Fox News: The Birth of a Conspiracy Theory...But his Documents is the New Never-ending Story

A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 1/22/23

This week a typical Fox News viewer would think that classified documents were planted in every Biden property by scheming Democrats who want to prevent him for running for re-election in 2024. The same Fox fan might think the World Economic Forum would lead to Islamist communist countries destroying the American way of life.

Anyone who exclusively watched Fox News last week wouldn’t know that Elon Musk is embroiled in a lawsuit filed by Tesla shareholders over a tweet he made about making the company private. Fox viewers probably missed stories about a major plane crash in Nepal, a hunger strike in a Texas prison or violent political protests in Peru.

A lover of the Murdoch owned news empire was basically fed a diet of conspiracy theories about classified documents and not much else. The story dominated the network’s coverage taking up 25% of its total airtime.

Fox anchors also sowed panic surrounding the annual World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland. More than one Fox anchor acted as if the United States was at the tipping point for falling into a communist dystopia at any moment. It was more of the usual Fox propaganda with some extra tin foil hat.

Shows I covered last week

• Fox & Friends - The first hour

• The Five

• Hannity

The Birth of a Conspiracy Theory

I noticed how several Fox News contributors and hosts kept pushing the same ridiculous theory about the origin of the classified documents tied to President Joe Biden - the idea that the documents were purposefully planted by Democrats in order to force Biden to retire and not run for re-election in 2024.

I decided to go back two weeks to when the story first broke to see if I could find the exact moment that someone on Fox came up with it. In order to do that I went through every segment about the story for all 30 hours of coverage I had collected.

What I found was a half-baked theory that started on “The View” but quickly mutated and then spread like a virus throughout Fox and the right-wing media ecosystem.

On the Thursday Jan. 12th, on “The Five,” Greg Gutfeld showed a clip from "The View" in which Sunny Hostin said she thought Republicans might have planted classified documents in Biden's home and think tank. It was a half-baked theory that wasn't supported by evidence.

Within a couple of days Fox News had morphed the theory to make it about Democrats either purposefully planting documents or at least using the crisis to get rid of President Biden so he wouldn't run for president in 2024.

Here’s the timeline.

Thursday Jan. 12th - The Five

“And it looks like the view and a Democrat congressman have a solid theory on the documents,” said Greg Gutfeld.

A brief clip from “The View” shows up on the screen and Sunny Hostin give her opinion on the scandal.

“Does it feel like the Republicans are behind it?”

The segment also included a brief clip of Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA)

“I’m also aware that things can be planed on people. . .things can be planted in places and then discovered conveniently,” said Johnson.

Gutfeld then turned to his co-host Geraldo Rivera.

“How do we not know? It's not. Has it been planted, Geraldo? Maybe this is the work of the Russians. No, it's the work of the Russians,” asked Gutfeld.

Thursday Jan. 12th - Tucker Carlson Tonight

Tucker Carlson picked up on the theory but made it about Democrats trying to ruin Pres. Biden’s chances of running for president in 2024. I have no evidence that Carlson got this idea from Gutfeld or if it was already circulating in right-wing circles but he was the first person on Fox News that I witnessed promote it.

“Harris was grinning the whole time. And why wouldn't she be grinning? Let's see now. That senile white guy who claims to be her boss is finally going. Down, down, down, down, down, down,” said Carlson.

Friday Jan. 13th - The Five

The next day on “The Five” Judge Jeanine Pirro was quite direct.

“Is this some of the Dems who don't want Joe Biden to run,” asked Pirro.

Friday Jan. 13th - Tucker Carlson Tonight

Buck Sexton, a former CIA officer and current conservative radio host, also echoed the same theory only instead of Democrats he implied intelligence agencies were trying to manipulate the next presidential election.

“Opportunism from within the national security apparatus to push him? That's what we want to know,” said Sexton.

Carlson went to an even stranger place.

“I think this is make way for Michelle. Just my view, not provable. We'll see,” said Carlson.

I assume Carlson is talking about Michelle Obama the wife for former President Barack Obama. Michelle hasn’t announced she has any plans to run for any public office much less president. Fox News has promoted her as potential candidate since her husband left office.

Monday Jan. 16th - The Five

Judge Pirro repeated the theory again.

“What what's interesting about this is there's a part of me that wants to believe that a lot of this is being promoted by the Dems because they don't want Donald Trump to run for excuse me, they don't want him to run either, but they don't want Joe Biden to run for president,” said Pirro.

Monday Jan. 16th - Hannity

Kellyanne Conway, former senior counsel to President Trump, also promoted the idea.

“I think it hurt. I think, you know, your essential question of are they trying to push him aside? Who do they really have? He can't turn it over to his vice president,” said Conway.

Thursday Jan. 19th - The Five

“Whose is this going to is this the effect, the deliberate effect from the Democrats to keep him from launching,” asked Gutfeld.

Judge Pirro seemed to think she was the only person who had come up with the idea.

“Well, I think I said this last week. I said, you know what? This could be the Democrats saying, we've got to get this geezer out of the way,” said Pirro.

Friday Jan. 20th - Hannity

Fox host Will Cain said the same exact thing but with a bit more panache.

“Most of America at this point, including probably the Democratic Party and most of those who exist in Washington, D.C., regardless of what administration is in power, are done. I think they are done with Joe Biden. I think his incompetence and his senility has become undeniable and obvious to the point where they're thinking we can't run him in 2024,” said Cain.

Sean Hannity prodded him a bit.

“But they're saying he's about to announce that he's running after the State of the Union,” said Hannity.

Cain responded.

“At the same time, they are allowing and I think that's a fair word, allowing the classified documents to become the number one story in America, so much so that it's even covered by CNN,”said Cain.

I have no evidence if this was an organized or coordinated response on behalf of Fox News but it does seem a bit suspicious that all of these personalities would come up with the same basic idea at the same time. Absolutely none of the Fox anchors and guests offered any proof of their claims.

Imagine Rudy!

While discussing Biden’s classified document scandal former MTV reality television star Rachel Campos-Duffy had a brilliant idea.

“Do you imagine if Rudy Giuliani was in charge of finding whatever documents were in Mar-A-Lago? This was totally different. There should have already been a a FBI raid. By the way, not just for these documents. There's lots of crimes in the Biden family that need to be investigated. But, you know, they went into Mar-a-Lago. They raided Trump's house. They went into Baron's bedroom. No one goes into Hunter Biden's bedroom to see what's going on,” said Campos-Duffy.

I’m not sure if Hunter Biden has his own bedroom at his father’s home considering Hunter is an adult and a father but you never know.

The image of Giuliani rooting through Trump’s home office and storage room is amusing.

Sean Hannity Yells at a Liberal Black Man

Sean Hannity is the highest paid personality on Fox News. He also produces a daily three hour radio show that is part of his compensation with the network.

Hannity also has the longest running career with Fox . He was the first personality hired as on-air talent when Fox News launched in 1996. Hannity also holds the record for the longest-running host in cable news history.

Despite all of these achievements and his long-standing relationship with Fox, “Hannity,” is sinking in the ratings. For months now “The Five,” “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” and “Jesse Watters Primetime,” have had larger audiences than “Hannity.”

Panic is starting to set in. Hannity has decided to revamp his fairly dull format of inviting on 2-3 guests for every segment and letting them dominate the dialog.

One of those new additions is “The Hot Seat,” a segment with an opposing voice. It’s supposed to be a rapid fire back and forth of a pressing political issue.

The segment usually dissolves into Sean Hannity yelling over his guests while disrespecting them. Last week was probably the best example of this abusive interview style.

Hannity asked Richard Fowler a sometime liberal voice on “The Five” to discuss the Biden classified document scandal.

Instead of transcribing this incredibly messy conversation I can reduce it to a few phrases. Hannity started the segment by mixing up multiple scandals that involved Democrats including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“As a Democrat, can you be intellectually honest enough to admit there's a double standard,” asked Hannity.

Fowler responded.

“Well, first of all, you're mixing a lot of different stories here,” said Fowler.

What followed was a mess of Fowler trying to get an answer out and Hannity shouting over him while saying things like,

“So focus you can keep up.”

When Hannity spoke it was if he was barking orders at Fowler which was particularly ugly to watch considering the fact that Fowler is a Black man.

A viewer would get absolutely no new information from this segment other than watch Hannity verbally abuse a liberal guest.

This second example is from another segment of “Hot Seat.” The segment was supposed to be about the World Economic Forum but it quickly turned into a screaming match about NATO, the United Nations and so called globalist, socialist countries.

This time Hannity included another liberal Jessica Tarlov, along with Fox host Pete Hegseth. Again Hannity berated and talked over his liberal guest. Tarlov did manage to get some points out.

“Well, if these international organizations don't have us influence, I'd say, generally speaking, more Western Democratic influence, we know what's going to happen. China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, those are going to be the countries that are in charge of the world, not us. We're the leader of the free world. It's our responsibility to tell nuclear. I would never say that they are well-managed it,” said Tarlov.

Hannity began to talk over her.

“You think that these organizations are having any positive impact that the American people of benefit from the billions of dollars that our government wastes on these globalist socialist organizations,”asked Hannity.

The only other time Tarlov was able to get much of a coherent thought out before being talked over she managed to correct him on his use of the word socialist.

“First of all, I would add to the pile, if you're going to insist on calling them globalist socialist organizations, the fact that they are democratic organizations and that's one of their core missions to promote. So let's look at NATO. What NATO is doing right now to support Ukraine is one of the most incredible things in modern history. Where would we be right now? Vladimir Putin would be in charge of Ukraine. The U.S. would be being rebuilt if it weren't for NATO.” said Tarlov.

The rest of the exchange ended with both Hannity and Hegseth laughing or talking over Tarlov while falsely claiming most of Western Europe was socialist.

Pete Hegseth Has No Idea What the Words Communism or Islamist Mean

During the crazy “Hot Seat” segment Hegseth went on a crazy rant about what he thought were Islamist communist countries.

“Third Global control over refugees where they flow. Where are they flowing from? Islamist supremacy governments. Socialist communist governments. Yes, that's a problem that's a lot different than whether it's raining or whether it's drier. Here you've got global elites in Davos, in one of the countries with the smallest government, closed borders and a homogeneous culture preaching it, the rest of us that we need a command and control, economy, command and control, government, open our borders, and that culture identity is an evil thing,” said Hegseth.

The list of communist countries is quite short and none of them have a Muslim majority population much less a theocracy. The economic model of communism is dying even in the countries that are identified as communist.

• China - has not practiced true communism since it enacted free market reforms in 1978

• Vietnam - the economy also includes some free market reforms due to excessive debt from the Vietnam War and failures in collective farming.

• Laos - has a similar hybrid economy like China and a similar one-party rule. It’s one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia.

• North Korea - a dictatorship run by a family dynasty. The government owns all the means of production.

• Cuba - the closest economy that could be described as communist although government control over key sectors of the economy was reduced in August 2011 as a continuation of the economic reforms initiated by Raúl Castro. The new reforms included encouragement for the creation of small businesses. Cuba’s economy was also artificially propped up for decades by the USSR. It still has one party rule that strictly controls everything in the country.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green calls Rep. Ilahn Omar Antisemitic

While a guest on “Hannity” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene had the nerve to call someone else antisemitic.

“Some reps deserve to be removed. Ilhan Omar is another example. She's anti-Semitic and she should not be on foreign affairs,” said Greene.

When I made my video for Twitter I included clips from Greene’s appearance at a white nationalist conference hosted by Nick Fuentes.

I also included the a segment that included the time she compared mask wearing to the Holocaust.

“You know, we can look back in a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star and they were definitely treated like second class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking,” said Greene.

Greene later apologized for this remark.

I even dug up an old clip from MSNBC’s “Rachel Maddow Show.” In the clip Maddow found an archived page from Facebook group Greene was a part of before she ran for Congress. The group was dedicated to QAnon based conspiracy theories including one that promoted the idea that Jewish controlled space lasers had started wildfires in California.

“About, about the lasers here in her own words. Is Congresswoman Greene on the lasers? From her Facebook post, quote,

There are too many coincidences to ignore. I find it very interesting that Roger Kimmel and the board of directors of PPG and he is also vice chairman of Rothschild, Inc. What a coincidence. It must be that Governor Brown signed a bill protecting PPG and allowing them to pass off the cost of fire responsibility to its customers.

It must also be a coincidence that the fires are burning in the same projected areas that the high speed rail project is to be built. And what are the odds that find Stevens husband? Richard Blum is the contractor to the rail project. Then, oddly, there are all these people who said they saw what looked like lasers or blue beams of light causing the fires in pictures and videos.

Solar space generators collect the sun's energy and then beam it back to Earth. If they're beaming the summer sun's energy back to Earth, I'm sure they wouldn't ever miss a transmitter receiving station. Right. Question mark, question mark, exclamation point, exclamation point. What would that look like anyway? A laser beam or light beam coming down to earth, I guess. Could that cause a fire? That's her and her own words,” said Maddow.

Stories Fox News Ignored

Every week I compare 15 hours of Fox News to five hours of the PBS NewsHour. The following is a list of stories PBS covered that Fox News didn’t mention.

• At least 68 people were killed due to a plane crash in Nepal last week. It was the worst air crash in three decades for the small Himalayan country.

• PBS also featured a segment last week about the illegal organ harvesting cartels from India that prey on Nepali people.

• Demonstrations have continued in Peru demanding the president's resignation. The protests began after former President Pedro Castillo attempted to dissolve Congress after he was facing impeachment. After his attempt to replace elected officials Castillo was removed from office and arrested. At least 55 people have died since protests began.

• PBS continued its extensive coverage of catastrophic flood damage in Pakistan for the third week in a row. Fox News hasn’t mentioned the crisis in any of the shows I’ve covered. About 4 million children are living in close proximity to stagnant and contaminated flood waters. Roughly 8 million people remain displaced. The PBS segment focused on innovative methods that local architechts and engineers have found to help the population create low cost housing.

• Solomon Pena, a former Republican candidate in New Mexico was arrested and charged with targeting the homes of Democrat lawmakers in drive-by shootings. Prior to running for Congress, Pena had served nearly seven years for armed burglary and had been demoted twice while in the U.S. Navy. Pena was also known for promoting wild conspiracy theories and had said 2020 election officials should be sent to Guantanamo Bay. None of this stopped the New Mexico Republican Party from endorsing his candidancy.

• Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is currently testifying in a shareholder lawsuit over a tweet he made where he said he was thinking about taking Tesla private for $420 a share and that he had “funding secured.” That phrase resulted in Musk having to step down as executive chairman and pay millions of dollars in fines and legal fees.

• Kennth Roth, the former executive director of Human Rights Watch, will have his Harvard University fellowship reinstated. The college had withdrawn it after Roth publicly stated criticism of Israel’s leaders and government.

• Texas prisoners have staged a hunger strike as a means to protest solitary confinement.

• The U.S. Justice Department has cracked down on Russian nationals involved in cryptocurrency schemes.

• The Supreme Court of Israel ordered Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to fire a senior cabinet member due to his criminal past.

• A former top security officer in the Mexican government, Genaro García Luna, went on trial last week on charges he accepted millions of dollars in bribes to help drug cartels sell drugs and avoid capture.

• PBS produced an extended segment on the relationship between climate change and extreme weather.

• China’s population fell for the first time since 1961. The decline in part due to its former one child policy. Since parents were allowed to only raise one child many families selected boy babies over girls and now the population has too many men and not enough women. China’s economy has also slowed last year mainly due to COVID-19.

• Sixty-two women and four babies who were captured by suspected jihadists in Burkina Faso have been freed by military forces.

• Italy's most-wanted Mafia boss, Matteo Messina Denaro was arrested after 30 years on the run

• The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said it will begin targeted audits of nursing homes to verify if residents have been accurately diagnosed with schizophrenia due to an alleged overuse of antipsychotic drugs in such facilities.

• Even though Fox News includes a brief segment on the NFL almost every morning as part of “Fox & Friends” the network has never addressed the league’s diversity problem. PBS produced an extended segment about the racial disparity that exists in coaching positions in the league. Even though most NFL players are Black most coaches and members of management are white.

• Advocates in Greece who help migrants could face years in prison. Critics say Greece is trying to criminalize humanitarian work.

• The Department of State launched a new program to help refugees called Welcome Corp. - a new private sponsorship program that empowers Americans to play a leading role in welcoming refugees.

• Italian film star, Gina Lollobridgida died at the age of 95.

By the Numbers

Coming up…

This week I’ll be covering the first hour of “Fox & Friends,” “The Five,” and “The Ingraham Angle”