Fox News reacted about as expected after President Joe Biden gave the annual State of the Union address. While President Biden seemed quite focused and energetic during the speech Fox hosts claimed he was stumbling and confused.
As Republican lawmakers booed and heckled him, Fox News personalities brushed it off. Biden was even criticized for walking out of the chamber too slowly.
The network’s coverage of the event was so biased they didn’t even bother to say much of anything after the Republican rebuttal delivered by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Her speech could be reduced to a few anecdotes about herself and her family mixed in with cultural war attacks on the LGBTQ community with a revisionist history of school segregation in Arkansas.
Fox News
Commentary - 37 minutes
No commentary after Republican response
Fox News Panel
Martha MacCallum - Fox News
Bret Baier - Fox News
Dana Perino - Fox News
Harold Ford Jr. - Fox News
Jacqui Heinrich - White House correspondent, Fox News
Aishah Hasnie - Congressional correspondent, Fox News
Brit Hume - Fox News
Larry Kudlow - Former Director for the National Economic Council - Trump Admin., Fox News
The overall tone of the commentary was dominated by Larry Kudlow and Brit Hume, two older white men who reminded me of a much grumpier version of “Statler and Waldorf” the two senior aged muppet critics featured in countless Muppet themed movies and television shows.
Kudlow and Hume hated President Biden, they hated Vice President Harris and it seemed the entire Democrat Party.
I’ve grouped everything by subject rather than chronological order as they tended to come back to the same themes throughout the broadcast.
Border, Crime, China
Martha MacCallum set up the only topics Fox wanted to focus on.
“Indeed it is. And it comes as the president deals with a huge list of major challenges, the fallout from the Chinese spycraft revelations over classified documents, a porous southern border, inflation and crime. No mention of the balloon. No mention of the ten balloons that we now know about over the recent years,” said MacCallum.
She then made an odd pivot.
“And no sort of certainly no axis of evil kind of moment that we heard from George Bush back in 2002 in terms of addressing head on the way that he views the number one foreign policy, national security threat to the country in a comprehensive way,” said MacCallum.
I’m not sure why out of every past president MacCallum would go back to George W. Bush. Sure he made a speech about an “Axis of evil” but overall most of his foreign policy decisions were an absolute disaster.
The wars he started quickly grew unpopular with the American public and the deception his administration used to promote the war in Iraq has severely tarnished his legacy. Many Americans still refer to him as a war criminal and even lifelong Republicans had turned on him by the end of his presidency.
MacCallum could have brought up Ronald Reagan and his “tear down this wall” speech or any number of other examples from other Republican presidents.
“It was very, very, very brief in terms of detailing the things that Harold just mentioned, border crime, China. I mean, those are those are huge issues that confront this presidency. And it feels like we heard a lot about things that are, you know, would be nice, I guess. But but that don't address the deep concerns that a lot of people in the country have about the future,” said MacCallum.
Spending
MacCallum also listed a number of policies that might be popular with a Democrat or Independent audience.
“He ended with a familiar refrain talking about America that there's nothing that we can't do if we put our mind to it. And yet it seems that the path to achieving that is an enormous amount of spending. And this comes on top of $5 trillion of spending during COVID. But it seems like the path to making sure that we succeed as a nation includes a laundry list of spending, medical leave, paid family leave, nursing home, affordable teacher raises Pell Grants. He went on and on. The answer to police violence, as he put it, is more training, housing, jobs. So there's there's a lot of spending that he outlines in this plan, ” said MacCallum.
Larry Kudlow was even more worked up about it.
“This was an exhaustive list with no price tag of the spending and mandates. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, it's like 25 pages worth. So they're doubling up or tripling up on what I would call big government socialism. I don't think the country wants more and more spending. And he never mentioned never mentioned the possibility of a compromise with Kevin McCarthy, the Republican speaker. With respect to that, he said we're going to pass the debt ceiling. We always do it. We're going to do it. No one's going to touch the big entitlements. And that's all he said. He had nothing to offer on that front, which I think is going to be a big problem,” said Kudlow.
It’s always humorous when someone on Fox News calls a moderate like Joe Biden a socialist.
Brit Hume echoed what Kudlow said.
“And in a Democratic speech like the Democratic president's speech like this. There's always room for more school and more teachers and higher teacher pay. So that that would be the only thing I would say if you. Began to cover it,” said Hume.
Again to a far-right wing conservative schools and teachers might not be popular, but more funding and focus to education is music to many Democrat voter’s ears.
“Yeah. I mean, look, there's there's always room for this left wing stuff. We've got to tax the rich. They don't pay their fair share. Okay. We just had numbers that the top 1% of taxpayers pay, 42% of all the taxes in this country. The bottom 50% pay two and a half percent,” said Kudlow.
What Kudlow failed to mention is the bottom 50% of the country only have about 3.3% of the wealth whereas the top 10% hold roughly own 68% of the wealth.
Bumbling Biden and Bad Polling
Brit Hume went off on a rant about how Biden was basically a bumbling idiot.
“And whether he got through the speech. Well, and it seemed to me there was an awful lot of stumbling and slurring and words left out and so on. So the question becomes this, does someone sitting at home worried about the future of our country, perhaps suffering from inflation and the other maladies, is worried about crime, worried about the border. Look at this man delivering this speech tonight and say, I have confidence to give him four more years. He's the man who has led our nation so well. He's fully in command. Or they look at him and have doubts. Doubts that they may already harbor based on Afghanistan and certain other things. I have I have my I have considerable doubt as to whether this was a confidence inspiring speech tonight.” said Hume.
No one on the panel chimed in and agreed with him. Biden does have a habit of making vocal gaffes, stuttering and sometimes getting lost in a train of thought but he seemed to be on the top of his game last night.
Bret Baier pointed out that polling doesn’t always reflect what voters are actually thinking.
“President You know, we talked about polls right before the midterms and they didn't turn out how Republicans thought they were going to with Democrats outperforming where they where they were. And that has emboldened this president and this White House,” said Baier.
The Medicare/Social Security Freakout
Bret Baier obscured reality when he acted as if no Republican had ever suggested making cuts or changes to Social Security or Medicaid.
“He accused Republicans, though, of wanting to sunset Medicare and Social Security and the debt ceiling debate. That chamber looked and sounded more like the House of Commons in the U.K., with many members piping up. It did turn out into a bi partizan moment when both parties stood for innovation to not touch Medicare or Social Security. Both parties clearly will have to agree together to make any long term changes to either program, said Baier.
Several Republican lawmakers have suggested changing the terms for Social Security and other entitlements. Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) has proposed defended his proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years.
“Thank you very much. Do you see Kevin McCarthy banging down the gavel, ending this session? There were times when he sort of was looking over at some of his more kind of raucous members and kind of giving them the little bit of the eyeball. I think they got a little bit to turn this car around. If you don't watch it, you,” said MacCallum.
If anything McCarthy’s facial expressions towards Republicans in the chamber showed that he had absolutely no control over members of his party.
The Super Bowl
As the commentary was wrapping up Bret Baier made an odd plea to President Biden.
“Traditionally, the network covering the Super Bowl gets an interview with the president, United States. We have formally asked for that interview, but we have not received an answer yet whether they are going to officially do it or not. We're running out of days. Harold Ford, what about that,” asked Baier.
Harold Ford Jr. is normally a moderate voice on “The Five” although during Tuesday night’s commentary he was in agreement with his Fox co-hosts for most of the evening.
“He should accept the invitation. It's a tradition that should be continued,”said Ford.
PBS NewsHour
Commentary - 47 minutes
PBS NewsHour Panel
Geoff Bennett - co-anchor, PBS NewsHour
Amna Nawaz - co-anchor, PBS NewsHour
Lisa Desjardins - Congressional correspondent, PBS NewsHour
Laura Barron-Lopez - White House correspondent, PBS NewsHour
Amy Walter - editor in chief, Cook Political Report with Amy Walter
David Brooks - columnist, New York Times
Johnathan Capehart - associate editor, Washington Post
Rep. Mikie Sherrill - Congresswoman - (D-NJ)
The PBS panel was far more positive about the speech.
“Well, what we saw was a president on fire, a president who has a strong record to tout lots of accomplishment and things that have been passed that he can talk about numbers, facts and figures that he can already talk about, projecting into the future of more things to come that haven't been implemented yet. You brought up the thing that stood out to me. Let's finish the job. And then, you know, he he brought the tone that I was looking for and he ended his speech in the way he has. He ends basically all of his big speeches. And that is when he gets to the point where he says, we are the United States of America. He almost growls it in a very forceful, passionate way to remind us in word and in tone, that this is a nation that when we put it and put our minds to it, we can get a lot of things done,” said Capehart.
David Brooks kind of gave Biden a bit of a backhanded compliment.
“Sixty-two percent think he hasn't done much that Geoff mentioned. The the administration believes that they can sort of fix that. A lot of the infrastructure spending in those past last year, those projects are actually going to happen this coming year. And so a trip to see Joe Biden. If somebody is filling a pothole in front of your street, Joe Biden will be there. He will be there cutting, shoveling and putting up the sign. Joe Biden did this for you. And so when he talks about what the campaign is going to be, he sounds like he's running for mayor,” said Brooks.
Amy Walter pointed out the most memorable moment of the night.
“I don't think we've ever seen a president and Congress negotiate in real time during a State of the Union about the debt ceiling. That's definitely a brand new thing,” said Walter.
Lisa Desjardins had the comment of the evening when she mentioned the rowdy Republicans sounded more like a drunken mob than esteemed lawmakers.
“I think the section where he was talking about a lot of statistics, a lot of numbers, bragging about his accomplishment. That's when we saw the crowd here listening, but not as emotional as it got into sections about the border, in particular about China. Then we saw the eruptions from the Republican side. And I have to say, I'm still digesting. I don know if I witnessed something like a house of the British Parliament, which is more like a barroom. There was a real lack of restraint,” said Desjardins.
After the Republican response most of the PBS panel noted that her speech was more about cultural issues and did not address any economic policies. They also pointed out that Trump was basically the same age as Biden.
Jonathan Capehart was especially worked up about the Republican response.
“This speech. I'm trying not to levitate from my chair because there were so many. She leaned so hard into the culture wars that she just slid right into ignorance. And for her to say to revel in the fact that she is an an alumna of Little Rock Central High School and lauding the Little Rock nine and their statues, they're memorialized when the Republicans, particularly in Florida, but I guess now in Arkansas, are going to make it illegal for students to learn about why the Little Rock Nine are significant, are and are in bronze in Little Rock.
This speech was entirely offensive. When she talks about, you know, Republicans are there for freedom and Americans which Americans and what freedoms, what about the trans kids whose targets? They've got targets on their backs or kids, LGBTQ kids in schools or black kids in schools who can't learn their history because government is making it illegal. I wonderful. She's the youngest governor in the in Arkansas and she's drawing these contrasts with an 80-year-old president.
But thank goodness we have an 80-year-old president who just gave a speech to the nation, the entire nation, about what he wants to do for them. There was that moment when the president said, look, I know you guys, you voted against the infrastructure bill, but then you show up and take credit for the for the projects and the jobs that come.
And I look forward to you guys doing it again. She doesn't have that message. The message that she just she just gave to the nation and on behalf of the Republican Party just proves to me that the Republican Party is lost, not lost. It's gone. And if they're going to keep digging themselves into these culture war issues, great.
More power to them. It's great for the for the Republican primary, the Republican base, I guess. But the country in the last midterm election said that we don't like that that, said Capehart.
Coming up…
I should have my usual weekly analysis of Fox News for the week ending 2/12/23 on Monday evening.