MAGA Media Freakout, Tucker the Troll and MSNBC’s Comeback
The right-wing media's reaction to Biden’s decision to drop out of the race reeks of desperation.
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Even though the writing had been on the wall for weeks, former President Donald Trump and his MAGA media apparatus were still caught flat-footed and ill-prepared to deal with the specter of a Kamala Harris presidential campaign, all but proving that their chief strategy had just been to hammer “Sleepy Joe” Biden on his age and diminishing fitness for office.
The immediate reaction to Biden’s unprecedented announcement not only reeked of desperation but was also a hodgepodge of incoherence and contradictions.
For instance, amid the mounting pressure campaign from Democrats to convince the president to step aside, House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Sunday morning that replacing Biden on the ticket would be “unlawful” and he was considering legal challenges to force him to be the nominee.
Hours later, though, Johnson declared that Biden “must resign the office immediately” because his dropping out showed that “he is not fit to serve as President” – a talking point quickly adopted by other prominent Republicans and right-wing media figures.
“So Republicans are going to sue to keep Biden on the ballot to serve as president for four more years while simultaneously claiming that he should resign his office? That’s totally incoherent, a signal of obvious political desperation,” Media Matters senior fellow Matt Gertz aptly noted.
Adopting the GOP’s flailing response, Fox News reacted by accusing the Democratic Party of disenfranchising voters and subverting democracy itself. “If anybody was afraid that democracy would be upended, we are watching it today,” anchor Harris Faulkner fumed on Sunday.
“How do Democrats presume to be the defenders of democracy and try to castigate former President Trump as an existential threat to democracy when, in fact, the Democratic Party, for lack of a better word, is usurping democracy?” Faulkner’s colleague, John Roberts, added moments later. (To be fair, Fox News anchor Dana Perino did push back on that narrative, noting that “if almost 80% of Democrats polled say they wanted another nominee in the last four weeks, I do not think they feel disenfranchised.”)
Utterly Unready
It didn’t take long for Fox News to parrot MAGA’s bleatings that Biden’s exit was akin to an insurrection. Trump confidant Sean Hannity described it as an “elitist coup” on Sunday evening, while former Bill O’Reilly lackey Jesse Watters wondered if the president was the victim of a “bloodless coup.” Lara Trump, the former president’s daughter-in-law who is also the RNC’s co-chair, told Hannity the Democrats ran a “successful coup against Joe Biden.”
Meanwhile, the fever swamps floated wild conspiracy theories that Biden ordered the assassination of Trump and was only dropping out because it failed. “The only reason @JoeBiden is dropping out today is because his administration plotted an assassination of Donald Trump and missed,” Trump ally and self-proclaimed “investigative journalist” Laura Loomer tweeted.
Soon enough, MAGA media revealed just how utterly unready they were for a Harris candidacy, relying instead on lazy misogyny, racism, and recycled attacks to take aim at the nation’s first Black woman vice president. “Here’s just one reason that voters seem to detest Kamala Harris,” Hannity grumbled before airing a montage of Harris laughing. Senate Republicans soon began plotting attack lines on Harris that revolved around, you guessed it, her laugh.
“She does not speak well. She does not work hard…. She should not be the standard-bearer for the party,” former Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway insisted. Newsmax hosts, GOP politicians, and far-right pundits followed suit by straight up calling her a “DEI hire” who “cackles like an insane woman.”
“Her whole history is DEI,” Fox Business host and former Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow exclaimed on Tuesday, referring to the term the right has already weaponized as a racist dog whistle. Still, some Fox News personalities appeared to realize how this could backfire and urged conservatives to back off. “If you start attacking her based on being DEI and all the other stuff like that, you are going to turn voters off,” ‘Fox & Friends’ host Lawrence Jones warned on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t just Harris’ laugh Hannity was fixated on. He even went so far as to literally grasp at straws over a Harris presidential campaign. “She wants to ban plastic straws. I love my plastic straws. I hate paper straws,” he griped.
As for the former president himself, besides trying out uninspired nicknames for Harris, he’s already tacitly admitted that his campaign was built solely around exploiting Biden’s weaknesses as a candidate, even demanding that “the Republican Party be reimbursed for fraud” because he has spent so much “time and money on fighting Crooked Joe Biden.” Trump also hinted that he’d skip out on the next presidential debate.
“Now that Joe has, not surprisingly, quit the race, I think the Debate, with whomever the Radical Left Democrats choose, should be held on FoxNews, rather than very biased ABC,” Trump raged on Truth Social. Naturally, right-wing pundits quickly jumped in and provided preemptive cover for Trump running out of a debate with Harris, saying he had a “strong case” to pull the plug.
Tucker the Troll Emerges at RNC
Flaunting his close ties to Trump and his family, Tucker Carlson – who was abruptly fired by Fox News 15 months ago despite being its most-watched anchor – apparently used the Republican National Convention as something of a revenge tour against his former employer while re-emerging as one of MAGA’s most influential voices. Trolling his old network while suggesting his clout in the Trump world now superseded Fox founder Rupert Mudoch’s, Carlson drove home that point on the first night of the convention by sitting in Trump’s box.
Additionally, Carlson drummed up more intrigue by accompanying Donald Trump Jr. at Fox News’ studio in the Fiserv Forum, where the convention was held. While Trump Jr. sat down for an interview with host Sean Hannity on Tuesday night, Carlson sat in the green room and checked out the studio while mingling with many of his old colleagues.
It was reported that Carlson's unexpected visit left Fox execs “stunned” and staffers “uncomfortable,” but a source who was in the room told Ragebait that most shrugged off the appearance. “When he came into the green room, Tucker was so far in the rearview mirror,” the source said.
The source added that Kimberly Guilfoyle, who was also once fired from Fox, joined Carlson and her fiancé Trump Jr. “It was just a very weird group,” the source noted. “And people were like, ‘You're welcome to be here, but why are you here?’ It was weird.”
Missing Murdoch by a few minutes in the Fox studio, Carlson appeared to try to run into the media mogul throughout the convention.
In a photo that went viral online, a smiling Carlson was seen just feet away from Murdoch in a restaurant at the Trade Hotel, which is next to the arena. According to the Hollywood Reporter, “the potentially awkward reunion was averted by quick-thinking Murdoch aides, who formed a human wall around the Fox News baron just as Carlson was passing by, narrowly averting contact between the two.”
An eyewitness told Ragebait, however, that Murdoch was wrapping up a Wednesday breakfast meeting in a private event room when Carlson suddenly came rushing down to the restaurant. Though there were “plenty of seats to go sit down,” the source noted, Carlson stood at the lobby entrance for several minutes, perhaps figuring Murdoch would be forced to walk past him. Carlson did not respond to a request for comment.
“The problem is that Rupert took a different elevator,” the source said, adding that Murdoch appeared to have “no idea” Carlson was there. The following day, the eyewitness was in the restaurant when Carlson sat down at a table close to a private room where Murdoch had scheduled a meeting.
“[H]e sits there, and he waits, and he waits, and he waits,” the source said. But Murdoch used a second door to enter the meeting, avoiding Carlson altogether. (Ironically, in a recent Wall Street Journal profile, Carlson said he avoids restaurants because they’re too costly, instead saying he has his meals prepared at home – by a private chef.)
Back to the Limelight
Alongside Trump Jr., whom he has struck up a close friendship with, Carlson has appeared to look to position the RNC as proof that Fox News and Murdoch no longer hold sway over the GOP and the conservative movement. For instance, while Murdoch pushed North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum hard to Trump as a vice presidential candidate, the former president ultimately decided on Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio after Carlson personally lobbied for the MAGA culture warrior.
“There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the Republican Party, you had to bend the knee to him or to others. I don't think that's the case anymore,” Trump Jr. told Axios on Tuesday, adding that Murdoch’s influence on GOP politics “is not what it used to be.”
It appears that cozying up to Trump – who he once said he hated passionately – has helped return Carlson to the limelight. He told the New York Times that he is working on a docuseries about Trump that will include close-up footage of the assassination attempt on the ex-president. But it also seems clear that it’s Carlson who needs Trump more than the other way around.
According to two sources familiar with the former president’s comments, Trump told Fox News employees that the only reason Carlson was seated in his friends and family box on Monday night was that the former Fox star asked to be there. Representatives for Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president's remarks.
In the end, it also remains to be seen if Carlson’s MAGA clout truly is as powerful as Murdoch’s. While Fox News scored a post-RNC interview with Trump and Vance, Carlson – who has transitioned into a Joe Roganesque podcaster – countered by booking Pizzagate conspiracist Jack Posobiec. During that conversation, Carlson claimed women leaders have been “nasty” and “bloodthirsty” and said he doesn’t “see any evidence that female leadership is more likely to get us to peace than male leadership - I see the opposite.” He even compared Harris to former Cambodian dictator Pol Pot.
MSNBC Gets Its Groove Back
What a difference a couple of weeks makes.
After Democrats went into full crisis mode following Biden’s atrocious and feeble debate, MSNBC found itself in its own purgatory. The channel saw its ratings plummet as disgruntled Biden stans felt the network’s reliably liberal hosts had abandoned the president amid growing Democratic calls for him to drop out.
Making matters worse, MSNBC’s corporate parent Comcast decided to pull ‘Morning Joe’ – aka Biden’s favorite cable news show – from the air the Monday after the assassination attempt on Trump, reportedly over concerns that the show’s crew would say something inappropriate. The move left MSNBC staffers concerned that network bosses were currying favor with a potential Trump administration and prompted hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough to publicly threaten to quit if it ever happened again.
Less than a week after the ‘Morning Joe’ drama, everything changed. And it was as if a massive weight had been lifted from the network’s shoulders.
Moments after Biden dropped out, Scarborough – who appears to serve as an informal adviser to the president – was on MSNBC gloating that Republicans were melting down over Biden’s exit. “The most telling thing about how positive this may be for the Democratic Party is the Republican response,” he said, adding that GOP leaders were already complaining that it was a “violation of democracy.”
Heaping praise on Biden for his “act of selfless devotion” and “political sacrifice,” the network’s top stars said the president “changed everything today in an instant” and that it now fully put the focus back on Trump. They also acknowledged the amount of criticism they had received from their own viewership in recent weeks.
“There has been so much consternation about the fight in the party but also the media coverage of the fight. We have talked about all that,” Rachel Maddow noted. “But throughout, even as difficult as it was, it was a good-faith fight.”
By the next day, ‘Morning Joe’ had become the destination for prominent Democrats to argue the case for Harris and jockey for position. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, both of whom are on the running mate shortlist, appeared on Monday, while other VP hopefuls like Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker popped up the following morning.
Needless to say, it’s now only a matter of time before Harris herself shows up for an MSNBC sitdown.
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Journalism. Always refreshing to read Zeteo news. They call it like it is. 😏
Right wing media and Johnson's MAGAT Congress all belong in a locked psych unit. I've run a number of such units, so I know psychotics when I see them. They can be very dangerous and often require sedation for their safety and the safety of others.