megyn kelly cartoon

With Donald Trump's Rise, Fox News Reaps What It Sows

The cable news network that trained its audience to see media criticism of Republican politicians as evidence of bias is attacked for its coverage of Trump.

Fox News’ coverage of Donald Trump’s campaign has resembled the treatment that the real estate tycoon and reality TV star receives in “the mainstream media.” It is unlike the network’s coverage of unqualified populist favorites from past election cycles, like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Herman Cain. And populists are taking notice.
Last week’s debate is a fine illustration.
Immediately after the candidates left the stage in Cleveland, Ohio, Fox News moderator and anchor Megyn Kelly threw the network’s coverage over to pollster Frank Luntz, who stood in a room with a small group of voters gathered to offer their impressions. “Megyn, we’re about to make some news tonight,” he said as he turned to the panel. His meaning quickly became apparent: Under questioning, most of the assembled voters revealed that they felt unfavorably about Trump’s performance.
“You know what happened?” one man said. “I liked him when I came in here, because he wasn’t a politician. But right now, he skirted around questions better than a lifelong politician ever had.” Said another, “I was really expecting him to do a lot better, but he just crashed and burned. He was mean, he was angry, he had no specifics, he was bombastic.” A third voter declared, “You know, he just let me down. I just expected him to rise to the occasion and look presidential. He didn’t.”

The reactions were confounding to me, even though they squared with the conventional wisdom that Trump’s demeanor had finally inflicted a fatal wound on his presidential prospects.
I’d watched the debate. For most of it, I thought that Donald Trump would emerge as popular as ever: I don’t understand his appeal, but his performance was completely in keeping with the style and substance of his campaign to that point. Why did the handpicked Republicans disagree? Had I been in the room with them, I’d have asked, “If you came here as a Donald Trump supporter, how could you possibly be disappointed by tonight’s anger, bombast, blatant question-skirting, and a lack of specifics? When have you known the man to act differently?”
As I switched off the TV, I thought of two possibilities: Either I understood Trump supporters less well than I thought, or Fox News had assembled a wildly unrepresentative panel that misrepresented the reaction to Trump’s performance.
Come Monday, I was no longer puzzled.
“There is no sign that Donald Trump's raucous first presidential debate is hurting his support among party voters,” Reuters reported, “with the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll showing he still has a big lead over his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination. The debate did little to change Republican voters' opinions of Trump, the poll found. One-third said they liked him more after the debate, one-third said they liked him less, and the remaining third said their opinions had not changed.”

An unrepresentative Fox News panel does not raise my suspicions. Like other cable news channels, the network offers political coverage that isn’t particularly rigorous, and pollster Frank Luntz has gotten far more consequential matters wrong before. But the hard right has always been more inclined to attribute media missteps to conspiracy rather than incompetence. Now it’s suspicious of Fox News.
“They took advantage of us,” talk radio host Mark Levin told Breitbart, “they took advantage of the audience.” Steve Deace declared in USA Today that “very few conservatives I interacted with during and after the debate thought Fox was ‘fair and balanced.’”
The most popular entertainer in the conservative movement, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh, speculated on Friday that the Republican Party establishment had conspired with Fox News, ordering the network to “take out” Trump. In another segment, he criticized the debate moderators. “If I didn't know any better,” he said, “I would have watched this thing thinking that there is a Republican War on Women based on the questions and the lack of a woman being on the stage among the 10.  I thought the War on Women was a Democrat creation by George Stephanopoulos. The last place I ever thought I would see it continued is Fox News.”
In a CNN interview, Trump either implied or accidentally seemed to imply that Kelly treated him angrily during the debate because she was menstruating at the time. Said fellow GOP candidate Carly Fiorina in a tweet: “Mr. Trump: There. Is. No. Excuse.” Fiorina would continue to attack Trump and to voice her support for Kelly.

Afterwards, a caller to Rush Limbaugh’s show responded:

Rush, it's an honor.  Thank you for taking my call, and mega dittos.  I'm calling in regard to Carly Fiorina and her support in her tweet to where she clearly stated, “I stand with Megyn.”  She tweeted that, Rush. And, you know what, in my book, you stand up with the media or for the media, you are now part of the media.  If you align yourself personally with the media, you are now part of the media. And, Rush, she has clearly played straight into the hand of the media, and there is no way I want my president to send out little tweets in support of the media.  I'm just outraged.

Note that there is no distinction made between the Fox News Channel and “the mainstream media” or “the liberal media” or what Rush Limbaugh calls “the drive-by media.” There’s just “the media.” Kelly is a part of it. She is therefore the enemy, her attackers are allies, and those who stand with her are useful idiots at best.
I rarely agree with Limbaugh. But I think he was right when he said about Trump: “There's a percentage of the population that is totally fed up with the political class, including the media.  And they have wanted things said to people and about people… for years and they haven't heard it.  I mean, the media is not loved.  The media in some cases is despised, and Trump is giving it right back to 'em in ways that many people in this country have dreamed of happening.”

“As such,” the radio star said of the former NBC host, “he comes off as refreshing. Even when he's not on message, or not on issues, he comes across as somebody that says things they would like to say … things they have hoped others would say ... I don't think a lot of these big players, including in the media, have any idea who their audiences are … I don't think they have the slightest idea the size of and the amount of real anger directed at them … It goes so far beyond the fact that they're biased.”
Consider the Fox News debate as Donald Trump fans experienced it. Wouldn’t you wager that Kelly, Chris Wallace and Bret Baier all believe that Trump’s candidacy is a joke and that his supporters are naive and misguided? Didn’t their questions seem to imply that Trump is obviously unfit to be president?
Meanwhile, hasn’t Fox News spent years conditioning viewers to believe that journalists belong to a condescending class of decadent elites which engages in barely-concealed conspiracies to destroy anyone who tells it like it is to real Americans? For years, Roger Ailes broadcast everything that Glenn Beck wrote on a chalk board! Surveying America for individuals whose insights he would broadcast to the masses, he settled on Sarah Palin as a person whose analysis he would amplify. It is no accident that a chunk of the Fox News audience is now inclined to side with Trump over Kelly. With Trump’s rise, the network is reaping what it has sown.

Fox News Poll: 60 percent say Clinton has been dishonest on Benghazi

A new Fox News poll finds that by a nearly two-to-one margin, voters think Hillary Clinton has been deceitful about the State Department’s role in the events surrounding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi.
Thirty-two percent say Clinton has been honest with the American people, while 60 percent disagree.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE POLL RESULTS
Despite doubts that Clinton has been honest, less than half of voters (46 percent) think Congress should continue investigating her handling of the terrorist attack.  Exactly half say it’s time for lawmakers to move on (50 percent).  That’s mostly unchanged from this summer, when 47 percent said continue and 49 percent move on (July 2015).
Among Democrats, nearly one in three says Clinton has been dishonest on Benghazi (30 percent), and one in five thinks the Congressional investigation should continue (19 percent).
Clinton was head of the State Department when the September 11, 2012 attack that killed four Americans took place.
Overall, only 13 percent of voters approve of the job Congress is doing.  A large 78-percent majority disapproves.  A year ago, it was 12-78 percent (October 12-14, 2014).  Over the last year, the highest approval lawmakers received was 21 percent in both February and March (2015).
Democrats (19 percent) are more than twice as likely as Republicans (9 percent) to approve of Congress.
The Fox News poll is based on landline and cell phone interviews with 1,004 randomly chosen registered voters nationwide and was conducted under the joint direction of Anderson Robbins Research (D) and Shaw & Company Research (R) from October 10-12, 2015. The poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points for all registered voters.

Kerry planning Mideast visit as US faces pressure to calm violence in Israel

The Obama administration is under pressure to help calm the growing violence in Israel which has some warning of a third intifada, as Israel's military steps up its response to deadly Palestinian attacks by deploying hundreds of troops. 
Amid the unrest, Secretary of State John Kerry just announced plans to visit the region, and has spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
"We're working on trying to calm things down," he said Tuesday during an event at Harvard University. "And I will go there soon at some point appropriately and try to work to re-engage and see if we can't move that away from this precipice."
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest also cited that visit Wednesday when asked what President Obama is doing to address the crisis, saying Kerry will travel "in the near future." He said the visit underscores the "continuing deep concern" the U.S. has and urged both sides to take "affirmative steps" to calm tensions.
Yet the State Department under both Hillary Clinton and now Kerry so far has been unable to push forward the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Relations between Obama and Netanyahu remain as chilly as ever -- particularly after the Iran nuclear deal put them on opposite sides of the debate -- and it's unclear how much sway the administration still has in the volatile region.
Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a Fox News analyst, cited Netanyahu's visit last month to Moscow to meet with Putin to discuss Syria. "He can see that Obama's Middle East non-policy has failed utterly," Peters said.
Kerry may be hoping his personal touch can help bring both sides together as tensions reach a critical point.
Tuesday was among the bloodiest days so far, as a pair of Palestinian stabbing and shooting attacks in Jerusalem killed three Israelis and another two attacks took place in the normally quiet Israeli city of Raanana. Three Palestinians, including two attackers, were also killed.
On Capitol Hill, U.S. lawmakers urged a stronger response from the administration.
"I stand behind Israel's fundamental right to defend itself and its people from violence and terror," Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., said in a statement. "Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and his government have an obligation to stop these attacks, to cease the harsh rhetoric that incites them, and to negotiate in good faith for a peaceful resolution."
He added, "It is imperative that the United States continue to ensure that Israel has the resources [it] needs to enhance its security and meet these threats."
Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said "it is critical that the Obama administration and Congress press Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas ... to act decisively to end the growing wave of Palestinian violence and return to bilateral peace negotiations with Israel."
State Department spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday put out a statement condemning "in the strongest terms today's terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians."
He said the U.S. stresses the importance of "condemning violence and combating incitement" and is in "regular contact" with both governments. "We remain deeply concerned about escalating tensions and urge all sides to take affirmative steps to restore calm and prevent actions that would further escalate tensions," he said.
It's unclear what the U.S. message involves beyond those appeals.
Pressed repeatedly at Tuesday's briefing on what U.S. officials are doing and saying about the crisis, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Kerry is urging both sides to condemn violence and combat incitement. But he would not elaborate beyond saying that the U.S. is delivering the same message to the Israelis and Palestinians. The only specific item he mentioned was that Kerry is stressing the "importance of upholding the status quo in word and in deed at Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount."
This was in reference to what is seen as the spark for the fresh surge of violence -- rumors that Israel was plotting to take over Jerusalem's most sensitive holy site, sacred to both Muslims and Jews. Israel has adamantly denied the allegations.
Eight Israelis and 30 Palestinians -- including 13 identified by Israel as attackers -- have died in a month of unrest, with dozens of others wounded.
In response, Israeli police said 300 soldiers have been incorporated into their deployment on the streets of east Jerusalem, where many of the assailants are from.
Israeli Cabinet minister Yuval Steinitz said the current conflict had less to do with political differences and more with anti-Semitic incitement to create a religious war. He quoted Abbas' recent statement where he blessed "every drop of blood spilled for Allah" and said Jews desecrated a Jerusalem holy site with their "filthy feet."
Steinitz said, "It's all about horrible, anti-Jewish, racist incitement."
A column in National Review by attorney and writer David French said Israel is "on the brink of a third intifada," and questioned whether the Obama administration's waning influence in the region might fuel the unrest.
But Brookings Institution fellow Khaled Elgindy told Al Jazeera America it's "too early to say this is the 'third intifada' because we don't yet see an organized political leadership that can coordinate the various Palestinian pieces of this and can articulate political demands."
The first and second intifadas -- Palestinian uprisings against the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip -- started in 1987 and 2000, respectively, and lasted several years.

Activists occupy Baltimore City Hall, voice displeasure over police commissioner

Activists refused to leave Baltimore City Hall on Wednesday night as they protested the permanent appointment of the city’s interim police commissioner and told police they wouldn’t leave until the commissioner and mayor met their list of demands, including changes to police tactics and significant investment in education and social services.
Members of the Baltimore Uprising began shouting from the upper gallery of a conference room as city council subcommittee prepared to vote for Kevin Davis as permanent commissioner. The full council will vote on Monday.
"All night, all day, we will fight for Freddie Gray!" the activists chanted amid calls to postpone the vote. "No justice, no peace!"
Three of the subcommittee's five members voted in favor of Davis. Councilman Nick Mosby, who is married to State's Attorney Marilyn Mosby, voted against the confirmation, while Carl Stokes, who is running for mayor, abstained.
After the committee began to leave, protesters refused to go. A member of the group who identified herself as Ralikh Hayes told the Associated Press reporter that 32 protesters were inside and that they "have no access to bathrooms, food or water currently."
"People are sitting, relaxing," she said. "We are waiting to see if we'll get a meeting with anyone tonight. We want to meet with the interim commissioner and the mayor, but that meeting doesn't mean we're leaving. We'll be here."
Earlier Wednesday, a spokesman for Baltimore Uprising said the activists wouldn’t leave until Davis and Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake agreed to a list of demands. Among them: that police avoid using military-type equipment such as armored vehicles, and only use riot gear as a last resort to protect officers.
They also want officers to wear name tags and badges and want to be able to protest in larger areas and for longer periods of time than “would normally be tolerated.”
In addition, they are asking police to be "more tolerant of minor law breaking," such as the throwing of water bottles, "when deciding whether to escalate the use of force."
Rawlings-Blake appointed Davis interim commissioner in July after his predecessor Anthony Batts was fired amid a spike in violent crime in the city. The violence followed unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, a black man who died after suffering an injury in police custody.
It was Marilyn Mosby who decided to prosecute six officers in connection with Gray's death. All of the officers are currently awaiting trial. In the aftermath of Mosby's decision and the widespread unrest, homicides began to rise and residents in crime-addled neighborhoods accused police officers of abandoning their posts.
Following the subcommittee's vote, Davis called Wednesday night's protest an "act of civil disobedience" that "is just part of this moment."
"It's all part of the healing process," he said. "The fact that this occurred isn't upsetting. It's just part of where the city is right now. I understand where they are. I understand their frustration. ... I promised the citizens of Baltimore and the protesters that I'll be the type of police commissioner that they deserve. This is just part of where the city is right now, and if we're going to get to the other side of this, we have to go through these moments."
 Addressing the council subcommittee earlier, Davis said that he remains committed to training officers to actively engage and interact with community members. Davis also emphasized his commitment to "respect and fight for the right for Americans to assemble and peacefully protest."
"2015 is the year that things change," Davis said, referring to the task of repairing the tense relationship between the police and the public in Baltimore.
If approved by the full council, Davis will earn $200,000 a year. His contract will run through June of 2020.