Tag: Fox News

Stephen Colbert unleashes furious rebuke of Republicans and Fox News: ‘Have you had enough?’

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“A Late Show with Stephen Colbert” had a show planned for Wednesday night, but it ended up being a live show because the host spent the day glued to the coverage of the attempted war at the hands of President Donald Trump’s supporters.

“I really want to do the show we’re about to do and I also don’t want to do the show we’re about to do because Lord have mercy, there are some dark subjects that we talk about on the show occasionally, but I’ve really haven’t been as upset as I am tonight,” he said. “I’m sure you are, too.”

His message was to Republicans, particularly those who spent the last several years kissing up to Trump. Continue reading.

Fox News airs point-by-point fact check of wild election fraud claims during 3 of network’s most pro-Trump shows

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Fox News this weekend is airing a stunning point-by-point fact check to claims made on programs hosted by the network’s most pro-Trump voices after voting technology company Smartmatic send a 20-page legal letter demanding “a full and complete retraction of all false and defamatory statements and reports.”

The segment, which features an interview with Palo Open Source Election Technology Institute voting technology expert Eddie Perez, aired on Lou Dobb’s Friday show and Jeanine Pirro’s Saturday show. Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo will also show the segment.

In its Dec. 10 letter to Fox News Media, Smartmatic charged the company and its hosts with waging “a concerted disinformation campaign against Smartmatic. Fox News told its millions of viewers and readers that Smartmatic was founded by [the late Venezuelan President] Hugo Chávez, that its software was designed to fix elections, and that Smartmatic conspired with others to defraud the American people and fix the 2020 U.S. election by changing, inflating, and deleting votes.” The company also demanded the company “match the attention and audience targeted with the original defamatory publications.” Continue reading.

GOP lawmakers are showing up more frequently on Newsmax

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Watch the conservative cable television outlet Newsmax on a given night and you’ll see a parade of GOP lawmakers and other influential conservatives.

As President Trump openly feuds with Fox News, conservative lawmakers and loyal Trump officials have increasingly added Newsmax to their rotation of media stops, giving a sheen of credibility to the fledgling network as it seeks to compete for conservative viewers.

Newsmax is still not in the same ratings stratosphere as Fox, which draws millions of viewers nightly to its flagship opinion shows and has a robust, around-the-clock news division. Continue reading.

Right-Wing Media Figures Still Refuse To Admit Biden Won

The new era of competition between Fox News and its would-be rivals, Newsmax and One America News Network, appears to be fueling an unwillingness by commentators at all three networks to accurately describe Joe Biden as the president-elect, even after the Electoral College met this week.

Since losing the election, President Donald Trump has increasingly trained his criticism on Fox News. He has ranted that his personal propaganda outlet has proven insufficiently supportive of his illegitimate effort to overturn the results based on phony voter fraud claims, urging his supporters to instead watch Newsmax or OAN. Fox has aggressively course-corrected in hopes of maintaining its audience, while the smaller networks have lashed out at the dominant player in hopes of ripping away more of its viewers.

Overnight, for instance, OAN’s Pearson Sharp highlighted that his network “will officially not be calling Joe Biden the president-elect.” He went on to say that OAN is “the only broadcast news network out there with the integrity to report that this election isn’t over,” criticizing Fox, Breitbart.com, and Newsmax for having “caved.” Continue reading.

How Geraldo Rivera, the sensationalist showman of ’80s TV, became the voice of election reason on Fox News

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The investigative reporter-turned-freeform celebrity is now a seasoned pundit delivering a firm message to Trump fans about the 2020 race: “It’s over.”

Geraldo Rivera thought he “would never work again” after hosting one of the highest-watched busts of all time in 1986, when he cracked open a vault belonging to gangster Al Capone on live television and it turned out to be empty.

The famously mustachioed Rivera has had several other acts since then. He hosted a tabloid talk show in the late 1980s and 1990s, where he got decked in the face by a chair during a scuffle involving white supremacists. He attempted to resurrect his once-serious journalism career by joining Fox News in 2001 as a war correspondent but was essentially booted out of Iraq in 2003 for divulging troop positions. He bravely tried the cha-cha on ABC’s “Dancing With The Stars” in 2016 — and was the first to be eliminated.

But now in 2020, at 77, Rivera might be playing the most important — and unexpected — role of his life, as a contrarian truth teller who has been pleading with President Trump, whom he considers a friend, and the president’s most passionate supporters to accept that their side lost the election. Continue reading.

Fox News Host Pulls Apart Election Lies Trump Spouted On Network Hours Earlier

Eric Shawn debunked claims that his colleague Maria Bartiromo allowed the president to amplify on her show.

Fox News host Eric Shawn on Sunday debunked election disinformation that President Donald Trump shared on the same network only hours earlier.

Trump unloaded a stream of baseless claims about a rigged election in his first televised interview since the election to his devout Fox News ally Maria Bartiromo, who encouraged the allegations and allowed them to go largely unchallenged.

But Fox weekend anchor Shawn pointed out on “America’s News Headquarters” that Trump’s campaign has failed to prove any of his accusations in court.  Continue reading.

Fox News Lets Trump Spew Lies Unchecked In First Interview Since Election Day

Maria Bartiromo sat back and let the president push disinformation to her hundreds of thousands of viewers.

Fox News on Sunday offered President Donald Trump a platform to spew lies about voter fraud unchecked for nearly 45 minutes in his first interview since Election Day.

Trump joined “Sunday Morning Futures” by phone, where he ranted about the election results and pushed unsubstantiated allegations of ballot-counting irregularities and a “rigged” election in favor of President-elect Joe Biden.

Host Maria Bartiromo, one of Trump’s most fawning cable news allies, mostly sat back and let the president peddle baseless conspiracy theories to her hundreds of thousands of viewers. When she did chime in, it was to encourage his defiance and sow doubt about the electoral process. Continue reading.

Fox News ticker destroys Trump for ‘baselessly’ and ‘falsely’ claiming election was rigged

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Viewers of Fox & Friends were treated to a dose of the truth on Thursday when the show admitted that President Donald Trump has “baselessly” and “falsely” claimed that the 2020 election was rigged.

The message to Fox News viewers appeared on the network’s ticker graphic that is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

“President Trump phoned into a meeting organized by Republicans in Pennsylvania Wed., baseless claiming that the election was ‘rigged’ and falsely claiming that he won it ‘by a lot,'” the Fox News ticker reported. “Most of Trump’s legal efforts to challenge voting procedures in PA, MI and other states have been thrown out and his campaign has not produced sufficient evidence to back up claims of widespread voter fraud.” Continue reading.

Fox News finally pays a price for its false reports on the Seth Rich conspiracy theories

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While Fox News attempts to stay in the niche swirling the toilet bowl drain of ultra-right wing nationalism, it is important to remember that Fox News created the fake news space and showed the world how profitable hate and fearmongering could really be. Back in 2016, as the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaigns worked their ways around the country, 27-year-old Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich was tragically killed in what Washington, D.C. police called a robbery gone wrong.

Fox News, with an assist from Sean Hannity and whomever it is he gets his bogus information from, promoted a conspiracy theory-laden web of lies about Seth’s death, connecting it to Hillary Clinton and the now quaint “her emails” scandal. Joel and Mary Rich sued Fox News in 2018 saying that the right-wing lie factory “intentionally exploited” their son’s death to push a political agenda. On Tuesday, the case was dismissed by both parties as Fox News has reached a settlement with the Riches.

The original story was published by Malia Zimmerman and Fox News promoted it relentlessly for a week before retracting it. No further followup into what had happened that allowed the news outlet to publish and push the baseless, arguably libelous insinuations that Hillary Clinton and her team had assassinated a young man over emails leaked to the press. Continue reading.

Tucker Carlson bashes Trump attorney Sidney Powell for lack of evidence in fraud claims: ‘She never sent us any’

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As Fox News host Tucker Carlson noted on Thursday night, he’s more than willing to give airtime to outlandish claims. “We literally do UFO segments,” he said.

But even Carlson said he was fed up with the total lack of evidence produced by Sidney Powell, one of the Trump campaign’s attorneys, for her unfounded allegation that electronic voting systems had switched millions of ballots to favor President-elect Joe Biden.

“We invited Sidney Powell on the show. We would have given her the whole hour,” Carlson said. “But she never sent us any evidence, despite a lot of requests, polite requests. Not a page. When we kept pressing, she got angry and told us to stop contacting her.” Continue reading.