Fox News: Twitter, Twitter, Twitter, Crypto Con Men, and Misgendered Nuclear Engineers
A condensed overview of 15 hours of Fox News for the week ending 12/18/22
A typical Fox News viewer might think The Twitter Files revealed a vast conspiracy of federal agents acting as puppet masters hellbent on manipulating elections. A fan of Fox News might also think it was perfectly acceptable to misgender people once they’ve been arrested for a crime and that Sam Bankman-Fried somehow single-handedly changed the course of the Midterm elections.
These same Fox enthusiasts may have missed stories about an African Summit in the U.S. capital, a state of emergency in Peru, or the criminal charges brought against the father of a mass shooter who helped his son obtain the weapons he used to kill seven people at a Forth of July Day parade.
Fox also pushed their usual panic at the Southern Border, unproven crimes involving Hunter Biden and even fell back on recycled conspiracy theories about the origins of COVID-19.
The same audience that was told that Twitter was destroying free speech was encouraged to cheer on Elon Musk’s decision to ban journalists who wrote unfavorable things about him. Overall it was a slower news week for Fox than most but they still found plenty of ways to be outraged.
Shows covered last week
Fox & Friends - 1st hour
The Five
Hannity
A Fox News Host Defends a Federal Crime
Tammy Bruce, subbing for Hannity, seemingly unwittingly defended a federal election crime. It is illegal to encourage voters to vote on the wrong date. This tactic has been used against Black voters for decades. There is no exception for the same behavior on social media.
“Just hours ago. In all seriousness, you guys, a new batch was published by journalist Matt Taibbi. Now irrefutable proof that your government was directing Twitter to censor Americans. According to Taibbi, quote, Twitter's contact with the FBI was constant and pervasive as if it were a subsidiary. Between January 2020 and November 2022, there were over 150 emails between the FBI and former Twitter Trust and Safety Chief Yoel Roth.
To be continued, a surprisingly high number are requests by the FBI for Twitter to take action on election misinformation, even involving joke tweets from low follower accounts. For example, many of these tweets look like this. No likes, no comments, no retweets. Just a message. Telling Democrats to vote on Wednesday, a day after the election. Ha ha ha. Apparently, the federal government believes that joke tweets like this were a threat to democracy.
Big tech to censor speech. They did not like including jokes and satire that seems more fitting for the Soviet Union than the United States of,” said Bruce.
The wording of that joke tweet is really specific. From the FBI’s website.
Report potential election crimes such as disinformation about the manner, time or place of voting.
If a person wrote vote on Wednesday on a piece of paper and passed it out in a neighborhood the week before an election, that would be a federal crime.
That exact tactic has been used against black voters in the United States for decades. Taibbi and other '“journalists” that have worked on The Twitter Files have only released cherry picked examples.
There could be thousands of supposedly joke emails just like the one Bruce featured. A bot farm on Russia or China could easily disseminate thousands of tweets meant to mislead U.S. voters. It is perfectly reasonable that the FBI would look into a seemingly innocuous tweet if that were the case.
When a Free Speech Absolutist Bans Journalists
Jessica Tarlov broke down some of the background information behind Elon Musk’s decision to suspend the Twitter accounts of a handful of journalists who have written about him.
“I would like to say that I think that Elon Musk needs a content moderation team, that he needs the Trust and Safety Council to come back so that people could actually see that there were folks and not just one man deciding that because his feelings got hurt or he felt unsafe, even though that Elon Jet account is just publicly available, information.
Right. So let's be clear about that and that assassination attempt on his child. And it is very scary for someone to climb on top of a car that has your kid in there. He didn't report it to the police, which seemed strange. And then Donnie O'Sullivan, one of the reporters that we just showed, got suspended from Twitter for just tweeting out the fact that the LAPD had said that he didn't file a report that had nothing to do with his coordinates, nothing to do with an assassination at all.
And the transition from Republicans being up in arms about preserving the First Amendment to, you know, ‘Cry harder libs!’ is really something to behold. So he changes the terms of service a couple days ago to shut down the jet tracker, which he had explicitly said, I'm never going to shut down. And the new terms of service are so vague that,” said Tarlov.
After some back and forth with her fellow castmates about Musk’s new arbitrary rules Tarlov continued.
“He's suspending people who are aggravating him, who are hurting his feelings, like Lynette Lopez from Business Insider, who's been looking at him for years because of Tesla. That's a company that she covers. She just got suspended for putting up old information about him, about the fact that Elon Musk actually has a habit of doxing people that he doesn't like from the past,” said Tarlov.
No, Sam Bankman-Fried Did NOT Buy the Senate
Fox News anchors have used a number of excuses for the Republican’s anemic performance in the midterm elections. Jesse Watters has tried to put the blame on one man - Sam Bankman-Fried the former CEO of FTX a bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange. Bankman-Fried has been charged with a number of financial crimes for basically stealing his clients money.
Bankman-Fried was also the second largest donor to Democrat groups during the midterm elections.
Watters has decided that Bankman-Fried alone is the reason the Democrats still control the Senate.
“The Republicans, they keep saying, oh, the Republicans got so much money. I'm so sick of hearing that. You could zoom in on this. See the blue the blue are the Democratic donations, the redder the Republican donations. It's not even close. And if you add in all of the money that the executives at that firm donated, that's about $70 million.
That's about two Senate seats the Democrats spent and stole. And I'm going to call that money back from you and Geraldo, because that bet is bogus,” said Watters.
Seventy million dollars is a lot of money. The total amount spent in the midterm election cycle was $16.7 billion.
In Terms of Forth Grade Math
The numbers are large, but the actual equation is easy, 70 million out of 1 6.7 billion is less than one half of 1% of the total amount spent in the midterm elections. A billion is a lot larger than a million.
Candidates are also elected by voters. Candidates who raise the most money do not automatically win an election. And there were also several large donors who gave money to Republicans. Sorry, Jesse, you still lost that bet to Geraldo Rivera.
Is Musk Paying Fox to do Commercials for Him?
After a brief exchange about blue check marks on Twitter the cast of “Fox & Friends” started openly shilling for Elon Musk’s new Twitter Blue plan.
“Yep. You're going to have to pay for those. And there's going to be different types of checkmarks. And I think there are a lot of people out there, frankly, actually, who feel like, all right, I'm willing to pony up for it if it makes it different and I'm verified, that's something that's probably got some value attached to it,” said Kevin Corke, Fox News correspondent.
Ainsley Earhardt pointed out some features of Blue Twitter.
“You pay a little bit more if you don't want all the ads on there,” said Earnhardt
Will Cain gave actual pricing.
“I think $11 is for Apple or iOS users, $8 for regular Android users. I think at this point, the question of whether or not you pay for your blue checkmark is less about what it might offer you and more at this point, whether or not we can financially support the concept of free speech on social media. It's the one platform right now at least willing to expose the censorship regime that it had in the past,” said Cain.
Cain made a fairly broad leap when he lumped in every other social media company.
“But don't think it's alone. YouTube, Google, Facebook, all are right now operating under under similar ideologies,” said Will Cain.
Fox News Hosts Misgender a Non-Binary person 56 times in a short segment.
Judge Jeanine Pirro started a segment about Sam Brinton. Brinton is a non-binary person who served as the former deputy assistant secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy until his recent arrest for stealing luggage.
Brinton uses the pronouns they/them.
“Okay. You know what the problem is? I always feel like I'm about to get into trouble when you read, like, who he they. Hey, she. Hey, we got to talk about. Let's start with this guy, Sam. He's dealt with this day. Yes. Written. I want to play that game,” said Pirro.
Brian Kilmeade shouted out that since Brinton was a criminal it was perfectly acceptable to use male pronouns when referencing them.
Jesse Watters topped Pirro.
“Got this guy, Sammy Sticky Fingers. He wasn't just any transgender. He was like the sexual pioneer of transgender. You Google him, which I assume they did before hiring him. He's wearing leather. There's a leash. There's a dungeon involved. I wouldn't call it deviancy. I wouldn't call it perversion. Let's just say he's sexually adventurous. And when you are in that world that he's in and he's deep, you can be blackmailed easily,” said Watters.
Brian Kilmeade strangely defended Brinton.
“Jesse, I'm going to challenge you. I think he's the only person or he. She is the only person. They can't be blackmailed. He posted all the words you could possibly have. Yeah. Yeah. He's the. Oh, you can't blackmail me. He's already blackmailed himself,” said Kilmeade.
Jessica Tarlov, the only liberal at the table, was the only cast member to respect Brinton’s gender identity.
“Bill Maher and Barack Obama have been talking about this, making people feel bad about when they don't know what to say right about. Pronouns are just don't make people feel bad about things that also on the flip side of that it doesn't take that much to find out how somebody wants to be addressed. And if you do know that, do not intentionally make fun of them or challenge the way that they live for your own comfortability, no one should be made to feel bad about it. Like you said, I'm nervous to say X, Y or z. He I.” said Tarlov.
I created a transcript out of the entire segment and removed any instance where the terms he, him or guy were used for someone else. All told Brinton was misgendered 56 times in this short segment.
A person’s gender doesn’t change after they are arrested or even convicted of a crime.
Musk the Dictator
Degan McDowell seemed to think that there was absolutely nothing wrong with a billionaire ruling a social media platform like an emotionally stunted despot.
“I love it, but I am not so. The only thing I'm surprised about with Elon Musk is that he didn't start doing this sooner. He spent $44 billion on this money losing sewage. And do you know, Jesse, you understand this? Do you know how badly people whine and behave when they pay for a full price first class airline ticket?
So can you imagine spending $44 billion on this heap of crap? So he's selling Tesla stock to prop it up. He sold three more than three and a half billion dollars in Tesla stock recently. $23 billion,” said McDowell.
Bogus Expert of the week
Clay Travis - an American lawyer, writer, radio host and television analyst. He is the founder of OutKick a sports based media company.
Travis is a frequent guest on Fox News and has discussed any number of topics. When Travis shares his opinion about anything with pop culture, sports, or the media he is well within his lane.
Hannity invited Travis to explore the origins of COVID-19 alongside Gordon Chang, an expert on China.
Travis is about as qualified to talk about the origins of a global pandemic as any random person off the street. His comment about the origin of COVID-19 was puzzling to say the least.
“And remember, they've had years now to find this host animal that allowed, if this is your theory, right, that that allowed this transition to occur and they hadn't been able to find it anywhere. Meanwhile, all of the evidence and a lot of the evidence that we're never going to see, remember, has totally been destroyed. And there's clear reason why Dr. Fauci would be lying about this and why the emails would suggest that there is a cover up here.
Because it is an explosive and destructive story. If our American taxpayer dollars were being used, as I think Gordon thinks and I think in many and you, Sean, and many people out there watching us right now believe that it was American taxpayer dollars that unleashed COVID up on the world through Chinese research when this escaped from a Chinese lab.
And the fact that the Chinese immediately covered it up, the fact that Dr. Fauci and his allies inside of NIH also worked to help to cover this up,” said Travis.
Travis sounds like a crazy uncle at a Thanksgiving table who has had more than a few glasses of wine. His statements are bold and declarative but he's done no actual research himself he’s merely rehashing things he’s read from highly polarized biased sources.
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 all of the stories PBS covered that Fox did not.
The U.S. government is still sending out free COVID-19 tests. Every household is eligible for four at home tests.
Five Louisiana police officers were charged in the 2019 death of a Black motorist Ronald Greene. Police initially told Greene’s family that he drove off the road and hit a tree but police body cam footage later revealed officers repeatedly stunned and punched Greene and then dragged him off to lay face first in the dirt for nine minutes before he died. The Union Parish coroner may have also been involved in the coverup as the coroner’s report listed the cause of death as a motor vehicle accident.
Eight people were convicted in a French court for their role in the 2016 truck attack that killed 86. The driver, an Islamic State sympathizer, intentionally drove into a large crowd of people who had gathered to watch Bastille Day fireworks. He was killed by police the night of the attack.
In a attempt to squelch the anti-government protests that began in mid-September the Iranian government has turned to publicly executing protesters. This is the second execution of a protester in just a few days, the 23-year-old man was hanged from a construction crane in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
The Israeli army admitted to shooting a teenage Palestinian girl during an operation in the West Bank. The army claimed she was unintentionally hit. This is a rare admission of error on the part of the Israeli army.
The European Union parliament removed Eva Kaili, of Greece, as Vice President over allegations of bribery by Qatar. She was arrested last week by Belgian authorities.
American sports journalist Eric Wahl’s cause due to natural causes. Wahl suffered a ruptured aortic aneurysm with a hematoma, a type of rare heart condition that is often fatal. Wahl’s brother initially speculated that foul play was involved since Wahl had received multiple death threats after he wore a rainbow t-shirt at the World Cup.
Inflation in the U.S. fell from 7.7% in October to 7.1% at the end of November
Pres. Biden met with delegates from 49 African countries at a three day event in Washington D.C. It is the first U.S. - African Leaders summit since 2014.
Pres. Biden signed a law protecting same-sex marriage last week.
United States House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol will release its final report.
The new mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, issued a state of emergency over the city’s homelessness problem.
Japan is boosting its defense budget and counterstrike capabilities to counter perceived increased aggression from neighboring North Korea and China.
Harvard appointed Claudine Gay as its first Black and second woman president
Robert Crimo Jr., the father of a 19-year-old accused of killing seven people at a 4th of July parade in Highland Park, has been charged with seven counts of reckless conduct for helping his emotionally disturbed son obtain a gun license. His son, Robert Crimo III had a long history of erratic and violent behavior.
In the past week Peru issued a state of emergency after political protests in support of ousted President Pedro Castillo turned violent. Castillo has since been imprisoned for 18 months on charges of rebellion. The unrest began when Castillo, facing impeachment, tried to dissolve Parliament and form his own government.
GM issued a major recall for roughly 825,000 vehicles due to faulty daytime running lights. The issue can be easily resolved with a software update available at GM dealers.
Chrysler issued a recall on over 1.2 million Ram pick up trucks due to misaligned tailgates that could open while driving.
The Library of Congress National Film Registry inducted 25 films include Disney’s animated The Little Mermaid along with Iron Man, Super Fly, and Carrie among others.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, and senior government officials met for two days to plan a recovery for China’s damaged economy just as the country faces a spike in new COVID-19 infections.
The U.S. will send advanced bomb kits and Patriot missiles to Ukraine to help them fight back against the Russian invasion.
Last week Starbucks workers at 100 company owned stores staged a three day walkout in a unionization effort.
The Electoral Count Act, moved forward in congress. The bipartisan bill would change how members of Congress could object to electoral votes. It was designed to help prevent another situation that help lead to the riot on the Capitol on January 6th. The Electoral Count Act is included as part of a larger spending bill.
Flu, RSV and COVID-19 patients continue to fill up hospital beds around the country.
Last week marked the 10th anniversary of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut
Last week the January 6th Committee announced they would be referring former President Donald J. Trump on criminal charges to the Department of Justice for his role in the violent attempted insurrection on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
By the Numbers
The Twitter Files and all things Elon Musk dominate Fox News coverage last week. The border crisis segments haven’t changed in months. Undocumented immigrants are portrayed as drug smuggling invaders who will destroy the American way of life.
The category of ‘Artist Profile’ usually makes the top five categories for the week for PBS. The artist profiles feature artists from the full spectrum of the arts from visual art, performing artists, to poets and chefs. The network tends to run more artist segments around major holidays as they are pre-taped and are easy to program into a slow news week.
Senator-elect John Fetterman (D-PA) is becoming the AOC 2.0. Fox finds a way to bring up Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) when there’s absolutely no reason to reference her. Hillary Clinton and Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-NY) are also frequent all purpose targets for the network.
I checked the transcripts for Herschel Walker because I got a request from a Twitter follower specially asked me to check for his name.
It was a little startling that Twitter was mentioned as often as Biden and that Elon Musk and Trump were neck and neck last week.
Coming Up…
Due to the upcoming Winter holidays I won’t have a newsletter/podcast next week on 12/26/22. Fox provides absolutely garbage content during the holidays. It’s a lot of recycled material and pre-taped shows. The next newsletter will be published on 1/2/23
I will probably still post clips on Twitter and try to figure out Mastodon and Post.News. I have accounts on both platforms as DecodingFoxNews.