a member of my staff. Although I have since ordered the post deleted and apparently it was, it was also emailed out to millions of other recipients,” the judge said in court.
On “The Ingraham Angle,” Laura Ingraham treated the order as if it was part of a vast conspiracy to silence Trump’s powerful voice.
“So, again, words focus on words. Pay no attention to the stuff that the Democrats are doing to destroy and endanger America. Pay attention to the stuff that Donald Trump says. Words are dangerous to them. So, he really shouldn't be allowed to speak freely. This is why gag orders are being issued and sought. Yesterday, Judge Arthur Engoron slapped a partial gag order on Trump forbidding all parties from posting, emailing or speaking publicly about members of his staff.
Trump had posted a pic of one of the judge's law clerks with Schumer and made a crack on Truth Social, I guess, about her being one of Schumer's girlfriends. Now look, I think it was an unforced error by Trump's team. No reason to do that. But if it wasn't that, it would have been something else,” said Ingraham.
This is how PBS covered the same story.
“The judge in this New York case is Arthur Engoron. He imposed a gag order on Mr. Trump yesterday. Why? What led to that?” NewsHour co-anchor Amna Nawaz asked White House correspondent Laura Barron-Lopez
“So, Judge Engoron imposed this gag order very quickly on Trump saying that he can't make comments about court staff. And this came hours after former President Trump attacked that judge's principal law clerk on social media. On Truth Social Trump baselessly accused the law clerk of having a relationship with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and also said that, ‘This law clerk is running the case against me. This should be dismissed immediately,’ said Barron-Lopez as she directly quoted the Truth Social post.
She continued.
“This is clearly a pattern from the former president where he is directly attacking any officials that are involved in these cases against him.”
Hillary Clinton Said MAGA Should Be Deprogrammed - Stephen Miller Had a Meltdown
On Friday morning during an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared Trump supporters to a cult and said they needed a formal deprogramming.
Fox News likes to paint Clinton as some sort of all powerful super villain who exists to lay waste on the Make America Great movement and the conservative way of life. Of course, Clinton is retired and not planning on running for any elected office but that’s not going to stop Fox from pretending she’s basically a suburban Joseph Stalin.
While a guest on “The Ingraham Angle” hosted by Kayleigh McEnany, Stephen Miller, former speech writer for Donald J. Trump reacted to Clinton’s statement by echoing themes in the white Christian nationalist movement.
“They're telegraphing their true intentions Kayleigh. The biggest mistake that we can possibly make is the mistake that others have made in countries before ours in different time periods when there was a fascist movement, an authoritarian movement, autocratic movement that demonized and dehumanized the political opposition. And people said, oh, they're not serious. We don't we don't think there's any real threat.
We're going to dismiss it. Joe Biden, when he says that they want to get rid of the MAGA threat, when they describe those who dissent from his agenda as the equivalent of enemies of the state. When the Department of Justice, as you mentioned, targets concerned parents and now targets Trump supporters, what you are seeing is the machinery of the state, something unthinkable in our history, the machinery of the state being turned inward as an instrument of oppression against Christian Americans, against Americans of faith, against pro-Trump Americans, against those who reject the left's cultural and social agenda in our schools and workplaces. This is a terrifying moment, in my opinion,” said Miller.
Clinton’s statement could be taken as hyperbolic but Miller made a number of assumptions regarding her intentions. Clinton does not work for the government and had absolutely no power over anyone. Although she remains an influential figure in the Democratic Party she cannot directly enact any sort of government edict.
Miller was also one of many guests and hosts on Fox who completely overreacted to her statement. Fox dedicated several segments to her remarks last week including “Fox & Friends Saturday.”
Jessica Tarlov Remains in Reality Regarding Hillary’s Deprogramming Statement
Friday on “The Five,” Judge Jeanine Pirro directly asked Jessica Tarlov to weigh in on Clinton’s comments.
“Jessica, you would hear words like de-platforming, deprogramming, cult, all haters in countries like the Soviet Union, China, North Korea. Isn't that in itself a threat to democracy?” asked Pirro.
“Hillary Clinton giving an interview? No, it's not a threat to democracy. Does it land in a bunch of GOP ads heading into an election? Sure. That's what happened with the basket of deplorables comment. But I really need everyone to spare me the faux outrage and the pearl clutching about this little collection of things that Donald Trump and high-ranking Republicans call liberals on a daily basis anarchists, anti-American, deranged communists, corrupt, compromised groomer and perverts, thugs and traitors. Now, she was explicit that she was talking about a subsection of the Republican Party the same way that Joe Biden is when he talks about these MAGA extremism.
But you tell me if the leader of the Democratic Party so that that would be Joe Biden was facing four indictments with 91 felony counts, he had been found liable of sexually assaulting a woman and defaming her. That's E. Jean Carroll, guilty of fraud, sharing the nation's secrets not only in the Mar-a-Lago indictment, but there was a report yesterday from ABC News that he had shared information about our nuclear submarine capacities with an Australian billionaire who's a member of Mar-a-Lago, who had then gone on and share that with dozens of other people.
They're not making a purchase, I think, of three subs and included specifics up to how many nuclear warheads they carry and how close they can get to Russian subs without being detected. And then I told you so that all of that is happening and he's shooting up in the polls. And when you see those interviews of Trump supporters outside of the rallies, they're like, none of this is true. It's the big lie. He won the election, etc.. And you wouldn't say to me, you guys are in a cult. It's actually tame what Hillary Clinton was saying,” said Tarlov.
Fox Guest Goes Rogue about Hunter Biden
Now that the House can’t do much of anything without a Speaker the Hunter Biden story temporarily fell out of its normally heavy rotation at Fox.
The network did manage to get a few segments in about the president’s troubled son.
On Wednesday on “Fox & Friends,” Steve Doocy sat down with Elliot Felig a New York based criminal defense attorney, to talk about the gun charges Hunter Biden faces.
“How much trouble is Hunter Biden in?” asked Doocy
“The prosecutors basically already showed their hand in this case back in July when they agreed, at least tentatively, to a no jail disposition. Right. The key factors there, the fact that it was the first arrest or that he doesn't have a record, the fact that it's under the law, a non-violent crime, the fact that there's a constitutional question hanging over the statute. Those factors are all still in place. So even though the deal fell apart, I think the prosecutors still are open to wrapping this up with a no jail plea,” said Felig.
For months several Fox News pundits have made wild claims that Hunter would likely serve up to 25 years in prison for lying about his drug use on a gun form. None of them bothered to interview a criminal defense attorney.
A Real Disaster Strikes After So Much Manufactured Outrage
On Saturday morning Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip breeched Israel’s defenses by land, air, and sea in a well-coordinated assault at the end of a Jewish holiday.
The militant forces attacked unarmed civilians at an outdoor music festival killing at least 260 people at the event. In addition to striking a few military targets the soldiers went door to door in small border villages indiscriminately killing and raping civilians while kidnapping others including children and the elderly.
The number of dead is estimated at around 700 - 1000 people mostly civilians.
The brutality was filmed by the militants themselves or by survivors of the attack. Social media was quickly inundated with cell phone footage of horrific images of people being murdered or fleeing for their lives.
The government of Israel and its military were completely caught off guard by the massacre.
It seemed obvious that Hamas probably had help coordinating the attack. Within a day of the assault the Wall Street Journal confirmed Iran helped plot the attack over a series of weeks.
I decided to pick up an hour of “Fox & Friends,” along with the Saturday edition of “PBS NewsHour,” to see how both networks covered the assault. Even in the first brief segments Fox chose to editorialize the event while the NewsHour just stuck to the facts.
After a segment that included a correspondent reporting from Israel Pete Hegseth weighed in.
“Concession after concession has been made to Palestine. In this case, Hamas after multiple intifadas, took control of the Gaza Strip. But they've used it to build tunnels and buy weapons and starve their people with financing from Iran, which is why part of our own Bret Baier sat down with Bibi Netanyahu in just a couple of weeks ago. The idea used to be land for peace. And the Gaza Strip is an example of how when you give land to Islamists, they don't use it for peace. Here's a part of what Bibi Netanyahu said.”
I want to point out that Hegseth substituted the word “Islamists” for Hamas a specific terrorist group in Gaza. The term ‘Islamist’ is normally used to describe a radical or fundamentalist Muslim.
Hamas would definitely meet the definition of a radical religious group but by using the border term ‘Islamist’ Hegseth is lumping in a much broader group of Muslims that were not involved in this attack. Many fundamentalist Muslims are in a state of constant conflict and aggression with other Muslims who have similar extremist views.
If he’s referring to Hamas he should call the group by its name not lump them in with a larger group.
He then cut to an interview with the Bibi Netanyahu the Prime Minister of Israel from September 22nd.
‘How do you solve that part? Are you willing to give concessions when it comes to the Palestinians? Specifically, I think the Palestinians should be part of the process, but I don't think the Palestinians should have a veto over the process. And the reason we didn't have for a quarter century any new peace treaties. After we made peace with Egypt and Jordan, we didn't have for 25 years a single new peace treaty because everybody said, first you have to satisfy whatever the demands of the Palestinians are. You've got to conclude a peace treaty with the Palestinians. Well, there was only one problem then that the Palestinians don't want a peace with Israel. They wanted peace instead of Israel. They don't want a state next to Israel. They want a state instead of Israel. So that wasn't going to get us anywhere,” said Netanyahu
It might not seem strange to pull an old quote from the Netanyahu to give some context for the attack from my perspective it seemed abrupt. Fox News usually ignores any story related to Israel. The network won’t report on positive or negative stories it’s just a black hole in their coverage.
Viewers may agree with Hegseth’s assessment of Hamas depending on how they feel about Israel-Palestine but I just wanted to point out that he definitely added his opinion to the segment.
Since I started this project in February 2022, I immediately noticed a trend of Fox News ignoring most stories from the Israel-Palestinian region. A typical Fox viewer would know very little about the escalating violence in the region or the complicated internal political tensions that have been brewing in the country for months.
I went through my archives and found over 70 stories that PBS covered about Israel-Palestine that Fox News did not.
Here’s a sample of some of the headlines:
Deadliest day in West Bank in two decades
Palestinian gunman killed 7 people in East Jerusalem
Israel moves forward with Judicial reforms amid massive protests
Ultra-nationalists protest for more Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank
Rampaging Israeli settlers set fire to Palestinian homes and cars in the West Bank.
Attack in Tel Aviv - Palestinian driver intentionally ran car into group of people
There was no describable bias among the segments as they included negative stories about both sides of the conflict. The number of segments that included violent acts was staggering.
I have been concerned for some time that the violence would escalate in the region based on the coverage on PBS.
The crucial context that was lost however was the ongoing internal political conflict within Israel. Fox did include a few segments about Israeli citizens coming out in massive numbers to protest their own government’s actions to limit the power of the judiciary but most of its coverage was thin.
Part of the reason this attack happened when it did is that Hamas exploited the internal political divisions within Israel to its own advantage.
I’m planning to go through my entire list and publish every single segment with hyperlinks in separate newsletter to show the full context of what Fox News viewers missed out on in the past year and a half. I tried to have it ready for this newsletter but quickly realized it will take me several days to put it together along with my regular schedule for this project.
How PBS Covered the Attack
John Yang the weekend anchor reported from Washington.
“Tonight, months of escalating tensions between Israelis and Palestinians have erupted into a firestorm in an unprecedented surprise attack. The militant Hamas rulers of Gaza sent dozens of fighters into Israel by land, sea and air.
Gun battles raged for hours in communities across southern Israel, and officials on both sides say Israeli soldiers and civilians are now captives in Gaza. Israel responded with airstrikes on Gaza cities, flattening Hamas offices and residential buildings. At this hour, at least 200 Israelis are reported dead and 1100 wounded. Palestinian officials say at least 198 Palestinians are dead and 1600 wounded, most from fighting in Israel,” said Yang.
The segment was fairly-straight forward with more detail than Fox included. This was on Saturday before the full account of the Israeli civilian casualties were known.
I want to point out in the language Yang used he pointed out that as of Saturday evening the Palestinians who were killed inside of Israel implying, they were members of Hamas.
Stories Fox News Ignored
Every week I compare the hours I watch on Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour due to the past week extending into Saturday and including extra hours on Tuesday I’ve had to truncate this list a bit and am only featuring the top stories.
Updates in the war in Ukraine
EU leaders gathered in Kyiv to pledge they were still united for Ukraine. Biden reassured allied leaders that the U.S. remains committed to supporting Ukraine.
The Pentagon warned Congress that it is low on money to replace weapons for Ukraine
Robert Fico, the pro-Kremlin politician in Slovakia just won the last election with 22% of the vote. His party did not win enough votes to govern on its own so now he must secure a coalition government in the next two weeks
Climate diasters
India experienced torrential rainfall which caused a glacial lake burst its banks and resulted in flash flooding killing at least 42 people with over 150 still missing.
A New Jersey appeals court threw out a $222 million judgment against Johnson & Johnson over a case involving four plaintiffs who claimed they got cancer from using the company’s talc products. The Superior Court of New Jersey, Appellate Division found the judge in the lower court shouldn’t have allowed some of the scientific expert testimony to be presented during trial.
The last ethnic Armenians from the separatist area Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan left the country. Over 100,000 people, more than 80% of the population, fled after Azerbaijan reclaimed the area in a military strike.
The U.N. Security Council voted to send an International Police force led by Kenya, to Haiti. The resolution aims to restore order following the assassination of the president in July 2021 resulted in an overwhelming surge in gang violence.
The CDC recommends a ‘morning after’ type of antibiotic pill for gay and bisexual men that can be taken after exposure to sexually transmitted diseases.
PBS included several segments about various winners of Nobel Prizes. The full list of winners was published last week.
The government of Pakistan announced that all undocumented immigrants must leave the country by November 1st or face deportation. Many of the immigrants fled the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan.
Turkish police have detained over 1000 people including dozens with alleged links to Kurdish militants after a suicide bombing linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party or PKK.
PBS produced an extended segment on NSH USA Corp, an American machine company, is inadvertently supplying parts for the Russian war effort in Ukraine. Machine parts and equipment are being laundered through third party brokers in Europe who use aliases to hide the true identity of Russian buyers.
Drones struck a military graduation in Syria. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack at least 89 people were killed and 300 wounded.
The U.S. Army has a new plan to recruit more college graduates and Americans with a partial college education rather than solely focus on high school graduates. The Army has not met its recruitment goals since 2014.
Pope Francis is set to hold a three week Synod to help reform the Catholic Church. It will be the first time women will be allowed to vote.
The Indian government arrested the editor of NewsClick after several journalists wrote articles that were critical of the government. Indian authorities claim the media company was getting funding from the Chinese. NewsClick denied any financial misconduct.
Alabama will finally get a new congressional district that favors Black voters after a long protracted battle with the Supreme Court. Federal judges selected new congressional lines to better represent the demographics the state. The state of Alabama tried to fight the new districting but ultimately lost its case.
More than 2400 people were killed after a series of earthquakes in Afghanistan. The quakes that hit the area were some of the most deadly in the past year.
A group of senators led by Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) met with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The meeting is a precursor to a meeting later this fall with between Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden.
I chose to use the term militant to describe Hamas because that's the term PBS used and I have a great deal of respect for the network. It's impossible to navigate this as I've gotten angry comments on Twitter and Threads on both sides of this conflict. This is not an editorial. I purposefully kept my own feelings about this absolutely brutal incident out of the article.
You’re doing an excellent job, Juliette! 👍🏼👍🏼❤️❤️