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Matthew Gertz Profile picture
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9 Nov, 6 tweets, 2 min read
Fox News was right about William Barr mediamatters.org/donald-trump/f…
The best-case, non-alarmist scenario is that the right-wing media machine will now ensure that a majority of Republicans permanently refuse to accept the results of this election.
There are many worse cases, of course. But that’s the floor at this point.
Whether this is “serious” or just a campaign trying to pay off its debts is totally irrelevant to that point — Fox et al is and will treat it as serious, and the party base and leadership will respond to the credulous coverage. Hard to predict where it goes from there.
The feedback loop here is quite perilous though. mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump…
This is what I wrote before Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr got involved. mediamatters.org/fox-news/trump…

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More from @MattGertz

Matthew Gertz Profile picture
11 Nov
I think @HayesBrown gets at something very important in this piece: Things have escalated to a point where regardless of what GOP leaders think they are trying to do, the situation could quickly spiral out of their control.
msnbc.com/opinion/how-mu…
@HayesBrown Everyone is trying to figure out what Republicans are doing and when the stakes are this high and trust this low it is very easy for miscommunications to occur that result in extremely bad consequences.
@HayesBrown Every day this continues increases the probability of the tinder going up in flames.
Read 7 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
11 Nov
Fox News primetime firmly planted in the "do nothing" camp as cases hit record levels, hospitalizations soar, and deaths clear 1,300. ImageImageImageImage
Here's the radiologist Trump plucked from a Fox green room to run the coronavirus response describing Dr. Tony Fauci as "a political animal" who has "cheered up because of the election" and lost his "credibility."
mediamatters.org/coronavirus-co…
Read 4 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
10 Nov
An immense abdication of responsibility that ignores dangerous levels of downside risk.
The key question this morning is whether Republican state legislators in PA, MI, GA, AZ, etc would be willing to resist a sustained Trump/Fox push to ignore the election results and submit a dueling elector slate, triggering a constitutional crisis.
That’s already been floated by Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. As Fox works itself into a frenzy over bogus election fraud claims, those calls are likely to get louder.
Read 7 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
9 Nov
The theory that Rupert Murdoch had put his foot down really isn't holding up too well.
This segment, promoted by the president of the United States, features discussion of a scenario in which the Pennsylvania state legislature sends a dueling slate of Trump electors to the Electoral College.
The president tweets video of the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee telling him not to concede because "these computers in Michigan do not pass the smell test," seems like a ref to the Hammer and Scorecard conspiracy theory.
Read 4 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
8 Nov
The morning after news networks called the election for Biden, Trump is watching Fox and pushing out its lies to delegitimize the results.

Left, Fox & Friends Sunday, 7:21 a.m.
Right, Trump, 8:38 a.m
Both predictable and dangerous. mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-an…
Trump likely also saw Steve Scalise, the number 2 House Republican, pushing the same garbage about the election results on Fox, saying "some very questionable things happened" in key states.
Read 4 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
7 Nov
Fox's analysis is that Joe Biden succeeded by taking the virus seriously, building his margin in the suburbs, and because the GOP didn't push mail-in voting.

In other words, the network's advice led Donald Trump to ruin.
Trump didn't take the virus seriously because he was listening to Fox.

His suburban strategy was built around fearmongering the Floyd protests because he was listening to Fox.

He told his supporters that mail-in ballots were a source of fraud because he was listening to Fox.
The actual impact of Trump taking Fox's advice, particularly wrt the coronavirus, proved devastating for the country.

But as political counselors, they failed him.
Read 6 tweets

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