The Fox News Network stopped using the “fair and balanced” tagline a while back, a tacit admission that as the propaganda arm of the White House it’s neither fair or balanced.
The prime time opinion hosts of the conservative network (Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham) resemble Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s Propaganda Minister, more than they do objective analysts. Only a Trump cultist would be satisfied by the reporting and commentary offered by Fox News.
Trump enjoys a symbiotic relationship with his favorite news network. He praises his favorite Fox News personalities on Twitter, and grants interviews to Fox News on a regular basis while shunning the broadcast TV news programs and CNN and MSNBC, and it return he expects glowing coverage. To sum it up he generates ratings for Fox News and in return they treat him like the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan.
Make no mistake about it, Trump views Fox News as the media arm of his White House, and he throws a tantrum whenever the network provides air time to any of the Democratic presidential hopefuls.
The mutually beneficial relationship between Trump and Fox News has become strained after Fox hosted town hall meetings for Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete. After Sanders got the town hall treatment from Fox Trump tweeted:
“So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the ‘audience’ was so smiley and nice. Very strange, and now we have @donnabrazile?”
Notice the use of the word “we”, Trump views Fox News as an integral part of his reelection campaign.
And after the Mayor Pete town hall aired on Fox News, Trump tweeted:
Hard to believe that @FoxNews is wasting airtime on Mayor Pete, as Chris Wallace likes to call him. Fox is moving more and more to the losing (wrong) side in covering the Dems. They got dumped from the Democrats boring debates, and they just want in.”
He also referred to the South Bend, Indiana, mayor again as longtime Mad Magazine mascot Alfred E. Neuman. When Trump is frustrated he reverts to using childish nicknames to refer to his political opponents.
I hope the head honchos at Fox News will have an epiphany and realize that their cozy relationship with Trump is destroying their credibility and enabling a tyrant.
Oh for the old days when Fox News could get away with semi-plausibly using the slogan “Fair and Balanced.”