WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7, 2024
The latest thing Gutfeld has said: For starters, it might be worth reposting what JD Vance recently said.
He said it last Saturday evening, during the Atlanta rally at which Candidate Trump staged a long rant about Georgia's (Republican) governor. As Trump staged this highly peculiar rant, he kept repeating his favorite (unsupported) claim:
The 2020 election had been stolen from him in that state!
Trump's rant, and his endless claims about stolen elections, were and are basically nuts. But as we noted in Monday afternoon's report, none of Trump's comments was more remarkable that the remarkable thing his running-mate said during his brief introduction of Trump:
VANCE (8/3/24): Eight years ago, Donald Trump had everything—fame, fortune, family, friends. He gave up the easy life so we could get our country back.
He traded everything he had for unjust persecution—for slander and scorn from the fake news, all for this country, for you and me.
They couldn't beat him politically, so they tried to bankrupt him. They failed at that, so they tried to impeach him.
They failed at that, so they tried to put him in prison. They even tried to kill him.
They even tried to kill him! What an astonishing thing to say!
What a remarkable statement! But almost surely, you've seen this astonishing remark mentioned nowhere else.
Full fairness to Jennifer Rubin! This helps explain why we're inclined to agree with her recent claim that "a bizarre double standard" may seem to exist with respect to the coverage of Candidate Trump.
By now, statements like Vance's routinely go unreported and undiscussed. In effect, such remarkable conduct has been "normalized"—is being treated as if there's nothing to see there, as if there's nothing of interest or consequence in the existence of such remarkable statements.
Nothing to see here! Move right along! So it's been with respect to that statement by Vance, and with Trump's endless unsupported claims about the 2020 election supposedly having been stolen.
Tomorrow, we'll turn to those claims by Trump. For today, consider the most recent behavior by the fellow widely known as "The Termagant"—by the Fox News Channel's Greg Gutfeld.
We refer to this 59-year-old man's behavior on last evening's Gutfeld! program. On Monday night, he had returned from a one-week vacation and had pried the lid off the garbage can all over again.
Last night, though, on his second day back, he took matters one step beyond.
He opened with a couple of jokes, as he always does. This allows his owners, the Fox News Channel, to pretend, and to directly claim, that they're airing a comedy program.
That isn't what they're airing! Just for the record, three of the termagant's opening jokes dealt with these topics last night:
Themes of the termagant's handful of jokes, August 6 Gutfeld! program:
Tim Walz "looks like the guy at church who remarries one month after his wife mysteriously passes away."
Governor Walz "looks like the high school football coach who made sure that everyone showered after practice,"hint hint hint hint hint.
Rosie O'Donnell's too fat.
It's the law on this idiot's program. Every night, there has to be at least one liberal or progressive woman who is way too fat.
(Also, Nancy Pelosi has used too much Botox. It very much needs to be said!)
Last night, Walz was that kind of coach (hint hint), and Rosie was way too fat. By now, it was 10:03 p.m., and it was time to get down to the actual business of this crime-adjacent program.
From 10:03 until 10:15, the termagant engineered a truly deranged pseudo-discussion. During this imitation of discourse, he directly suggested that 20-year-old Thomas Crooks was acting as a government agent when he tried to shoot Donald J. Trump back on July 13.
The termagant made that direct suggestion at the end of his monologue on the topic. Actually, let's be fair—he was merely asking a question. Inquiring minds wanted to know:
GUTFELD (8/6/24): The attack on Trump was weeks ago but the media has moved on and we don't know why the shooter did it and nobody seems to care...Which makes us wonder what's going on.
Unguarded roofs. No counter drones. Knowledge of a man with a rangefinder. Photos of the shooter by the Secret Service a half hour before the shooting.
Not checking IDs. Rallygoers pointing out Crooks to law enforcement and nothing being done.
[...]
It wasn't like Thomas Crooks was James Bond. He did everything he could to arouse suspicion. Were all those government agents failures? Or was Crooks the only government agent that failed?
Yes, that's what he said. There followed a pseudo-discussion straight out of a fever swamp in which four enablers played along with what had been said.
("It's all laid out," the former professional wrestler said. "You just—in your monologue, you brilliantly laid out the entire thing...We don't need to wait for their investigation. Just look at the footage.")
Gutfeld had brilliantly laid it out! They don't need no stinkin' investigation—not on this particular Fox News Channel program!
Once again, this isn't a comedy show. This is a baldly disordered propaganda program drawn from a dark fever dream.
Assessed by any normal standard, this program's suggestions land just this side of Pizzagate and QAnon. We think it's time to start saying the names of the various people who enable the termagant in this remarkable conduct.
Once again, let's be fair! The corporate owners of the Fox News Channel have the First Amendment to hide behind as they air this propaganda vehicle.
For that reason, we're only speaking metaphorically when we say that programs like this have begun to strike us as part of an ongoing "criminal enterprise"—metaphorically, as an ongoing act of fraud committed against the millions of people who watch this "cable news" show.
We're only speaking metaphorically! But we'd say there's a criminal vibe.
Now for the rest of the story:
Blue America's finer news orgs avert their gaze from this conduct. They avert their gaze from what happens at the Fox News Channel as a general matter.
They've averted their gaze from Vance's statement in Atlanta. They also tend to avert their gaze from Candidate Trump's endless claims about stolen elections, including his recent claim about the 2020 Minnesota election.
They tend to avert their gaze from such claims. On the rare occasions when they try to push back, they tend to try and to fail.
Tomorrow, we'll plan to show you what happened when Trump recently claimed that Minnesota had been stolen and would likely be stolen again. He offered no evidence in support of this inflammatory claim.
To its credit, CNN tried to push back. We would say the spirit was willing, but the skill levels were weak.
For today, one final point:
Gutfeld's presence on the air is an artefact of the ongoing "democratization of media." To wit:
First, democratization came with its partisan talk radio shows—with Rush Limbaugh aired nationwide. Not long after that, the Internet was up and running, with "segregation by viewpoint" emerging within a few years.
Before long, we had wholly partisan "cable news" channels offering tribal comfort food served by arrays of good friends. Social media has also stepped in, further extending this "democratization" mess.
"Democratization" sounds like a very good thing. In practice, the democratization of media has had its tiny small problems.
At one time, a person like Gutfeld couldn't have been on the air as host of a major "news" program. As our democracy struggles and strains, those days are now long gone—and the finer people at the finer news orgs are sound asleep at their posts.
They tried to kill him, the candidate said. Meanwhile, was Thomas Crooks a government agent—a government agent who failed?
The termagant was only asking! A corporate termagant's inquiring mind very much wanted to know!
Tomorrow: The flesh was weak
