The reason they can't win these awards, of course, is they have terrible factual accuracy, & on the primetime shows, out-right lie. Yet, Republican identifiers continually identify Fox News as their ONLY news source & the reason as it being the only one that is factually accurate
If all I knew about the Ukraine investigation was what I learned about it via the gatekeepers of right-wing media, I would have a VERY distorted view of the entire case. The main takeaway from the hearings in the right wing media sphere was the disjointed tidbits you saw from
Jordan and the other GOP members on the panel. In short, the narrative on right wing media is that the hearings produced no evidence of wrongdoing by Trump but DID produce evidence of corruption by Biden. Also, that all the evidence against Trump is 2nd hand, that Trump was not
allowed to present witnesses, that the hearings were conducted in secret back rooms and broke multiple points of order and decorum. To support this frame, McCarthy filed symbolic complaints in the House making these "corruption allegations" which allowed Fox and other right wing
media outlets to lend legitimacy to their frame of corruption in the hearings. The average Republican does not accept the evidence presented against Trump at the hearings because they are not aware of it. They did not watch the hearings and rely on right-wing opinion leaders to
tell them what the hearings "mean." As you may have noticed during their floor speeches House Rs reject, wholesale, the fact that Trump withheld military aid in order to extort the Ukrainian president into announcing an investigation into the son of his main political rival via a
months-long campaign in Ukraine that involved the removal of an anti-corruption Ambassador and included a brazen phone call in July from the WH that triggered alarms among several people listening to the call, leading a whistleblower to file a complaint, uncovering a scheme that
involved the Sec of State, the Sec of Energy, the president's personal attorney, Ambassador Sondland, and National Security Director Bolton, causing the latter to resign/be forced out. Once the president was made aware of the whistleblower complaint, he promptly released the aid
but plans were underway for the Ukrainian president to satisfy Trump's demands for the release of the aid via an announcement of an investigation into Hunter Biden on CNN- as specifically mandated by key administration officials including possibly, the president himself.
All of which could be verified if not for the fact that the president has declared a blanket and full immunity of executive privilege, something no other adminstration has ever done bc it asserts that Congress has NO Article I oversight powers, something @senatemajldr knows full
well is no where close to anything any president has ever done before (and btw: executive privilege does not apply to criminal conduct). BUT, listening to any R member of Congress, including long-term defenders of Congress like @LindseyGrahamSC none of these facts exist, there is
no credible evidence against the president, and all of this is just a product of "evil" Ds trying to exact electoral revenge by undemocratic means. So if I had been on the stage last night for the opening question, I most surely would have explained the terrible impact partisan
media is having on the ability to bring information on the impeachment to the general public and how that without factual information, it is not reasonable to expect public opinion on these issues to change.
