top congressional republicans refuse to acknowledge the election results more than a month after the fact, and the story in mainstream outlets is just basically "welp trump is out of options ok that's all"
the trump-focus ends up creating the expectation that things will go back to some sort of "normal" when he's gone. but if you look at the forces shaping gop behavior (that is, right-wing media), it's clear that we're never going back. that's the story.
to the contrary, this dumb coup just sets the bar going forward. it's not just that right-wing media and their audience are for this sort of thing, it's that any gop politician who doesn't do at least this / support this is a stealth democrat (and to them, democrats are evil)
the fundamental reaction in right-wing media to this election is to double down on the propaganda; and now fox realizes that it doesn't have a monopoly on its audience anymore, so it decided that is has no choice but to go along, not just on primetime but the "news" side as well.
and given the amount of money (and tbh grifting potential) in the audience, there's going to be 1) an endless race to the bottom and 2) a refusal to criticize anyone else for racing to the bottom.
combine that with the death and right-wing (Sinclair, private equity, etc) cannibalization of local news, that real news will consider to wall itself off to secure a revenue stream, and just structurally, before you even individual factors, things are just going to get bleaker
as things get worse, many of us will look back and be horrified at the underreaction to all of this and wonder what we could have done
and if i knew the answer to that question, I sure as shit wouldn't be writing it for free on twitter
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
Chris Wallace, who ignored massive wildfires in the western United States on Fox News Sunday, and who did not ask a single climate crisis question in his 2016 debate, announces that he'll ignore the issue in this debate as well.
Meanwhile: Alex Berenson on Fox "straight news" program: "Children and young adults are at basically no risk of serious illness or death from this virus"
No pushback at all.
It's a genuine scandal that the president was downplaying COVID in March despite knowing otherwise.
His favorite network is *still* doing that for nakedly political reasons -- under the guise of "straight news" no less.
Berenson went on to rail at masks, putting it on Chris Hahn to explain why masks are good.
It's just so telling: Fox treats the science as just part of the same old partisan bickering. This is why Trump downplayed the virus in the first place.