1. The GOP responded to Donald Trump’s 2020 defeat by institutionalizing his lie that the election was stolen and laying the groundwork to rig the next presidential election in favor of the GOP.
2. Any such plot revolves around the impermeability of the right-wing media bubble.
Fox News needs to be on board to tell Republicans that the election was stolen and the politicians need to reverse it.
3. That's the role Fox played for Trump in 2020.
4. The Fox/Trump/GOP propaganda effort was remarkably effective in convincing the broad mass of the party that the election was stolen.
5. Why did the plot to reverse the election results fail? Biden won by too many states, and by too large a margin in those states; Democrats held the House and some key state offices; and enough Republican officials refused to participate in Trump’s election theft to thwart it.
6. But now Republican voters are primed to disbelieve future election results; there's no guarantee that the Dem margin would be as large or that Dems would hold those offices; and the GOP has been purging officials who wouldn't play ball.
7. There's a very real danger that the GOP will try the exact same play in 2024 -- but that this time, the political conditions will be much riper.
8. It’s easy to imagine Fox teaming up with GOP leaders to try the 2020 playbook all over again if the party’s nominee loses at the ballot box.
9. The nominee simply needs to refuse to admit defeat, baselessly allege widespread voter fraud, and count on Fox to surface and distribute enough internet conspiracy theories to give party officials cover to overturn the results.
10. Fox and the Republican Party demolished all the guardrails in 2020, showing that they were willing to overturn the results of a legitimate election when it didn’t go their way. The only question remaining is whether they can do a better job executing their plan.
Last night, Tucker Carlson said Joe Biden "has no active role in running the U.S. government," promised his show would call it "the Kamala Harris administration" from now on, and added that the (fake) Harris book story suggests we live in North Korea.
Tammy Bruce: "Migrant children get to read Kamala Harris's kid's book, it's included in what can only be called a welcome pack, given to unaccompanied minors at the border, propaganda aimed even to children."
Right-wing media is a perpetual bullshit machine that whips itself into a frenzy about a new lie every day, with Republican officials acting as an accelerant.
We're basically dealing with @SimonMaloy's Fox cycle except a) GOP politicians play a bigger role than in the past b) the stuff is so dumb it's getting debunked by MSM much faster. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
The thing about that op-ed about how Disney is too woke is that the ride changes the guy is describing are extremely normal corporate synergy stuff -- they're making the rides more like their recent movies!
"Is Song of the South too racist to be the backdrop of a Disney ride?" seems less likely to be the proximate cause of the change than "Can Disney make more money promoting a princess film from 2009 than a film from 1946?"
Of course they changed Pirates, they made a series of hugely profitable films and wanted to align the ride with the film! There's a Jungle Cruise movie out this year starring The Rock, so of course they're changing the ride!
I took a deep dive into Fox News' pattern of hosting Naomi Wolf -- seven appearances since mid-February, most recently last night -- who has spent the last 15 years pushing increasingly bonkers conspiracy theories, most recently related to the coronavirus. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-k…
Tucker Carlson's Strange New Respect for Naomi Wolf in four images -- from kook whose book was debunked during a live radio interview, to useful coronavirus guest. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-k…
Wolf's social media is absolutely unhinged and paranoid stuff. This is not someone a credible news outlet would host in inform its viewers.