The reviews were almost universally savage after Donald Trump’s debate debacle, in which the former president ranted about migrants eating pets while getting his clock cleaned by an opponent he had insisted was “stupid.” Even the Wall Street Journal’s right-wing editorialists thought that Vice President Kamala Harris “won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity,” while Karl Rove added in a column that the night “was a train wreck for him, far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”
Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work
And then, in a universe all its own, was Fox News.
“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”
“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.
Follow Dana Milbank
An ebullient Harris campaign immediately called for another debate. (Trump, who once called for debates “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” eventually refused the challenge after much hemming and hawing.) But Harris’s gesture of confidence prompted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to argue: “They don’t think she won. They don’t think she’s in a position to win this race.”
Sean Hannity interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Trump notched “a big win.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “the best closing in presidential debate history.”
Trump himself joined Hannity in the spin room. “I think it was my best debate ever,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podc...tid=mc_magnet-oppodcasts_inline_collection_19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podc...tid=mc_magnet-oppodcasts_inline_collection_20
And that was just within the first 75 minutes after the debate. The next morning, Trump was back, on “Fox & Friends.” “I won the debate by a lot,” he said, and “every single poll last night had me winning like 90-10.” The hosts did not contradict him. At the same time, Trump argued that ABC News should lose its broadcasting license, because “they had a rigged show with somebody that maybe even had the answers.”
Advertisement
On Wednesday afternoon, Watters returned to the airwaves. “I found [Harris] evasive, found her unlikable, preachy and, instinctually, I don’t know that’s going to play with men,” he said. “The signature moments that you see on the internet after this, she didn’t have any. … Trump had them all.”
On Thursday afternoon, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, a Post Opinions contributor, announced on Fox that Trump “is in the process of winning the debate” because “a debate isn’t over in a day” and “upon further review, the American public has decided that debate was rigged.”
It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.
Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcast on the network) that they had not seen what they just saw. Unless I missed it, viewers also weren’t told the other news of the night, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris after the debate.
Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem.
Sign up for Shifts, an illustrated newsletter series about the future of work
And then, in a universe all its own, was Fox News.
“All the memorable lines were from Donald Trump,” host Jesse Watters proclaimed after the debate ended. (He specifically cited Trump’s “eating the pets” line.) “He just had some great knockouts,” Watters added. “And so this race just got tighter.”
“That’s probably true,” anchor Bret Baier agreed.
Follow Dana Milbank
An ebullient Harris campaign immediately called for another debate. (Trump, who once called for debates “ANYTIME, ANYWHERE, ANYPLACE,” eventually refused the challenge after much hemming and hawing.) But Harris’s gesture of confidence prompted Fox News’s Laura Ingraham to argue: “They don’t think she won. They don’t think she’s in a position to win this race.”
Sean Hannity interviewed Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who claimed Trump notched “a big win.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Trump had “the best closing in presidential debate history.”
Trump himself joined Hannity in the spin room. “I think it was my best debate ever,” he said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podc...tid=mc_magnet-oppodcasts_inline_collection_19
https://www.washingtonpost.com/podc...tid=mc_magnet-oppodcasts_inline_collection_20
And that was just within the first 75 minutes after the debate. The next morning, Trump was back, on “Fox & Friends.” “I won the debate by a lot,” he said, and “every single poll last night had me winning like 90-10.” The hosts did not contradict him. At the same time, Trump argued that ABC News should lose its broadcasting license, because “they had a rigged show with somebody that maybe even had the answers.”
Advertisement
On Wednesday afternoon, Watters returned to the airwaves. “I found [Harris] evasive, found her unlikable, preachy and, instinctually, I don’t know that’s going to play with men,” he said. “The signature moments that you see on the internet after this, she didn’t have any. … Trump had them all.”
On Thursday afternoon, conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, a Post Opinions contributor, announced on Fox that Trump “is in the process of winning the debate” because “a debate isn’t over in a day” and “upon further review, the American public has decided that debate was rigged.”
It was a case study in how the dominant “news” organ of the right cleans up Trump’s messes. When President Joe Biden had his disastrous debate, liberal outlets and commentators panned the performance and ultimately helped to force him out of the race. But when Trump had what was, objectively, a bad night, Fox News led a movement to claim it didn’t happen.
Sixty-seven million viewers saw an out-of-control Trump claim he won the 2020 election, complain that those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were “treated so badly,” argue about his crowd size, assert that he had read that Harris “was not Black” and that Biden “hates her,” admit that he still only has “concepts of a plan” on health care, make odd statements such as “I got involved with the Taliban” and “she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison,” and utter this ludicrous slander about Haitian migrants: “They’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
Fox News then told its viewers (14 million people watched the simulcast on the network) that they had not seen what they just saw. Unless I missed it, viewers also weren’t told the other news of the night, that Taylor Swift had endorsed Harris after the debate.
Often, after my weekly cataloguing of Trump’s madness and mayhem, readers ask why his followers don’t see that he is off his rocker. This is why. Fox News sane-washes him — and it sets the tone for the entire MAGA social media ecosystem.
