Steny Hoyer was on Special Report with Bret Baier talking about the shutdown and Trump’s wall. Hoyer mentioned existing walls in border towns shouldn’t be removed. Now Baier is supposedly one of the Fox News serious journalists. But his partisan leanings have always been clear. So he greeted Hoyer’s statement with glee. He really believed he had a gotcha! “So [walls] work there?”
Oh, boy! Steny Hoyer made news! Except that he didn’t. No one is saying that walls don’t work in populated areas. The question at hand is whether we should put up a wall where they don’t do any good — as a political stunt to pacify people who have been whipped up to believe that brown-skinned hoards are coming over the border to kill and rape them.
The Democrats have never called for the removal of existing border walls except in the fevered imaginations of conservative commentators. And that’s all that Bret Baier’s gotcha was. In the world of Fox News it was a gotcha because in that world Democrats really are for open borders. (For the record: I am for open borders but I hardly speak for the Democratic Party.)
Fox News Has a Scoop!
I was not planning to write about this. After all, Fox News being evil and stupid is hardly worth a comment. By their standards, Bret Baier is a real journalist. But then I saw this headline at FoxNews.com: FOX NEWS FIRST: Pelosi Slammed for Attempted Shutdown of Trump State of Union; Top Dem Breaks Ranks on Wall.
Note the implication here that the Democrats are breaking ranks. Steny Hoyer did not break ranks. But even worse is the implication that Nancy Pelosi is being slammed by a Democrat. As the article makes clear, she is being criticized by Republicans. What a surprise?! Get an Extra! out for that!
And I’m not alone in saying that Hoyer didn’t make any news. Literally no other major news outlet is covering this “FOX NEWS FIRST.” Even Washington Examiner has failed to pick it up. That’s just how meaningless this story is.
Fox News and World War I
Three Arrows produced a great video, A Battle of Lies — Fake News in the Great War. In it, he mentioned that the German public was shocked and angry when their government surrendered in World War I. This is because they had been fed nothing but propaganda. They were told about every good thing that happened to the military and nothing of the bad.
Reading the Fox News article, I see the same thing happening. Their viewers are fed a steady diet of this kind of “We’re winning!” propaganda. So if Republicans in the Senate do finally revolt and reopen the government, the Fox News viewers will be convinced that the party sold them out. To them, it will appear as though the Democrats were ready to break.
The Danger of Ignorance
I understand that the Fox News model is great for them; they make a lot of money. But it is bad for the country when you have roughly 40 percent of a population being fed a false narrative. And it is truly poisonous because of Trump’s claim about how the mainstream news is all “fake” and “the enemy of the people.” So there is no countering this false narrative in the short term.
This is the kind of stuff that leads to civil wars. Luckily, Fox News viewers are all over 90 so they don’t present a huge threat. (Quick PolitiFact, rate my claim “False”! I’m sure you are very busy looking for liberal comments to offset the tsunami of lies from conservatives!) But regardless, this situation causes civil strife. In the past, I was able to chip away at the Fox News lies held by conservatives. They always came right back when these conservatives watched Fox News alone. But it was nice that one-on-one these conservatives were open to facts.
That’s largely untrue now. Now I usually get some comment about how they’d “have to see the study.” You know, if you tell them immigrants are bringing nuclear bombs into the country, they will believe you. If you say they aren’t, they will demand documentation. And when you show them the documentation, they will say it is fake.
I don’t know how we move forward with 40 percent of our people being mini-Trumps. And Fox News stands as the puppetmaster of these idiots.
I’m starting to be annoyed with Democrats about this shutdown. Sure, it’s Trump playing to Fox News. And sure, it’s slightly amusing to have politicians on my side call him out for that.
Trump’s a lifetime liar and lazy con artist. I’ve said this. You’ve said this. His foremost opponent in the 2016 election said this.
I have no problem with poking at Trump’s ego, and I wish Secretary Clinton had done more of it, to be honest. But is this really the time?
We’re looking at hundreds of thousands of federal employees not receiving paychecks. Forest Service and National Park places which are going without protection. There’s a reason Redwood National Park exists. Those things take 500 years to grow. Once they’re ruined, that’s it, end of ball game.
What’s Trump asking for his racism wall, maybe 5, 6 billion or so? That is indeed a lot of money, and would be far better spent on feeding the homeless. You know as well as I do no part of that budget is feeding the homeless. It’s money being slightly diverted from bombs and bank bailouts.
Ideally, I’d agree to annoy Trump whenever possible. In this case, paychecks & redwoods are at stake.
The problem with this is the problem that always attends on givinghostage-takers what they want; they will 1) then never even bother pretending to compromise because they know that when they 2) do the same thing again when they want to get their way.
To blame “both sides” for this is to let the GOP win. It’s really that simple. And, given what the GOP is, to let them win is to help them push the country further back down the road to Making it 1929 Again.
I see that point, too. And the Reverend William Barber, a man I highly respect, takes that side. I wish there was just a less painful way of fighting this battle.
Don’t we all. These things are like an infection. You have to wipe them out early or they will come back more powerfully later. I don’t like thinking that but that’s just our dysfunctional conservative party.
What he said!
The problem is that if Trump gets this money he will just shut the government down again. This is, unfortunately, the way that Republicans have to be dealt with. Remember the Debt Ceiling crisis in 2011? When it came up again, the Republicans again tried to hold the world economy hostage. Obama said flat out that he would not negotiate and there was no crisis. I would say if Trump got his $5.7 billion, he would definitely do the same thing the next time the government needed to be funded.