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Apr 22 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
As the attack on the Capitol was ongoing and in the immediate aftermath, everyone from Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham to Kevin McCarthy and Ted Cruz recognized that it was bad and that Trump was responsible for inciting it with election lies. So what happened? 🧵
In the 24 hours after the attack, Fox hosts moved to validate the concerns of the mob and blame violence on antifa infiltrators rather than excoriate them or blame Trump. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
As Trump's impeachment moved forward, the aggressively denied his culpability, claiming that the managers were "lying" about the insurrection and that the Senate trial was a "sham" mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-h…
AS Tucker Carlson became the face of Fox, he developed an alternate reality in which the insurrectionists were the real victims, persecuted for simply wandering through the Capitol mediamatters.org/january-6-insu…
This effort had the loud support of Republicans like Greene and Gaetz; those like Cheney who actively stood against the insurrection were purged; most kept their mouth shut and knelt to Trump and the Foxers mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-n…
And so people like McCarthy and Cruz decided it was more politically palatable to pretend Jan. 6 was no big deal rather than facing down the party's propagandists and the most extreme faction of its base. #End

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More from @MattGertz

Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 21
I am going to become the Joker. politico.com/news/2022/04/2…
Are you fucking kidding me?
Maybe less time thinking about what will be "confusing" for parents and more approving drugs when you determine that they are safe and effective?
Read 6 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 20
1. With the Democratic Party’s political standing in decline and the midterms approaching, some are urging Democrats to appear more frequently on Fox News. I don't think their arguments make sense -- the potential benefits don't outweigh the costs. mediamatters.org/fox-news/democ…
2. Fox is a piece of GOP infrastructure like Heritage or the Federalist Society. But it makes money from ads and cable carriers in part by convincing its business partners it is a normal news outlet. Dems going on helps Fox execs make that argument.
3. Fox is unusually vulnerable right now. The network will try to sell the bulk of its ads for the next year at its upfronts presentation in mid-May. And a series of Fox carrier contracts expire over the next year. It's a bad time for Democrats to throw Fox a lifeline.
Read 14 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 11
1. Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law effectively deputizes the most Fox-News-and-Facebook-addicted members of the GOP base to act on frenzied smears that LGBTQ teachers are “grooming” children.
mediamatters.org/fox-news/flori…
2. The law is, by design, extremely vague, putting into question the legality of an extremely wide range of behavior.
3. This vague law is then enforced by parents suing their school districts. Suits will inevitably come from the most anti-LGBTQ parents, and school districts will chill discussion of a wide range of topics to try to avoid getting mired in lawsuits.
Read 6 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 5
Fox News mentioned ivermectin nearly 300 times as its hosts irresponsibly helped a right-wing effort to portray it as an effective COVID-19 treatment -- but the network has not mentioned last month's study that found that it doesn't work. mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-m… Image
Fox promoted ivermectin as recently as last night (!), when Stephen Miller told Tucker Carlson's audience “for two years we were lectured, 'you can’t give people hydroxychloroquine, you can’t give them ivermectin.'”

THE LECTURING WAS BECAUSE IT DOESN'T WORK!
Ivermectin references peaked on Fox in September, when the drug was mentioned at least 65 times, but it was mentioned on air at least once in every month from December 2020 through February 2022. Image
Read 7 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 4
This is such a weird piece. I think if you're going to claim that there's "a remarkable amount of substantive overlap between Democrats and Republicans on many of the policy questions Carlson deals with," you probably need to quote him more than once. washingtonmonthly.com/2022/04/03/ins…
This is the only time they quote Carlson in the piece, and it's from January 2019. There have been a lot of economic policy debates since then, maybe check and see how he weighed in on them (hint: he was against whatever the Democrats were doing)?
In lieu of quoting Carlson on specific policy debates, the piece suggestively points to his guests. Here, there might be overlap on corporate power because Carlson has hosted Matt Stoller and Gladden Pappin. The linked Stoller interview was four years ago Saturday. And Pappin...
Read 8 tweets
Matthew Gertz Profile picture
Apr 1
The right-wing’s con culture comes for the Mouse. Conservatives are deploying against Disney the same strategy they've used against the press and social media platforms: mediamatters.org/fox-news/right…
How the approach works:
1) Smear an institution
2) Push your audience away from it
3) "Work the refs" to move right
4) Create an explicitly right-wing counter-institution for your audience to patronize
All this week, right-wing media outlets have overwhelmingly focused on Disney as they try to extract a price for its call for the repeal of Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” legislation. Fox claims the company is “grooming” and “sexualizing children,” very gross.
Read 10 tweets

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