“Hoax’, is the new book about FOXNews, and how they put Trump in the White House, beginning with the first BIG LIE, saying Obama was born in Kenya. ‘You won’t believe what my investigators have found’, started Trump’s THOUSANDS of LIES.

 

‘Hoax’ shows how far back Ailes and Trump went--and Fox's role, thanks to Ailes, in turning Trump into someone conservatives listened to about politics, and why the US is Number One, worldwide, in COVID deaths.

It was 2011 when Ailes started a weekly call-in feature every Monday with Trump on "Fox and Friends" As Stelter says "the show reflected Ailes's hatred of Obama, fear of Muslims, and comfort with white male dominance." Trump was a natural fit, and Ailes gave him the forum to share his ‘birtherism’ that set the stage for his presidency. The beginning of Trump’s Big Lies, that the FOX audience loves to hear.

Stelter shows how Fox found the big pile of money that was available to those who could convincingly peddle the attacks and defenses that their conservative audience wanted to hear. Sean Hannity--the college dropout who Ailes had plucked from a talk radio outlet and turned into a mega-star--was so influential with President Trump that White House aides called him the chief of staff. Sometimes Trump would ask for Fox's Lou Dobbs to be patched in during meetings with his economic advisers.

They were all concerned with the same thing: popularity, ratings, money and power. Stelter shows that this was a dangerous relationship before the covid pandemic in America; after it, the relationship was literally deadly. The more Trump spread misinformation and OUTRIGHT LIES about the pandemic--it's cause, spread and his handling of it--the more FOX championed his actions. It didn't matter that the evening hosts' pro-Trump commentaries were invariably false. What mattered was telling the Trump (and Fox) base, ‘what they wanted to hear’.

Arguably, as Stelter writes, Trump and the Fox evening hosts and those on "Fox and Friends" have been complicit in a national tragedy that has seen over 600,000 Americans killed.

The idea that a president of the United States ignores his official briefings and instead trusts Fox and Friends is both disgusting and frightening. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost because Hannity fed Trump his lines (or is that 'lies') about Coronavirus.

I could go on, but why? Most of us know all this, but only some of us care. Nothing new here….