President Trump’s inconsistency, also known as his tendency to speak out of both sides of his mouth, sometimes at the same time, can make his supporters look bad. Some of them don’t really care, because, being the President, he can, unethically and even illegally, direct to them certain benefits, be it money, position, promotion of ideologies, or even just prestige.
But then there’s Fox News. Their close association with the current President through news coverage, interviews, and even hiring of former Fox News personnel, has linked their fortunes – quite literally – to that of the President’s. Therefore, when one day he says one thing, the next the opposite, and the third day he descends into gibberish, this may reflect poorly on Fox News. They cannot filter everything Trump says, because many viewers will catch on and Trump won’t put up with it, so they have to ride the bucking horse.
Or … they can start easing down from animal. Here’s Fox News commentator and anchor Neil Cavuto reprimanding the President:
Check out Neil's latest Common Sense pic.twitter.com/Iwg9ZrxDeH
— Neil Cavuto (@TeamCavuto) August 29, 2019
If you don’t want to watch it, WaPo provides a transcript. Cavuto is suitably nasty here:
CAVUTO: You’re only human. I get that. Who likes to be corrected? But you are the president. It comes with the job, just like checking what you say and do comes with my job.
After all, I’m not the one who said tariffs are a wonderful thing; you are.
Just like I’m not the one who said Mexico would pay for the wall; you did.
Just like I’m not the one who claimed that Russia didn’t meddle in the 2016 election; you did.
Now, I’m sorry you don’t like these facts being brought up, but they are not fake because I did. What would be fake is if I never did, if I ignored all the times you said you loved your old Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, until you didn’t, had no plans to dump your homeland security secretary, until you did, called Chinese President Xi Jinping an “enemy” just last week and a great leader this week.
Sometimes, you don’t even wait that long. Last week, you expressed an appetite for background checks, before arguing just hours later our background checks are already strong.
These aren’t fake items. They’re real items, and you really said them, just like you never paid to silence a porn star, until it turns out you did, never ordered your former White House counsel Don McGahn to fire Bob Mueller, until we learn you tried.
Fake is when it’s wrong, Mr. President, not when it’s unpleasant, just like it isn’t and wasn’t fake when you said the “Access Hollywood” tape wasn’t real, when it was, or that you inherited a depression from Barack Obama, when you didn’t, or that you ripped quantitative easing when he was president, but are furious the Federal Reserve isn’t doing the same for you now that you’re president.
Perhaps Cavuto is simply unable to put up with the head conservative any longer. Cognitive dissonance must be exhausting for people who are not used to the constant mendacity, particularly when you’re accustomed to logic and rationality.
But it’s also possible that this is Fox News beginning to step away from that hand grenade with which they’ve been playing. They have their conservative judges from Trump, but they also saw the GOP shredded in the mid-terms, and so far the 2020 elections are not boding well. A number of Republicans have announced they will not be seeking re-election, including today’s announcement to that effect from Rep John Shimkus (R-IL). Add in the health-induced retirement of Senator Isakson (R-GA) and a plethora of Texas Republican Congressional Representatives who have announced their retirements, and Fox News executives may be reading the writing on the wall. They may feel, justifiably, that paying the cost in Trump cultists’ hatred now may be better than being associated with a President who fails in his re-election bid while losing control of the Senate, and falling deeper in the hole in the House.
Fox News knows they’re big, bad, and have an operation in place. No one on the conservative side of the spectrum is likely to challenge their primacy. However, if they lose their reputation, ill-earned as it is, of being “balanced and fair,” they will still retain their hold on their conservative audience, but many will leak away as they perceive the fallacy of that slogan in application to Fox News. For them, a bigger audience is a bigger profit, and sometimes you just have to step away from the buffet line so you can return to it later.
The next few weeks should prove interesting. Will Trump take the big, broad hint and at least seek consistency? If not, will Fox News continue to inch away?
If Sean Hannity is fired or otherwise demoted, we can assume the latter. If Cavuto is fired, maybe not.
