Trump, Barr, and Fox News are working in concert to undermine confidence in the election
The playbook here is obvious -- throw together some sketchy investigations and use them to throw doubt on the election results. mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson…
Literally within minutes.
Looks like there's no evidence that this had anything to do with the election -- the ballots were among "roughly 1,875 pieces of mail" recovered from dumpsters -- but the Barr/Fox machine is flogging that anyway to undermine confidence in the election. nbcnewyork.com/news/local/usp…
1. Barr put out a new DOJ policy to interfere in elections 2. It's already being used in sketchy fashion by NJ's US Attorney. 3. Fox instantly picked up that story. 4. Because the point is to use stories like this to undermine confidence in the election. mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson…
5. The real action on a story like this is local media, which is currently bombarding NJ-area voters with headlines like this.
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This is the culmination of quite a lot of toil dating back to when I started chronicling Trump’s live-tweets in October 2017, so I hope you’ll indulge my long thread; if not, feel free to mute this.
First, why Trump’s Fox obsession matters: It dictates policy outcomes.
Here are 15 ways that happened over the two years of the study, from military strikes to impeachment to the coronavirus to racial justice protests to pardons to personnel and more. mediamatters.org/donald-trump/1…
Dawning realization that nine months into the pandemic. senior WH officials think that if you test negative it means that you definitely have not caught the virus and can do whatever you want and don't need to quarantine if you've been in contact with someone with COVID.
The president's Fox News buddies told him the virus was nothing to worry about so he took as few precautions as possible and here we are. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
Fox theoretically has a "news division" but here we are right before the debate and they've got Tucker Carlson doing his show, saying Joe Biden "may be senile" and passing on the claim that he backed out of getting his ears examined for an earpiece.
Now Brit Hume is on to say that Biden is definitely senile but there's a chance that won't be visible tonight and he'll be well-prepped and perform well anyway.
Carlson has said at least three times already that he didn't expect Biden to actually show up tonight.
Here's Sean Hannity getting from "Joe Biden is struggling cognitively" to "Joe Biden has memorized all of the answers he's going to give during the debate" inside a minute and a half, kind of seem like conflicting arguments!
Ari Fleischer questions whether Joe Biden can physically stand on a stage from 9:00 pm to 10:30 p.m., with Sean Hannity responding that Biden "has been readjusting his peak cognitive hour to 9:00 P.M."
Unclear whether the press will sustain the coverage, but this is what using the agenda-setting power looks like.
When I say it matters whether the press sustains the coverage, this is what I'm talking about -- the 2018 NYT bombshell about how Trump's fortune was built on tax fraud faded quickly, didn't make the Sunday shows that week: mediamatters.org/donald-trump/p…