Fox News's Hillary Clinton obsession backfired
Fox was extremely eager for Clinton's NY speech, right up until she started talking.
Fox News spent a ton of time Thursday talking about Hillary Clinton. But they needed a safe space when she actually started talking.
Clinton delivered a speech Thursday afternoon to the New York Democratic convention that was heavy hyped on Fox News, with anchors suggesting she’d tease some sort of 2024 presidential run (ironically, nobody wants that more than Fox) or address the fake scandal the channel has cooked up about her “spying” on the Trump White House that I explained in this newsletter earlier this week.
“A lot of people wondering if today’s keynote address by Clinton could include a hint of any possible hopes of a presidential run in 2024,” claimed one Fox reporter, even though the idea of Clinton primarying Biden is absurd, while anchors indicated to viewers that they’d take part of the speech live.
“CLINTON’S COMEBACK SPEECH: COMING UP,” read one chyron.
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And in fairness to Fox, they did carry a portion of Clinton’s speech live — a very short one. Because as soon as they cut to her, she went in hard on the political party the channel runs interference for each and every day.
"Republicans are defending coup plotters. They are curbing voting rights at precisely the moment when democracy needs champions, when we should be standing together against autocracies like Russia and China,” she said. “January 6 was a gift to them, because they know something we need to remember: America is only as strong as our unity and our democracy allows us to be.”
Clinton then pivoted to Trump’s lies about the election.
“We must reject the big lie about the 2020 election and the coverup—”
But before Clinton’s sentence was finished, Fox abruptly cut away. She was apparently hitting too close to home. They ended up taking about a minute of her speech in total.
Watch:
Here’s the thing — after Fox cut away, Clinton actually did get around to addressing the fake spying scandal the network has spent all week harping on. But instead of taking it seriously, she dismissed it with the scorn it deserves, and even suggested she’s considering legal action.
“We can’t get distracted, whether it’s by the latest culture war nonsense or some new right-wing lie on Fox or Facebook,” she said. “By the way, they’ve been coming after me again lately … it’s funny, the more trouble Trump gets into, the wilder the charges and conspiracy theories about me seem to get.”
“So now, his accountants have fired him, and investigations draw closer to him, and right on cue the noise machine gets turned up, doesn’t it?” continued Clinton. “Fox leads the charge with accusations against me, counting on their audience to fall for it again. And as an aside, they’re getting awfully close to actual malice in their attacks.”
Fox then spent the rest of the day proving Clinton’s point, taking about her incessantly and ignoring Trump’s legal troubles.
When all was said and done, Clinton’s named was mentioned on Fox News shows more than 100 times on Thursday, even though she did nothing more newsworthy than deliver a speech. Meanwhile, news that a judge is ordering Trump to sit for a deposition in connection with New York’s criminal investigation of his business was mentioned twice.
The end game, besides “scandals” being good for ratings, is to minimize Republican corruption and lawlessness by making it seem as though Democrats are even worse. Clinton, to her credit, refuses to play along — but that won’t stop Fox from caricaturing her anyway.
And they were still trying to make Clinton 2024 a thing on Friday morning, even though she did not so much as hint as another presidential run during the speech in question.
It’d be hilarious if it wasn’t disturbing.
They had to bump the Chappaquiddick story for this.
I have talked to many Republicans about Hillary Clinton. They all hate her but can't specifically tell me why they hate her. One exception, briefly, in 2008. One of them told me I should vote for Clinton over Obama in the primary. Hmmm...I wonder why?