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It's not as if Trump is addicted to the best-researched, most in-depth, meticulously sourced material in the world. If he were, we'd all be better off, right?
Donald Trump has been planting seeds for over a year, warning supporters not to trust the government, the polls or the media, because it's all rigged, he says.
Trump's war on the nation's news media, his war on truth, his war on reality ultimately caused him to become the first U.S. president to be impeached two times.
Interviewers, even the ones that support the person they're interviewing, have an obligation to probe further and push back when a candidate says something dangerous.
The greatest hoax of all of the Trump years is that Donald Trump has convinced one-third of the country not to believe not anything but Sean Hannity and Fox and Trump.
News outlets use words like erratic, volatile, unstable but rarely are Trump's words and actions covered as a whole and rarely do news outlets take it to that next level.
Well I think I'm of the view that Fox has a monopoly position... I think Fox has tremendous power from that point of view, but there's also the sense of fearing their audience.
With regards to Trump's treatment of Putin and Russia, national security experts and journalists have been citing the fact pattern and saying there's something strange going on.
The broadcast networks - they are literally broad. They try to appeal to everyone. They try to reach all of America, all the time. Increasingly, they fail to do that, but they try.
Donald Trump's biggest lie is about the election itself, the integrity of the election. He is alleging a massive conspiracy, thereby creating a massive challenge for the news media.
Were there hour-by-hour countdowns to the end of the Bush presidency? The end of the Obama years? No, definitely not to this extent. Trump's time in office is ending in ignoble fashion.
History suggests that big corporate maneuvers tend to coincide with changes in morning-TV fortunes, either because the new managers tinker with the product or fail to take it seriously.
Many Republicans knew that Trump's anti-media attacks were damaging, and they cringed when his White House was consumed by his own narcissism. They knew that the country deserved better.
When I watch Tucker's show, I hear - you're going to think I'm crazy - I hear 2024 campaign monologues. That's what I sometimes hear him doing, thinking about what is the post-Trump GOP.
Over time, the repetition, Donald Trump's lies about election rigging, have become a form of background noise, more of the same. And this is a propaganda technique, whether Trump knows it or not.
I'm telling you, November 8, we better be careful, because that presidential election is going to be rigged. And I hope the Republicans are watching closely, or it's going to be taken away from us.
Trump followed Fox's lead. He parroted what he heard on TV. He lied and lied, but rather than suffer the consequences, his lies were excused and supported and even celebrated by his media enablers.
Some journalists are schmucks, in it for themselves, willing to cut corners. But in my experience the vast majority of journalists are trying to contribute to their communities, honestly and reliably.
Well, I think the public has been well-served by the increase in fact-checking. And I find it shocking that not all news outlets have invested in hiring fact-checkers because the line is so pervasive.
Trump has torn off America's Band-Aid. The stories we are covering are about fundamental American values. We are having debates about democracy versus autocracy, the rule of law, equality and diversity.
I don't subscribe to the argument that TV networks gave Trump too much attention and that's the main reason why he's president, nor do I subscribe to the argument that reporters ignored Trump's America.
Trump might think that Fox needs his star power, and on the margins it's true that Trump appearances and interviews are right-wing ratings boosters. But the network was No. 1 long before he became a politician.
If you want to understand why a minority of American voters are unplugged from the fact-based news that the rest of the country depends on, just imagine being told multiple times a day that real news is a hoax.
This is the whole ball game, and this is what I really want to say. I'm proud that journalists are standing up, individually, speaking up in ways that we rarely see. They're not anti-Trump. They're pro-democracy.
I am glad that 'Hoax' came out a couple weeks before Bob Woodward's book. We both have these one word titles. His is 'Rage,' mine is 'Hoax.' They do make for a great pairing, and I'm not saying that as a sales pitch!
Of course, 'Fox & Friends' is more of an entertainment product than a newscast. The show's viewers know that the morning show promotes Trump and his agenda. Most of Trump's interviews are with boosterish shows like this.
Trump's inability to face the truth of his loss to Biden might explain why he has barely faced reporters at all in the closing weeks of his presidency. Even more remarkably, he rarely ever called into his favorite TV shows.
Trump's Fox News fixation was a major theme of his presidency. He hired people from Fox, fired people because of Fox, and gave most of his national TV interviews to Fox. Sometimes it was hard to tell where Trump ended and Fox began.
For a broad, star-powered picture like 'The Interview,' a big-tent release in 2,000 to 3,000 theaters is the top choice for a movie studio like Sony Pictures. It's the difference between a $1 million and a $10 million box office total.
Trump was a Fox News viewer before he was a Fox News star. He learned a lot about the Republican party's base by watching the network and calling into the morning show 'Fox & Friends' while still starring on NBC's 'Celebrity Apprentice.'
These communities that are losing local news coverage are losing something deeper. They're losing a connection to American democracy. And those connections must be rebuilt. We need more of a bottom-up sense of what it means to produce news.
Trump granted pardons because of Fox... He raged against migrant 'caravans' because of Fox. He accused public servants of treason because of Fox. And he got the facts wrong again and again because of mistakes and misreporting by the network.
To be sure, every White House tries to limit its exposure to difficult and distracting questions. The Obama administration was scrutinized for its use of late night shows and YouTube chats to get the president's message across in low-risk situations.
Bill O'Reilly truly was always going to go to Italy when the scandal erupted about his secret settlements with women that accused him of harassment. So he decided to go on the vacation that he already scheduled, and then of course, he never came back.
Chris Wallace is probably the most of an exception because his program, 'Fox News Sunday,' also airs on Fox broadcast stations. So he doesn't feel as many of the same ratings pressures to please the right wing audience versus all the rest of the programs.
Glenn Beck and others were pretty outrageous and extremely conspiratorial in the pre-Trump years. I don't mean to totally gloss over some of the nuttiness that was airing on Fox pre-Trump, but I do see a distinction between those years and the Trump years.
Rarely, if ever, has a cable news channel employed a host who has previously campaigned for the business goals of the channel's parent company. But as channels like MSNBC have moved to more opinionated formats, they have exposed themselves to potential conflicts.
For all the talk about, and appeals to, Trump fans who wanted to watch the press corps bullied and bashed, most Americans don't want that. They never did. Most Americans want to know what is real and true so that they can make the best decisions for their families.
Looking back, Mr. Trump's exploitation of the term 'fake news' to smear journalists was the single most consequential thing he did during the transition period. He built the scaffolding for his supporters to reject any and all information that wasn't Trump-approved.
There are networks now and websites that make Fox News blush, that, you know, people at Fox News say to me, well, those are radicals; those are extremists. And President Trump - if he does not win the election, he may well end up with a show on one of those networks.
There are so many families that are divided by Fox and Trump. I think a lot of people have been surprised by just how deep and how corrupt the roots are - how there's been collusion between Fox and Trump right in plain sight the whole time, and yet it's not often recognized.
What Fox News has become in 2020 is a conclusion of decades of right wing media and rhetoric against the rest of the media. In the '90s it was about media bias. In the 2000s it was about media bias. Now, the rhetoric is so much more extreme. It's about enemies of the people.
We, as a country, cannot allow ourselves to become numb to this. We, as a media, cannot shrug it off as old news, because the real danger here is that, when Donald Trump lies to his supporters about the others who are trying to steal the election, some of his supporters believe him.
As more and more Americans spend their earliest hours scrolling through news alerts and weather forecasts on their smartphones and tablets, morning shows have to adapt, too. And their biggest competitive advantage may be that, unlike an iPhone, they offer some form of companionship.
What I always tell people about Trump, or Kellyanne Conway, or Sarah Sanders, is that when you are interviewing these people, it is really more about the interviewer than the interviewee. What I mean by that is that the interviewer has to be ready to interrupt, fact-check, challenge, rebut.
I suppose my attitude is what's most important is that we surround the president's misleading information with accurate information and help people know what is true 'cause I think the biggest trend of the Trump years is that people are increasingly confused about what is real and what is made-up.
Intelligence agencies, congressional leaders, and outside experts have all assessed that Russia was responsible for a sweeping attack on the US election in 2016. Trump has given lip service to this assessment, saying he accepts the intelligence community's conclusions, while acting like he does not.
From the collapse of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, something that Trump said he would do on day one, to the explosive FBI announcement that there's an ongoing investigation into possible links between Russia and the Trump campaign, the common thread here is a White House with a credibility problem.
The Trump White House has employed several different strategies for sidestepping uncomfortable questions. There has been a rightward tilt at press conferences and briefings. At Q&A sessions with foreign heads of state, Trump has bypassed the country's biggest newsrooms and called on reporters from conservative outlets instead.
I was learning this from numerous sources, friends of Hannity, associates of Hannity, who say that off the record, Hannity is complaining about Trump, saying he's a crazy person... But Sean and these other stars of Fox, they're so committed to the business model, to their ratings, they want to make sure their viewers stay tuned.