The Fox Newsification of Haley was an opinion

Fox Corp. vs. Fox News: Investigation of a Deep Investigation of the Fox News Discrepancy with a Right-Right Campaign

The court filings have offered the most vivid picture to date of the chaos that transpired behind the scenes at Fox News after Trump lost the election and viewers rebelled against the right-wing channel for accurately calling the contest in Biden’s favor.

Fox Corp. believes there is no proof that Murdoch or his son played a role in the decision to air election-fraud claims. Attorneys for Fox say that the communications presented by Dominion are not related to the 115 allegedly defamatory statements in the case.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric M. Davis said in yesterday’s ruling that they should get the contracts.

Even so, Fox Corp.’s chief legal officer, Viet Dinh, acknowledged under oath that executives in the corporation’s chain of command have an obligation “to prevent and correct known falsehoods.” A team of outside lawyers, led by a highly regarded Chicago-based corporate litigator, is handling the Fox Corp. and Fox News’ legal defense. There were false election-fraud claims reported by Fox News journalists. And star Tucker Carlson sharply questioned the basis for Trump’s outspoken advocate Sidney Powell on his program. But Fox News never corrected the record on all the baseless allegations that unspooled on its airwaves.

There was a line that Keller drew between a host and a producer who had some pre-scripting material for the show on a specific channel and a network executive.

Murdoch sent a message to Scott telling her that Newsmax needed to be watched. Murdoch said he didn’t want to “antagonize Trump further” and that everything was at stake.

Nelson cited a document obtained from Fox, that said that “almost all of the executives that we’re looking at right now are at the daily editorial meeting.”

Dominion appears to be drilling down on its argument – hotly disputed by Fox – that the network’s executives knowingly allowed such false conspiracies to air on its programs to boost their audiences – because their pro-Trump viewers abandoned them after the Arizona call.

If Fox is to win a defamation case, they have to proveactual malice. Either knowingly broadcasting false and damaging information or reckless disregard for the truth is what that means.

No one at Fox would directly comment on Baker and Glasser’s assertions, other than Baier, who released a statement taking some issue with how his objections were framed. One person inside Fox with direct knowledge of its election coverage told NPR the delay in calling the full White House win for Biden involved a technical glitch in a control room as one show transitioned to the next at the top of the hour.

Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of Fox Corporation, acknowledged in a deposition taken by Dominion Voting Systems that some Fox News hosts endorsed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

Murdoch said he encouraged the firing of host Lou Dobbs, who was an “explosive”, but allowed him to keep hosting his show until after the election. Dominion argues that’s because Dobbs was popular with Trump and his supporters and the network was fending off viewer defections to Newsmax.

In recent weeks, Dominion has argued that Fox host Jeanine Pirro – a former district attorney and New York state judge as well as a Trump confidant – sits at the heart of its case. NPR has previously revealed an email that was sent by a Fox News producer begging her colleagues to keep her off the air because she was spreading lies about election fraud on the internet.

CNN’s Stephen Collinson puts it perfectly: “Fox News is the latest example of opinion formers on the right exposed for being held hostage to the fury they helped to incite. … Key players on the right feel they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend, according to new details.

Speaking under oath, Murdoch confirmed the suggestion by a Dominion lawyer that Fox was “trying to straddle the line between spewing conspiracy theories on one hand, yet calling out the fact that they are actually false on the other.”

In that case, Murdoch is accusing a much smaller media outlet of defamation. The site has had to pay out for critical commentary before; it wants to use the suit as a test case for changes to libel law in that country. Media outlets have less legal cover in Australia than they do here in the U.S.

The coverage from Murdoch’s media outlets does not mean that they will completely turn on Trump. If Murdoch pushes Republicans towards DeSantis if the two go against each other in a Republican primary, then he’ll be able to tilt the scales.

Four years ago, there was a close race in the governor’s race. On Tuesday, his nearly 20-point win against Democratic candidate Charlie Crist sent a message that he can win over the independent voters who decide elections.

The home page of Fox News also prominently featured a column by conservative commentator Liz Peek that declared DeSantis “the new leader of the Republican Party.” Fox News dubbed it “A NEW ERA.”

And The Wall Street Journal, the broadsheet owned by Murdoch, the newspaper’s conservative editorial board published a piece proclaiming the “DeSantis Florida tsunami.”

His Florida success will grab the attention of voters outside the state, according to the editorial board. You can bet Donald J. Trump was watching.

Murdoch asked Suzanne Scott to have Sean Hannity talk about Lindsey Graham, a Republican. Murdoch said that they can’t lose the Senate. In other words, Murdoch was directing the head of his talk network to help the GOP. This kind of directive from an executive would be a huge scandal at a news network.

Murdoch remarked afterwards that “We should throw this guy over.” according to a recently released book by a reporter at The New York Times.

Glenn Beck made this suggestion a day after the elections, but he expressed a desire to linger with the visions of a red flood that wiped out the Republicans. It wasn’t possible to linger on after the poor showing the party had in the election that was supposed to be a big one.

After confetti rained down on him, Ron DeSantis told his supporters that he and his family have rewritten the political map. Some in the crowd urged him to consider a White House bid by chanting, “Two more years!”

Florida gov. Marco DeSantis: What’s next? What has happened in the midst of the last two elections? How Democrat and Republican Senator Marco Rubio has dealt with the Trump administration

He has taken that political style and created a strongman persona. As governor, he has targeted protestors, universities, public health workers and corporations for opposing his policies. He sent police to round up voters with felony convictions who thought they were voting in recent elections when they actually were, because they were confused by the state efforts to strip their voting rights. He has bent the Florida legislature to his will, whipping up support for anti-gay laws, a new redistricting map and punitive legislation targeting Disney after the company criticized the state’s infamous “don’t say gay” bill.

But as a one-time GOP candidate for the White House, Marco Rubio understands that neither success in Florida nor success in theory can translate into national victory. Part of it is because of the state of Florida. The electorate there has gone more conservative in recent years as the country as a whole has become more liberal with policies like abortion protections and higher minimum wage laws.

Meanwhile, unlike the national party, the Democratic Party in Florida is in tatters, struggling to field and support candidates and to organize and mobilize voters. And Florida has a specific mix of Latino voters that is unlike most other states, weighted heavily toward immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela who respond favorably to DeSantis’s attack on Democrats as socialists.

Just two years ago, the party failed to pass a policy platform, instead issuing a statement of loyalty to Trump. When party elites inched away from Trump after his election loss and the insurrection that followed, they did not manage to bring the party with them. In order to overturn the election, the majority of Republicans in the House voted, as did the vast majority of Republican voters.

Georgia Lieutenant Gov, who has been critical of Trump, said Thursday that there’s no way to deny he got fired. “The search committee has brought a few names to the top of the list and Ron DeSantis is one of them. I think Ron DeSantis is being rewarded for a new thought process with Republicans and that solid leadership.”

“Trump rants for a couple of months. DeSantis throws some red meat during [Florida’s next legislative session] and then we have a primary around May,” said one DeSantis ally, describing his current posture

People who have access to him say that he has not yet made a final decision about his future but that he has kept a tight circle as he weighs his options. The governor’s brain trust is notoriously small. It consists of himself and his wife, Casey. But sources said the DeSantises also are hyper aware that he has a window to make a 2024 move, and though it widened after Tuesday, it might not stay open forever.

The intrigue surrounding a potential Trump-DeSantis showdown reached the White House on Wednesday. President Joe Biden joked, “It would be fun to watch them take on each other.”

DeSantis did shut bars and nightclubs and urged people to follow federal government guidance on limiting gatherings on beaches in March 2020. The federal government had advised him to keep them closed but he kept them open. The former president is clearly seeking to get to the right of the Florida governor on this issue, despite DeSantis spending much of the last two years feuding with the Biden administration over the pandemic. But while challenging federal health advice could be a powerful litmus test for a GOP primary, the idea that Trump’s disastrous handling of the pandemic could be a vote winner in the general election is quite a leap.

The Case For Donald J. DeSantis: Bringing Out the Bounds On A GOP Electoral Candidate From His First Year in office

A GOP consultant said that the legislative session will be red meat. “Whatever he proposes, they will pass it, and it will become law.”

The Republican fundraiser said that “anything ‘woke’ they can find to kill within their path, they’re going to do that” and predicted that financial institutions, in particular, would be a DeSantis target this spring.

While the former president retains a significant amount of support from Republicans, some of the party’s biggest donors have started to meet with other potential presidential hopefuls and signal their interest in bankrolling alternative candidates. It’s a concern Trump allies are confronting head on as they privately explore ways to make the monstrous pile of cash he has raised since leaving office available to him as a presidential candidate. Billionaire Ken Griffin, who gave nearly $60 million to federal Republican candidates and campaigns in the 2022 cycle, told Politico in an interview last week that he would support DeSantis if the Florida governor tosses his hat into the ring for the 2024 GOP nod. Two other Republican donors who gave to Trump in 2016 and 2020 and requested anonymity for fear of retribution, told CNN they too were waiting to see what the congressman does, and one of them said they would support former Vice President Mike Pence if he challenge his former boss.

He is expected to travel outside of the state to raise money and build his brand. After avoiding public events outside Florida for most of his first term, DeSantis in August took the calculated gamble to hold rallies in support of Republican candidates in some of the country’s most contested races for governor and US Senate. He continued to travel up until 10 days before the election.

“If in fact you go into a presidential primary with Donald Trump and think you’re going to kick his ass, you got another thing coming,” one Republican consultant in Florida told CNN.

Trump repeatedly opens fire upon DeSantis, who has failed to respond, with the “overwhelming force” that he vowed he would unleash. In fact, DeSantis hasn’t fired back at all. The Florida governor is no longer involved in the fight.

“I don’t know if he is running. If he runs, I think he would hurt himself a lot. “I think he would be making a mistake. I think the base would not approve and I would tell you some things about him that wouldn’t be very flattering.

Trump later downplayed Tuesday’s election results, noting he received “more votes” than DeSantis in Florida in 2020. Presidential races usually have much higher turnout than midterms and Trump’s margin of victory over Biden was about 3 points.

What have we learned about the midterm elections? And what can we learn from CNN’s Black Swan’s disappearance and murder of a legendary racehorse?

This week’s column can be sign up to be a newsletter. We’re looking back at the strongest, smartest opinion takes of the week from CNN and other outlets.

In the story “Silver Blaze,” there is a disappearance of a famous racehorse and the tragic murder of its trainer. A police inspector asks the detective, “Is there any point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“Consider the benchmarks for success in a typical midterm election: the opposition party gains an average of 46 seats in the House when the president is below 50% approval rating, as Biden is. While the final number is still being determined, GOP House gains will be far less than that,” Avlon noted.

It was only a little more than a week ago that Republicans thought they’d be savoring a crushing victory – and some Democrats were starting to blame each other for what they feared would be a disaster.

The New Yorker reported on November 4 that the GOP candidates were going for a sweep, including those in the competitive Senate races of Georgia and Pennsylvania. Wallace-Wells said that the words “bloodbath” kept coming up in the conversations.

“People sometimes wonder what it will take to get young people to the polls,” wrote Dolores Hernandez, a junior at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. “Well, after the 2022 midterms, they no longer have to guess.”

“Place in front of us an existential issue that could determine our future. Give us the knowledge that we can have a say about issues that affect us with our votes, and we will turn out in droves.” Hernandez and her fellow Gen Z friends saw abortion as that kind of existential issue.

Student activists say the line of students on the University of Michigan campus for same-day registration to vote went on for four hours on Election Day. There was a sense of anticipation around the election on the campus. Many young people and especially young women were motivated by abortion rights.

Nationally, exit polls showed that voters between the ages of 18 and 29 supported Democrats over Republicans by a 63% to 35% margin; no other age group was nearly as pro-Democratic, with voters over 45 strongly favoring Republicans.

Some pundits argued before the election that voter anger at the Supreme Court would fade after five months and that inflation would take care of most other concerns. They also argued that President Joe Biden was out of touch for focusing a major pre-election speech on the threat election deniers running for office posed to democracy. But both of those issues resonated.

The law professor wrote that, when it came to ballot initiatives, the abortion-rights side had a perfect five-for-five. “Kentucky, a deep red state, turned away an attempt to say that the state constitution did not protect a right to abortion. Voters in Montana rejected a proposal to impose criminal penalties on health care providers who perform abortions.

John Avlon considered the elections a repudiation of former President Donald Trump and many of the top ticket candidates who parroted them.

Roxanne Jones wrote that she was a relief. “It finally feels like a majority of voters want to re-center American politics away from the toxic, conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric we’ve experienced over the past several years.”

In Pennsylvania, Democrat Josh Shapiro soundly defeated Republican candidate Doug Mastriano in the gubernatorial race. Joyce M. Davis, a reporter for The Huffington Post, wrote about Mastriano’s fear of Pennsylvanians with his Trump swagger. He embraced Christian nationalism and once said women who violate his proposed abortion ban would be charged with murder. According to Davis he is an election denier.

“Plenty of voters are worried about unchecked progressivism on the left, but they’re even more worried about unchecked extremism on the right,” observed Tim Alberta, in the Atlantic.

“That extremism takes many forms: delegitimizing our elections system, endorsing the January 6 assault on the Capitol, cracking jokes and spreading lies about the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband. Donald Trump embodied all of this extremists which many swing voters rejected on Tuesday.

The Republicans are worried about the viability of Trump as a candidate. They worry that he could give Joe Biden another four years in the White House after he failed to win the election in the last three cycles.

Biden not only defeated an incumbent president, but was “able to move a formidable legislative agenda through Congress, overcoming fierce Republican opposition and even winning a few GOP votes along the way. The American Rescue Plan, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act are three of the most significant legislative records we have seen in the last half century.

Some of the voters who chose their House vote to oppose Donald Trump were in exit polls. The former president is the front-runner for the GOP’s presidential nomination, and only 37% of people say they have a favorable view of him. That should alarm the party…”

Five Lessons on Midterms: How President Vladimir Putin Has Known The Fate of the U.S. Senate Candidate Sophia A. Nelson

“Had Abrams succeeded, she would have been the first Black woman to become the governor of a US state. After her second straight electoral loss, America is still waiting for that breakthrough.”

Four years ago, Sophia A. Nelson was defeated by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and this time, she lost to him again.

In Texas, Democrat Beto O’Rourke lost to incumbent Republican Greg Abbott for governor. In the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Nicole Russell wrote that after “his third huge loss, it’s time for him to stop running for offices in Texas. We’ve had enough Beto for one lifetime. Is that true? His liberal policies are not welcome in Texas.

After taking control of the only regional capital in Ukraine since the February invasion, Russia pulled out troops from the city of Kherson. The architect of the war, President Vladimir Putin, may be able to retain control of his nation for a time despite the debacle, wrote Mark Galeotti. Even though continued defeat on the battlefield will have an impact on Putin, his dream of establishing Russia as a great power on the back of its military strength is over.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html

What are we doing wrong? Men are objects of lust, but what do they really need? A conversation between Chris Evans, Sara Stewart, and People’s Sexiest Man Alive

The actor Chris Evans received an accolade that was first bestowed on Mel Gibson in 1985, “a candidate whose appeal, I think we can agree, has not aged well,” Sara Stewart observed.

“People magazine recently announced this year’s Sexiest Man Alive, which makes it a great time to ask: Can we get rid of the whole tradition of People’s Sexiest Man Alive?”

Think about the ridiculousness of saying someone is the greatest of all time. Sexiness, by its very nature, is subjective. It is a winzy joke that people give up their own tastes as if they are all their own. By making their subject male, they tacitly said that we are so evolved that we are not objectifying women. Men can be objects of lust too! Playboy and other magazines may have been making a statement when they imposed an ideal of sexiness at the newsstand in the 1980s. But now? Not so much.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html

Five-Leastons Midterms: The Crown vs Musk’s Social Media “Commission on Prince Charles and Princess Diana”

The new season of “The Crown,” which Netflix dropped on Wednesday, “charts the royals’ course through the turbulent 1990s, including Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s agonizing divorce and Elizabeth’s ‘annus horribilis’ in 1992, when a fire destroyed much of Windsor Castle,” wrote Holly Thomas.

As Thomas noted, “The Crown” doesn’t masquerade as a documentary or claim to perfectly replicate private moments between royal family members.” It has done what historical TV shows, films, plays and literary fiction always have: Use factual events as loose outlines, fill them in using artistic license and trust the audience’s intelligence to tell the difference. It was created and written by Peter Morgan and he is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Roxanne Jones will not help with Musk’s attempts to fix the social media site. She’s had enough. Jones said that he deleted the platform on the day Musk became its new owner. I ended my relationship with Tweets due to the fact that it was time to say goodbye and good riddance.

The small act of changing one’s password will not have much of an impact on the number of users on the social network. For me, quitting social media was an act of self-care. I was setting boundaries for what I will, and will not, allow in my life.”

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html

Five Lessons from Midterms: What Would You Do With All That Money? The Answer to Bill Carter’s Problems about Millions of Dollars

Bill Carter doesn’t normally buy lottery tickets due to the fact that it felt like burning a $10 bill on a barbecue grill.

The number of people like us who ignore lotteries until they soar to massive amounts is interesting. Now a $100 million prize is barely eyebrow raising. That is too piddling to care? Would $100 million change a lot of people’s lives?

“Really: What would we do with all that money? After helping the kids, buying several homes, donating to charities, what else can we do? Build a ‘money bin’ and swim around in it like Scrooge McDuck? (Unwise. Money can make you wealthy, but that isn’t liquid.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/13/opinions/five-lessons-midterms-opinion-columns-galant/index.html

An Origin Story of Man of Steel: Donald Trump’s Third Presidential Runoff Campaign in the Wake of Republican Dem Demographic Dilemma

The origin story of Man of Steel is well known. As pop culture historian Roy Schwartz noted, “In 1934, at the age of 18, (Joseph) Shuster and classmate Jerome Siegel came up with a revolutionary idea: Superman. He was the first superhero, a concept so unprecedented that, as Siegel detailed in his unpublished memoir, every newspaper syndicate in the US rejected it for being too fantastic for children to relate to.”

Helen Louise Cohen, a Cleveland woman, might have had a relationship with Superman’s future wife, Lois Lane. Shuster sent her sketches of Superman along with at least one drawing of Cohen, and heartfelt letters in neat script.

Ultimately, she broke it off, choosing instead to marry “a dashing officer, later awarded the Legion of Merit and eventually becoming a colonel in the Army’s 88th Infantry Division.” Shuster was too nearsighted to enlist in the military during World War II.

Cohen would later tell her sons, as Schwartz noted, that “Shuster was simply too mild-mannered for her.” The family is sharing the sketches and letters that she kept with the world.

Donald Trump will begin the next part of his political career under siege if he mounts a third presidential bid on Tuesday.

Seven years ago, the New York businessman entered the political fray on defense, trying to convince his opponents that he was a serious contender for the Republican presidential nomination. This time, Trump takes the plunge as the party’s indisputable frontrunner, but once again, he finds himself in a defensive crouch.

In the wake of the GOP losing control of Congress, Trump has set his sights on winning a second term inWashington and attacking two GOP governors who could challenge his status as the party’s anchor.

Mehmet Oz, Adam Laxalt and Blake Masters, three Republican Senate candidates who earned Trump’s support in their primaries, respectively lost to Democratic opponents in Pennsylvania, Nevada and Arizona. Meanwhile, Herschel Walker, a longtime Trump friend challenging Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock, is headed to a December runoff after both failed to reach 50% support in Georgia.

In a Truth Social post last week, Trump claimed he endorsed Youngkin because he couldn’t have won if he didn’t.

When it comes to Trump, a true leader understands when they become a liability, as noted by Earle-Sears. The voters have given us a clear message that it’s time for a leader to step off the stage.

According to one of his aides, there was a detail that caught the attention of the former president that Sears refused to tell.

“If Glenn Youngkin decides to run for president, that’s his choice. But Team Trump will certainly mount a massive effort to win the Virginia delegates going to Milwaukee that is going to embarrass Youngkin,” said John Fredericks, a Virginia-based conservative radio host who chaired Trump’s campaigns in the state in 2016 and 2020.

“I know there’s a lot of criticism and people saying, ‘Just focus on Georgia,’ but he figures there’s no point in waiting. If Herschel fails to win, he will be blamed for the distraction but if he does win, he won’t get any credit for reviving the base,” said a Trump adviser.

“Nobody should be surprised. Michael Caputo is a former Trump administration official who is still close to the former president. The question you have to ask is: can this format work for him again?

One of the biggest challenges we will face is raising money, but I think Trump has shown that he does not need deep-pocketed donors in order to do his job.

Some Trump allies said the donor challenges, midterm outcome and questions about his stature has left a dearth of seasoned campaign operatives willing to join his next campaign. The president has told friends that he wants to keep his operation leaner, much like his 2016 presidential campaign, but some have questioned if it is out of preference or due to recruitment troubles. According to CNN, Trump’s likely campaign is expected to be led by Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, Brian Jack, and other advisers with whom the former president is familiar. His apparatus should dwarf that of his campaign two years ago, multiple sources said.

Even though Trump is trying to find his footing on the verge of a presidential campaign that may coast to the party’s nomination convention or encounter unforeseen troubles, allies who have remained with him are ready for battle one last time.

The Dean Obeidallah Show: Coronavirus in the Wild: When Ron DeSantis Gets Closed, Likely to Close Bars and Nightclubs

Editor’s Note: Dean Obeidallah, a former attorney, is the host of SiriusXM radio’s daily program “The Dean Obeidallah Show.” You can follow Dean Obeidallah at Mas Toai. He has his own opinions in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

It is not clear whoLake was referring to, but it is likely that he was talking about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who may have been angling for a 2020 White House run. DeSantis appears — at least for the moment — to pose the greatest threat to Trump’s bid to repeat as the Republican Party’s presidential standard-bearer.

Lang confronts Rocky at a press conference, publicly mocking the champ for refusing to fight a “real man,” and screaming out to the assembled crowd: “If he ain’t no coward, why won’t he fight me then?”

“I had governors that decided not to close a thing and that was up to them,” Trump said. The Florida governor changed his tune a lot on immunizations, and he took aim at him.

In March 2020, in response to the rapidly spreading pandemic, the Florida governor issued an executive order closing bars and nightclubs, and urged people to follow US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines limiting gatherings on beaches to no more than 10 people.

But his recent remarks and pronouncements have veered sharply away from sensible, government-imposed Covid-19 protections in what appears to be a desperate bid to appeal to the GOP’s Covid-denying base voters ahead of an anticipated presidential run.

DeSantis has come out against lockdowns, mask mandates, vaccines and other measures meant to combat the spread of the coronavirus. The supposition by many political observers is that the about-face has largely been motivated by an impending White House bid.

When does the former US president lose his job? The case for Rubio and the DeSantis scalar in the wake of his victory in 2024

But any potential run inevitably means a face-off with Trump, who is, as yet, the only Republican to have formally announced in the race. “Rocky III” marked the 40th anniversary of its release last year, but the 2024 GOP nominating campaign might be Rocky vs. Clubber Lang all over again.

But barring prosecution of the former President, if DeSantis wants to win in 2024, he can’t keep ducking Trump’s barbs. The Italian Stallion prevailed in the end despite the fact that the fighter lost his title early on in the film to Clubber Lang.

The former President has been on the ropes in the race for the GOP nomination, with polls showing that many voters in his party would rather have someone other than Trump as their nominee.

During the 2016 GOP presidential race, Trump and Rubio were among the Republicans vying for the opportunity to square off against the eventual Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton. Trump was the presumptive Republican contender to beat in the primary campaign.

That’s when Rubio finally took the gloves off, calling Trump “an embarrassment” and a demagogue. But it was too little, too late for Rubio, who lost the Florida GOP primary, and ended up dropping out of the race the next day.

When they fire, you must return with overwhelming force, says the top Gov, who is wearing a flight suit and seated in the cockpit of a fighter jet. He said, never, ever back down from a fight.

Perhaps DeSantis — a Harvard Law School graduate and former federal prosecutor — is waiting to see if Trump is criminally indicted, in the hopes he doesn’t have to meet him on the field of battle. Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis told a judge last week that decisions are imminent in her investigation into efforts by Trump and his allies to interfere in the election in Georgia.

The investigation by special counsel Jack Smith into the January 6, 2021 attack at Mar-a-Lago is one of the things that could lead to charges. It would be devastating to his election prospects if Trump ran for the presidency while under indictment, because he can still legally campaign for president even if indicted.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/29/opinions/trump-ron-desantis-rocky-iii-obeidallah/index.html

Trump, McCain, and the Future: Is Your Voting Role Played by the Media? An Update on DeSantis and the Case for a Democratic Candidate

You have to fight for it. There could come a time when GOP voters view DeSantis’ refusal to defend himself and punch back as a sign of weakness.

The longer he is silent in the face of Trump’s barrage of punches, the more likely people will ask themselves, as Rocky’s nemesis did: If he ain’t no coward, why won’t he fight?

There was also something jarring about a former president who tried to steal the last election – and incited an insurrection to try to cling to power – campaigning and being embraced by supporters as if nothing happened.

There is also a clear sense that Trump believes he is owed the Republican nomination and feels that certain sections of his party are not sufficiently grateful for his turbulent one-term presidency.

A couple weeks ago, Trump attacked evangelical leaders who were unwilling to support him in his bid for the Presidency because he had yet to deliver a conservative majority on the Supreme Court. Trump tends to view loyalty as a purely one-way commitment, and the comments were a reminder of this.

New Hampshire Republican Gov. Chris Sununu told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday that right now DeSantis would probably win the Granite State’s GOP primary. Sununu, who told Bash he’s considering his own White House bid in 2024, also took a swipe at Trump’s demeanor and the size of his event, which was an address to party activists rather than one of his seething rallies in a state where he won the 2016 GOP primary.

It looks like Trump is not ready to acknowledge the reality. He went to an ice cream parlor in the afternoon in South Carolina in order to make contact with voters.

The campaign will be about the future. This campaign will be about issues. Trump claimed at an event that Biden had put America on the path to ruin and destruction, and that he would not receive four more years in office.

He has not abandoned all of his rhetoric. On Sunday evening, he called into a rally for one on his favorite election-denying midterm candidates – failed Arizona gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake, who is still falsely insisting she won in November. And earlier on Saturday, in New Hampshire, the former president – who is facing criminal investigations by the Justice Department and a district attorney in Georgia over his attempt to overturn the 2020 election – could not resist taking aim at institutions that are revealing the true course of events in 2020.

Trump indicated that he would use his campaign and future presidency to try to sabotage the efforts of the Justice Department to hold him accountable.

“We’re going to stop the appalling weaponization of our justice system. There’s never been a justice system like this. It’s all investigation, investigation,” Trump said. He said his resistance to the probes was proof that the quality Republicans embraced in 2016 helped propel him to the White House.

“There’s only one president who has ever challenged the entire establishment in Washington, and with your vote next year, we will do it again and I will do it again,” he said Saturday.

Fox News has a Story: Tucker Carlson Peddled Donald Trump’s 2020 Election Lüths to the Media and the Fox News News Network

The documents continue to make it clear that Fox News is not a news network. News networks work hard to deliver the truth to their viewers. These documents reveal that Fox News executives and hosts knew the truth and yet they peddled election lies to the audience. The highest levels of Fox News were against the handful of hosts who tried to be honest with their viewers.

In a bombshell legal filing made public Thursday, it was seen that Fox News executives and talk hosts privately trashed Hillary Clinton’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged.

Despite acknowledging that the situation was real, the network allowed the lies to take hold of it’s air because executives were afraid that telling the truth wouldn’t please its large audience.

The damage to a brand that has been in existence 25 years was done in one week after the election, Sean Hannity told Carlson and Ingraham.

The hosts were so alarmed by Newsmax rising, they were angry when their colleague, White House correspondent, sent a fact check of Trump’s election lies.

That’s how we know Tucker Carlson tried to get a Fox News White House correspondent fired for fact-checking former President Donald Trump’s false tweet about election fraud.

“Hannity is getting awfully close to the line with his commentary and guests tonight”, warned Dinh, who was a top deputy to Murdoch. Murdoch warned that if Trump refused to concede graciously, “We should watch Sean and other people because they sound different.”

Behind the scenes, however, Fox News chief executive Scott had been wooing Mike Lindell, the MyPillow founder, major advertiser and pro-Trump conspiracy theorist, according to Dominion’s filing. Scott sent Lindell a personal note and a gift while encouraging Fox shows to book him as a guest to “get ratings.”

Haley, the Murdoch family, and the invasion of Crimea by Russia: The tale of a successful South Carolina senator and their first U.N. ambassador

“There will be a lot of noise and confusion generated by Dominion and their opportunistic private equity owners, but the core of this case remains about freedom of the press and freedom of speech, which are fundamental rights afforded by the Constitution and protected by New York Times v. Sullivan,” the network said.

If it would boost their stock and hold their audience captive, the Murdoch family would be all right with messing with America’s democracy.

I’ve never met Haley, but from afar it seemed that she had a reasonably good story to tell — a successful South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, Trump’s first U.N. ambassador and the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi, and after immigrating to South Carolina, earned a master’s degree in education and became a local public-school teacher. She had a father that taught biology for 29 years at Voorhees College and earned a doctorate from University of British Columbia. On the side, they even opened a clothing boutique.

DeSantis argued in an interview with Fox News in May 2015 that Putin “knows he can get away with things there. I believe Putin would make different calculations if we had a firm policy of armed Ukraine with defensive and offensive weapons so that they could defend themselves.

“I think that when someone like [Russian President Vladimir] Putin sees Obama being indecisive, I think that whets his appetite to create more trouble in the area. And I think if we were to arm the Ukrainians, I think that would send a strong signal to him that he shouldn’t be going any further,” he added.

In February and March of 2014, Russia invaded the peninsula Crimea in Ukraine and occupied the territory, illegally annexing it and declaring it as a part of Russia, an act that US and European allies decried and punished.

In May 2015, DeSantis voted for an amendment in the defense spending bill that would bar funds to implement the START treaty, a nuclear deterrent treaty between the US and Russia, until then-President Obama certified Russian forces were no longer illegally occupying Ukrainian territory. The legislation was passed by congress, but Obama vetoed it.

“We have common cause with those folks,” he said in March 2014, referring to Ukrainians who protested the annexation, “but it’s just a type of situation where militarily, we don’t really have any, any options to do much. I don’t know if the whole ofUkraine is written off, and I don’t think we’ll do much to re-unite the two countries.

He continued, “And so I think Obama’s policy of weakness is actually making a larger conflict more likely. And I think if you had Reagan’s policy of strength, I think you’d see people like Putin not wanna mess with us.”

After Russia’s invasion of February 2022, DeSantis blamed President Joe Biden for the response by the administration and continued to remain quiet on the issue.

“My feeling is that they haven’t done enough, Europe or Biden’s administration, to really hit Putin where it counts,” he said in a February 2022 news conference, emphasizing the Russian economy’s reliance on oil and gas exports.

If you go into another country with an armed population that is willing to resist you, it will be death by a thousand cuts for the Russian army.

In a news conference a few days later, she said, “I think Putin would not have done this if he thought the United States was strong, but I think the United States is weak because of the impotence of Biden’s administration.”

Murdoch said that many of the commentators were on-air in endorsing the election. “I would have liked us to be stronger in denouncing it, in hindsight,” he added.

Rebecca Tushnet said that the evidence was a “very strong” one and showed the difference between what top people at Fox were admitting and what they were saying publicly.

In her years as a practicing and teaching lawyer she has never seen such damning evidence prior to a defamation trial.

Fox News Shouldn’t Breathe: Paul Murdoch Explains the Murdochs’ View of the 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Key State of Arizona

In his deposition, Mr. Dinh, when asked if Fox executives had an obligation to stop hosts of shows from broadcasting lies, said: “Yes, to prevent and correct known falsehoods.”

The article was first published in theReliable Sources newsletter. Sign up for a digest that covers the evolving media landscape.

The Murdochs were warned repeatedly by Paul Ryan to cease the spread of election lies. The former speaker recommended that Fox News stop spouting election lies. Ryan told the Murdochs that many of those who thought the election had been stolen did so “because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believe were credible sources.” He was not wrong.

Murdoch gave Trump’s son-in-law a preview of Biden’s ads in 2020 and also information about the debate plan, the filing said. At most news organizations, this type of action would result in an investigation and disciplinary measures.

The documents show that the channel’s business model is not based on informing its audience, but simply on feeding them content that keeps viewers happy while they watch.

Asked whether he could have told Fox News’ chief executive and its stars to stop giving airtime to Rudy Giuliani — a key Trump campaign attorney peddling election lies — Murdoch assented. Murdoch said he could have. I didn’t.

The legal team for the company is presenting only the evidence that it thinks will lead to the conclusion that the parent company and its executives wrongly reported baseless assertions of a president.

Emails and other communications introduce into the case show that the Murdochs were involved in the network’s editorial path.

Each Murdoch speaks roughly daily to Fox News chief executive Suzanne Scott, she testified. Lachlan Murdoch said he had a daily chat with Scott, while his father said only once or twice a week.

“I’m a journalist at heart,” the elder Murdoch, who is just two weeks shy of his 92nd birthday, said in his deposition. “I like to be involved in these things.”

He had been resolute about defending Fox News’ call of the key state of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night — Nov. 3, 2020. Murdoch testified that he could hear Trump yelling at his son- in-law, who told him the situation was bad.

Scott forwarded his recommendation to the top executive over prime-time programming, Meade Cooper. Along with another executive, she canceled Pirro’s show that weekend over fears that the “guests are all going to say the election is being stolen and if she pushes back at all it will be just a token,” according to the filings.

By Nov. 13, Raj Shah, a senior vice president at Fox Corp., was advising Lachlan Murdoch, Scott and Dinh of the “strong conservative and viewer backlash to Fox that we are working to track and mitigate.” He said that positive impressions among Fox News viewers “dropped precipitously after Election Day to the lowest levels we’ve ever seen.”

The next day, Lachlan Murdoch warned Scott that a Fox News anchor’s coverage of a pro-Trump rally was “[s]mug and obnoxious”; Scott responded that she was “calling now” to remedy. In January 2021, anchor Leland Vittert ended his contract with Fox and became an anchor for NewsNation.

Fox Corp. board director Anne Dias wrote to the Murdochs on Jan. 11, 2021. I believe that the time has come for Fox News, or Lachlan, to speak up. It is a critical moment for Fox News and the nation.

“Just tell her”, advised Lachlan, who was advised by Rupert. Fox News called the election correctly and is now shifting its focus. We have to lead our viewers which is [] not as easy as it might seem.”

Tucker Carlson had a person on his show. Murdoch told the attorneys he was not going to take money for MyPillow ads.

The Real Reason Why the GOP is Not Red or Blue: It’s Green or Red or White or Black or White? The Case of Kevin McCarthy and the Dominion

But the ex-president’s entire political career, the modern Republican Party and a vast conservative media empire are based on the exact opposite premise of the Rolling Stones’ song: giving the party base exactly what it wants to hear – whether it is true or not.

The new details underscored how key players on the right feel they have no choice but to appease, satisfy and further inflame the voters and viewers on whom their profits or hopes of political power depend.

The GOP has a long tradition of leadership being led by fervent self radicalizing voters. They see their careers go to waste, like former Florida Gov. Bush and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake. Those that buy in – like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, now a member of the House GOP leadership team – can rocket to prominence.

There are indications that the billionaire publisher may be getting buyer’s remorse over the ex-president given the headline in his New York Post after the low energy 2024 campaign launch in November.

As he said in a deposition made public in a court filing on Monday in the Dominion case: “It is not red or blue, it is green,” referring to the color of a dollar.

The Republican politicians who appear on Fox are influenced by a similar calculation of what the political market will bear. Their unfiltered adoption of much of the doctrine favored by the conservative grassroots ultimately stretched American democracy to the limit.

Catering to that base helped fuel the rise of Trump in 2016, as he shattered the Republican establishment presidential field. GOP lawmakers who had to stay in power because they depended on not crossing the reality star-turned-president allowed him to run riot. The US Capitol insurrection in 2021 and the Republicans’ acquittal of him in two impeachment dramas helped promote an unstoppable radical tide.

The huge power of the Republican base was the secret sauce that forced new House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to make concessions to the most radical representatives in the conference after 15 rounds of voting he needed to win his job. McCarthy had earlier watched as two predecessors, former Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, tried to resist the GOP’s far right insurgency and lost their job. Last week, when McCarthy gave Tucker Carlson access to Capitol Hill security footage, he showed that the speakership is a subsidiary of the extreme elements of the GOP.

McCarthy’s dominance by the same GOP base that Murdoch worried about driving away is one reason why a coming showdown with the White House over raising the government’s borrowing limit has so many financial experts fretting about a possible default that could rattle the global economy.

This was the reason why, after all the commotion of his life in Manhattan, Trump was the perfect candidate to speak for the people. He was condemned by liberals for his extreme, racialized and sometimes profane rhetoric. The early Trump rallies were more like stand-up comedy shows for his crowd than they were for presidential events. Here was someone who was shouting out loud what millions of Americans had believed for years but felt constrained from saying because of social convention. Many commentators decried Trump’s demagoguery but fewer examined the social, economic and political reasons for his rise.

“This persistent theme — that Republicans in Washington fail to effectively represent the values of the people who elect them – foreshadowed the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016,” DeSantis writes in “The Courage to be Free,” published on Tuesday.

“The chasm between the aspirations of the GOP voter base and the behavior of party leaders in Washington would continue to grow wider in the ensuing years.”

Many politicians face a moment when, for reasons of conscience or political reality, they risk alienating their closest supporters. There is only one way to spend the political capital.

At the annual Veterans of Foreign Wars Convention in Kansas City in 2018, President Trump spoke about the marriage of convenience between his presidency and conservative media infrastructure.

“Stick with us. These people are making up fake news, so don’t believe them. It is not what you are reading that is important, he said.

What Do Fox News Messages Tell Us About the U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine? An Insight from Fox News Anchors and Executives

Every TV anchor and media executive should know that emails and text messages are not always public when a company is sued.

It’s especially painful if, as is the case for Fox News anchors and executives, the messages appear to show you are knowingly allowing false information on the air.

Ryan claimed that there was not a bigger platform in America. The conservative movement is in turmoil right now and I don’t like where it is.

During the George W. Bush administration, Fox would have been a major backer of military aid for Ukraine if Russia had invaded as it did a year ago. That perspective is still evident on the network, where many guests talk about the importance of Ukraine aid.

Carlson mimics Trump and questions if the US should be opposed to Russia’s invasion of Ukrainian because of its authoritarianism.

Trump will appear this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference, long a major stop for potential Republican presidential candidates. The other major announced candidate, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, will also attend.

CNN’s Melanie Zanona and Manu Raju interviewed two dozen or so lawmakers that Raju described as “hardcore Trump supporters, people who are part of the Freedom Caucus, people who were essentially his staunchest defenders during his four years in office.”

Multiple members of the Freedom Caucus actually traveled to Florida not to meet with Trump, but instead to talk to DeSantis, according to Raju. They were impressed by what they saw.