Fox News is not only President Donald Trump’s propaganda machine, it repeats Russian propaganda in his defense, which is why CNN contributor Garrett Graff called the conservative network out on Saturday for being a threat to our national security.
Trump is embroiled in a scandal that has resulted in two articles of impeachment against him in the House for trying to bribe a foreign government into hurting his political rivals ahead of the 2020 Election and for obstructing Congress.
In a desperate effort to keep their influence over the White House, Fox News hosts have resorted to repeating Russian propaganda to help him, including accusations that Ukraine interfered with the 2016 Election instead of Russia. The network also tells lies and delivers misleading information designed to falsely portray the impeachment as illegitimate.
In a column Graff wrote for Wired, he explained just how dangerous Fox News has become to our country:
“Monday’s split-screen drama, as the House Judiciary Committee weighed impeachment charges against President Trump and as the Justice Department’s inspector general released a 476-page report on the FBI’s handling of its 2016 investigation into Trump’s campaign, made one truth of the modern world inescapable: The lies and obfuscations forwarded ad infinitum on Fox News pose a dangerous threat to the national security of the United States,” Graff wrote. “Fox’s clear willingness to parry the wingnuttiest ideas in service of the president, long-term implications to the United States be damned, should worry all concerned about the state of the United States. The Ukraine myth is hardly the only example; for years, it has repeated false conspiracies about the murder of Democratic staffer Seth Rich, a conspiracy literally cooked up by Russian intelligence and fed into the US media.”
And Fox News has only gotten worse over the years as it becomes more and more a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Republican Party. Graff continued:
“While propagandizing has long been a key facet of Fox’s business (Stephen Colbert debuted his own Fox News host alter ego, in dedicated pursuit of ‘truthiness,’ all the way back in 2005), the situation is clearly getting worse: the lies deeper, its always-tenuous commitment to ‘Fair and Balanced’ unraveling further. Whatever loose adherence to a reality-based world the Fox worldview once possessed, whatever guardrails on truth the network might have once installed, are now gone.”
On Saturday, Graff appeared on CNN to deliver a similar warning after watching a clip of Sean Hannity feeding bullshit to his viewers about impeachment.
“The facts aren’t breaking through, and makes it incredibly hard to have the types of conversations and the informed electorate that we count on in our democracy and that’s leaving aside the larger issue which is the mainstream Republican Party, echoed by Fox News, advancing theories like these debunked Ukraine 2016 conspiracies that have been put forward and advanced by the Kremlin as Russian disinformation. So the fact that you have U.S. broadcasters embracing Kremlin disinformation campaigns is an immense problem for the U.S.”
Graff went on to say that Fox News is controlled by Trump, who attacks the network when it does not do his bidding.
“I think what you’re seeing is just sort of the outright capture of the Republican Party and conservative media by Donald Trump. … I mean, literally just about six minutes ago Donald Trump was tweeting, criticizing Fox News for even daring to host Adam Schiff and Jim Comey tomorrow on their Sunday shows, saying that he can’t believe that they would go so far as to have those voices on their air, and you can sort of see the pressure that the network is under to please its main audience of one during the morning shows and its evening primetime lineup.”
Here’s the video via YouTube:
Indeed, Trump did throw such a temper tantrum. And this will not end well for Fox News in the end. Trump is already telling his supporters to switch from Fox News to other conservative media outlets that are even more subservient to him and Russia. Fox News will wear the shame of their decision to shill for Trump and Russia. Frankly, the network should be shut down for putting our national security at risk. But it’s more sinister than that because the network is working to undermine democracy and the Constitution, all to protect a president who works for Russia.
When Trump is finally ousted from office and a Democratic president takes over, the next Attorney General should investigate and prosecute Fox employees to the fullest extent of the law and Congress should reestablish the Fairness Doctrine to prevent this kind of corruption from ever happening again.
Featured Image: YouTube screenshot
