{"id":77505,"date":"2015-10-23T07:09:09","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T15:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=77505"},"modified":"2015-10-23T07:19:26","modified_gmt":"2015-10-23T15:19:26","slug":"steve-sailer-fox-news-v-trump-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=77505","title":{"rendered":"Steve Sailer: Fox News v. Trump News?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes<\/a>: “I don\u2019t know much about cable TV news, in part because the kind of stuff that Fox News gets worked up over, like Benghazi, usually doesn\u2019t strike me as all that interesting. So, I\u2019m just speculating wildly here, but my vague impression is that a subtext to all the Fox v. Trump bickering and making up and breaking up against is that, besides the 2016 election, Rupert Murdoch likely sees a \u201cTrump News\u201d as the most threatening potential entrant to attempt to break up Fox\u2019s apparently quite profitable domination of conservative cable news. (My impression is that Murdoch is more serious about business than politics.) So there\u2019s a lot of sparring and shadowboxing between Fox and Trump.”<\/p>\n

Comments to Steve Sailer:<\/p>\n

* Murdoch is the sugar daddy of neoconservatives, Trump is the repudiation of neoconservatism. No more than that. Alienating viewers will probably stop them openly endorsing Hilary. Trump has already faced them down over the attempted Megyn Kelly hit.<\/p>\n

* My impression from multiple sources is that Murdoch doesn\u2019t particularly care about neoconservatism, it was just a smart choice for the protection of his business interests. Murdoch is a great businessman. Murdoch explained to a friend of mine: To do business in America, you don\u2019t need all the Jews in New York on your side, but you do need some of them.<\/p>\n

* The Cheney\/Kristal\/Perle neocon group were the most enthusiastic supporters of the war for sure, but it was hardly a difficult sale for them. We had a string of easy feel-good wins with Iraq I, bombing Serbia into submission, and beating the Taliban with minimal ground forces.<\/p>\n

A major war is great for news ratings. It was the entire media that supported the Iraq War. Other than Krugman, I cannot think of any major name in the media who strongly opposed the war. On the right all I can think of was Pat Buchanan. Certainly not the people running even the NY Times or Washington Post.<\/p>\n

* Fox tried to use the first debate to eliminate Trump from the Republican race. The ultimate hope was to physically remove him from the stage during the debate.<\/p>\n

Here is the beginning of a Los Angeles Times article<\/a>, written by Stephen Battaglio, titled \u201cHow Fox anchor Bret Baier prepared for the GOP debate and got an instant headline out of Donald Trump\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Republican presidential primary debate less than 10 hours away, Fox News anchors Chris Wallace, Megyn Kelly and Bret Baier sat at a long table with their producers and once again went over the game plan for the big night.<\/p>\n

Leaning into their laptop computers, they reviewed not just the questions they would ask but the structure of every query, keeping in mind the constraints of time and the need to avoid repeating topics.<\/p>\n

As they sorted and re-sorted questions, the unpredictability of real estate tycoon and reality-TV star Donald Trump was never far from their minds.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the level is about an eight on the concern meter because of the unknown,\u201d Baier said.<\/p>\n

Baier even had a \u201cnuclear option\u201d at the ready for Trump if he ignored all protocol.<\/p>\n

The script \u2014 which Baier didn\u2019t have to use \u2014 took a page from Trump\u2019s \u201cCelebrity Apprentice\u201d TV show. It went like this: \u201cMr. Trump, in your business you have rules. You follow rules. We have rules on this stage. We don\u2019t want to have to escort you to the elevator outside this boardroom.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bret Baier \u2018locked and loaded\u2019 for debate<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re hoping we don\u2019t have to use it,\u201d Baier said later. \u201c[But] we\u2019re locked and loaded.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Fox News is neocon central, and I don\u2019t think that\u2019s some sort of accident, or because conservatism now means neoconservatism. Immigration is a hot button issue with conservatives, but one Fox was trying to minimize until Trump forced it onto the table. Mickey Kaus lost his slot at Fox-owned Daily Caller because he insisted on commenting on Fox\u2019s reluctance to cover the issue.<\/p>\n

The regular pundits it employs are the pantheon of neocons.<\/p>\n

On the 6 o\u2019clock \u201cSpecial Report,\u201d the Fox All-Stars panel makes weekly predictions on the chances of the Republicans seeking the nomination. Throughout the summer, they were all touting Jeb with Marco as backup. Host Bret Baier told the panel that their viewers were leaning heavily toward Trump and Cruz, and asked why the views of the panel were so much at odds with that. Krauthammer said, \u201cI guess because we\u2019re all neocons.\u201d I think it was meant as a joke, but there was a short uncomfortable silence. Neocons aren\u2019t supposed to acknowledge that they don\u2019t represent the conservative base. The visceral anger many of the Fox pundits have displayed toward Trump was due to the fact that he exposes this.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve noticed that the ridicule of Trump has damped down a bit as he continues to do well in the polls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steve Sailer writes: “I don\u2019t know much about cable TV news, in part because the kind of stuff that Fox News gets worked up over, like Benghazi, usually doesn\u2019t strike me as all that interesting. So, I\u2019m just speculating wildly … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29752,29576],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donald-trump","category-fox-2"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77505","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=77505"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77510,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77505\/revisions\/77510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=77505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=77505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=77505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}