How Fox News Covered the State of the Union Address
A comparison of commentary of the SOTU from Fox News and the PBS NewsHour
I had some difficultly getting the right version of the Fox News coverage for the State of the Union address which is why this one is coming out a little later than I’d hoped. Fox News broadcast a bare bones version of the State of the Union address that featured Shannon Bream as the sole anchor for Fox 5.
I realized I captured the wrong broadcast about midway through and then I went to crazy lengths to track down and capture the Fox News network broadcast. I had to find a bootleg version of the first half and capture the second half from Fox Business.
Luckily the Fox broadcast lined up almost perfectly with the PBS NewsHour special so I was able to do a side by side comparison of the transcripts from each network.
Democracy 2024 - State of the Union Address
Pre-show before speech: 25 minutes
Anchors
Bret Baier - Fox News, co-anchor
Martha MacCallum - Fox News, co-anchor
Correspondents
Peter Doocy - Fox News, White House correspondent
Panel
Dana Perino - Fox News, former White House press secretary (G.W. Bush)
Harold Ford Jr. - Fox News, former congressman (D-TN)
John Roberts - Fox News, chief political analyst
Brit Hume - Fox News
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) - Elected official
Brandon Judd - National Border Patrol Council
“The president will come in here tonight, be very well rehearsed, very well prepared, very well rested, and will deliver a speech with a lot of energy and clarity, after which, of course, we can. We will watch while the hosannas from Democrats and their allies in the media will ring down upon him, saying that that puts the senility and the age and acuity issue to rest. It doesn't, but that's what I expect we'll hear from,” said Hume.
Three minutes into the program Bret Baier quoted Trump’s ramblings on Truth Social.
“The president is very substantially late. Not a good start, but let's give him the benefit of the doubt. I'm sure he had very important things to do, but he is now just getting into the car. They will have to drive very, very quickly. You just don't want to be late to the State of the Union. They need Mario Andretti to be at the wheel of the limo,” said Baier quoting Trump. “I think it's going to be a play by play all night long.”
Trump planned to do a live fact check of Biden’s statements on Truth Social but apparently not much came of it. According to reporting by the New York Times, users on Truth Social reported 3,000 outages on the site by 9:30 p.m., according to Down Detector, a website that tracks user reports of web disruptions.
Trump’s ‘fact checking’ amounted to the former president mocking President Biden and Vice President Harris.
Martha MacCallum remarked how the mood of the country seemed negative according to recent polling.
“You know, people do look to these speeches. They are opportunities to lift up the country. And what we see in these numbers. 70% think the country is going in the wrong direction. It's really astonishing how down people are down about the economy, very down about what's going on at the border. They feel like there's a loss of control in the country,” said MacCallum.
Dana Perino also appeared shocked that the mood was dark despite working for a propaganda network that constantly peddles fear and paranoia.
“Although it's interesting that you say that because the mood in the country is pretty dark. And I feel like in a way, people sort of tuned out Washington. They don't think it's going to help them. They don't see or hear from Washington like how things are going to get better for them. And also the chaos that President Biden talks about when the Trump years. I think that when you see people say 72% of people say the country is going in the wrong direction, that's because they feel like their lives are chaotic now,” said Perino.
John Roberts appeared to openly perform for Donald J. Trump.
“I think somebody is watching because we mentioned a second ago that the Democrats are going to fight this election on abortion. Republicans are going to try to fight it on immigration. Donald Trump just put out on Truth Social. ‘There's nothing he can say (Biden) that could absolve him from letting 50 million people into our country illegally. He'll probably blame me, but I had the safest border in history,’” said Roberts quoting Trump.
Bret Baier encouraged the former president to call into the show.
“You know, if the former president wants to call in, we're happy to put him on, instead of reading his Truth Social posts,” said Baier.
“He just might. Yeah, he may. Just might,” said Harold Ford Jr.
The criticism of President Biden got so petty that former Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) criticized the speed at which Biden walked.
“One thing I've noticed from all the presidents, President Biden takes more time walking down and walking out. He literally waits till everybody leaves. I've never seen quite anything like it.”
Bret Baier seemingly searching for anything to talk about before Biden began his speech bought up another former Speaker of the House.
“The moment when Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up President Trump's speech after that. That was one moment that was remembered after one State of the Union.”
State of the Union Speech: 1 hour 8 minutes
Commentary after the speech - 17 minutes 30 seconds
“President Joe Biden delivering his State of the Union address lasting just about an hour and 8 minutes. It started off a little differently. Protocol says the speaker of the House introduces the president with the words. ‘It's my high honor and privilege to introduce the president.’ United States Speaker Johnson was ready, but President Biden dove right in to that speech straight away.
He started with freedom and democracy under assault. He pointed to Russia on the march in Ukraine, calling for funding and weapons for Ukraine. Right off the bat, he called out his predecessor, former President Trump, for, quote, bowing down to a Russian leader. From there, President Biden went to the January 6th Capitol riot, calling it the gravest threat to our republic since the Civil war. And he said that threat remains. That was the first 12 paragraphs of this speech in what many political watchers are calling one of the most, if not the most, partisan kind of rancorous State of the Union address they can remember.
It took about 40 minutes to get to the issue of immigration and really the exchange. He wanted more. The Democrats wanted energy tonight. They wanted fight. It was delivered in a fast, forceful, sometimes yelling way at the end, reaching the dismount that he said. The idea of America is why he's optimist about the future,” said Baier.
Brit Hume called Biden an old man which is ironic since he’s a year younger than the President.
“Well, I thought it was a good chance he would back a smoothly delivered of mistake free, no blunders, no stumbling speech tonight. He was the theme of it, of course, was that the country is on a great comeback. For for a speech about a comeback. He didn't seem very happy about it, did he? He seemed angry. There was plenty of stumbling and slurring of words and all the rest of it that we've come to associate with him and taken as a sign of his senility and his advancing age and the effect that it has on a person.
So I don't think he got out from under that at all. And I'm not sure that the person sitting at home tonight looking at the guy would think he was anything other than an angry old man now,” said Hume.
Brandon Judd brought up the recently stalled bipartisan border security bill.
“The reason that we supported the bill is because it's better than the status quo. What we wanted to see is we wanted to see it go to the floor to be debated, to have amendments put in there to make that bill much better. It is not the perfect bill. We've never said it was the perfect bill, but it is better than the status quo.”
Dana Perino mentioned the hostile interaction Biden had with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA).
“So, one, he was prepared for that moment. He knew it was coming, right? He got the name a little bit wrong. That line that I thought was a little bit strange is when he said, But how many people are being killed by illegals, by legal? And I again, that part wasn't on prompter, but there was a couple of times that the Republicans took the bait on a couple of things. One was on Trump tax cuts. So I talked about tax cuts like, I thought I thought you wanted those tax cuts, right? I thought that was a little bit skillful. That was like one of the moments where I can say that was pretty good. And also on immigration. But I do think that this was a polarizing, divisive speech and it was meant to be,” said Perino.
John Roberts conceded that Biden’s speech would go over well with Democrats.
“It was it was ‘yelly’ it was rancorous. It probably turned a lot of people off if they're like right leaning independents or Republicans. But I'm just going to predict that when the reviews come in on this, in places like The New York Times and The Washington Post and the National Review and MSNBC and other left leaning outlets, they're going to say that this was the most brilliant State of the Union that he's ever given because he needed a political resurrection.
Tonight, he went into this with the lowest approval rating of his presidency in a Fox News poll. He was underwater on every every major issue and underwater far enough that he needed to be at least breathing Nitrox. If not, Heliox in order to survive. He was that far underwater.”
Republican Response - 19 minutes
Martha MacCallum described Britt’s response as soft.
“Katie Britt, the youngest member of Congress, Republican member of Congress, woman giving the rebuttal, which is always a difficult job for all of the loud sort of shouting, yelling that we got from Joe Biden, who's on the other side of the political age group. This was soft. It was strong. She started by saying that Joe Biden's been in office longer than she's been alive. And then she said he doesn't get it. And she went one item after another talking about trafficking, talking about fentanyl all of these issues she talks about worries about with her family around the table,” said MacCallum.
Her co-anchor also offered praise for Britt.
“The American dream has turned into a nightmare for American families talking about fentanyl, talking about the border. At times she said about President Biden, y'all ‘Bless his heart.’ Now, if you're not from the South, that's that's not a great thing. But she she delivered in a speech that's tough to give. And I think that Republicans are going to say this hit all the notes,” said Baier.
According to reporting by Jonathan M. Katz, Senator Britt included a story in her State of the Union response that was extremely misleading.
Britt mentioned a woman she claimed she met who told her about her experience being a victim of sex trafficking at age 12. In the speech Britt implied that the abuse the woman endured happened in the United States.
Katz looked into the claims and traced the story back to Karla Jacinto Romero, a survivor of human trafficking who testified in front of Congress about the abuse she suffered in 2015.
Romero was forced into illegal underage sex work in Mexico, not the Unites States. According to her own testimony the abuse she suffered occurred from 2004-2008 during the G.W. Bush administration.
Romero also didn’t sit down with Britt and explain the abuse she endured in a private moment as the Senator implied. Her story was well documented well before Britt even considered running for the U.S. Senate.
PBS NewsHour - Special Report on the State of the Union Address
Pre-show before speech: 25 minutes
Anchors
Geoff Bennett - PBS NewsHour, co-anchor
Amna Nawaz - PBS NewsHour, co-anchor
Correspondents
Lisa Desjardins - PBS NewsHour, White House correspondent
Laura Barrón-López - PBS NewsHour
Panel
Amy Walter - Cook Political Report with Amy Walter
David Brooks - New York Times, columnist
Jonathan Capehart - Washington Post, associate editor
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Decoding Fox News to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.