Hen in the Fox House: Jorge Velázquez and Ramiro González Better Served Democracy than Bret Baier
Fox News has been a toxin in the United States for most of thirty years. Yesterday, Kamala Harris went into the Fox House in an attempt to chisel away at that toxin.
It’ll be days, weeks, years before we learn how it worked, in part, because it was (in my opinion) only the third most important TV yesterday.
The most important TV was probably Trump’s town hall on Univision. Six minutes in, a man named Jorge Velázquez took the mic (after Trump offered a smarmy compliment him on his hair, which is the kind of beautiful thick mane that Trump covets). Velázquez described that he used to pick strawberries and broccoli and asked, if Trump deports everyone he wants, who will do that work and how much will food prices go up. (Given the way he distilled the problem with Trump’s mass deportation plans with one poignant question, I would be unsurprised if he has some tie to the United Farm Workers,)
Trump immediately said he was the best thing to happen to farmers. He seemed to suggest he would bring back the bracero program (since Elon Musk has begun paying Trump’s bills, Trump has been pushing to greatly expand legal immigration). But he ultimately didn’t answer the question. It was an unresponsive answer to a question that every person who imagines themselves a journalist should be asking.
That wasn’t the only challenging question Trump dodged. After 25 minutes, José Saralegui asked Trump why he lied about the Haitians in Springfield. After 33 minutes, Ramiro González, a Republican who has dropped his registration in the party, invited Trump to win back his support by explaining his inaction on January 6. Trump not only offered the platitudes he always does, lied about his supporters bringing guns, and used the first person plural to align himself with the mob (which may end up being useful to Jack Smith), but he did not answer the question. By that point, a number of the viewers in the audience had a hostile body language to Trump. After 40 minutes, Jesús González asked Trump to explain his gun control policy to victims of school shootings. After 43 minutes, Carlos Aguilera asked Trump if he still considered climate change a hoax.
In this forum, average voters asked Trump the kind of questions that journalists no longer do. And they did so on an outlet that sill commands a great deal of trust from its viewers.
The second most important TV yesterday may be the Fox Town Hall for women.
It was everything that Trump voters distrust about the media (though will overlook here): A hand-selected group of Trump sycophants that was edited to take out parts damaging to Fox (including that one participant had already voted for Trump).
The Georgia Federation of Republican Women wrote on its Facebook page Wednesday that the group helped host the event, posting photos from the venue and writing they were “Super excited for the opportunity of hosting this event right here in Georgia!”
Shortly after CNN reached out to the group and Fox News about their role, the post was edited to state they were “excited for the opportunity of attending this event right here in Georgia!”
[snip]
The first question posed to Trump at the town hall came from a woman identified as Lisa, who asked the former president a question about the economy. The network did not disclose that Lisa is also the president of the Fulton County Republican Women group.
Some of the town hall attendees made it clear they were supporters of the former president, either in their questioning or in their attire.
“I want to thank you for coming to a room full of women the current administration would consider domestic terrorists,” a woman named Alicia said to laughter from the audience before a question about foreign policy.
But a portion of Alicia’s question was edited by Fox News to remove her admission that she was voting for Trump.
“I proudly cast my vote for you today. I hope they count it,” she added, according to an audio recording from a CNN reporter in attendance.
While it’s common for a pre-taped event or interview to be edited for time, Alicia’s short remark came in the middle of her question, which remained intact on the broadcast.
During another moment missing from Fox’s broadcast, Trump asked the crowd who they were voting for, leading to a chant of “Trump, Trump” breaking out by the attendees.
And Trump still bolloxed three questions. In response to a visibly distraught woman asking about child care costs, he offered the same babbling pablum about assigning Ivanka to address the issue that he offered at the NY Economic Club. In response to a softball about IVF, Trump first claimed to he the father of IVF before confessing he needed Katie Britt to explain why it was important. And then when a woman asked Trump about making choices for her own body, Trump offered the same canned answer about moving abortion back to the states but him, personally, believing in exceptions that don’t exist in a number of states.
Within the safe space of Harris Faulkner’s set, Trump seemed not to care about offering credible answers. The women in the room will vote for him anyway. But clips of his answers will circulate outside that safe space.
Importantly, Fox also edited a clip from the woman’s town hall, to cut Trump’s most fascistic speech, identifying the Pelosis as the “enemy within.” When Bret Baier questioned Kamala Harris about it during their interview, she called him on the edit, and used it to talk about what “you and I both know” about Trump’s threats to turn the military on Americans. What was meant to be one in a series of gotchas instead became a moment for Harris to point to things that Fox deliberately keeps from its viewers: the threat Trump poses to democracy.
When Baier played a Trump transgender ad, offering little excuse for doing so, Harris noted that Trump had paid $20 million to instill fear about an issue that has little to do with issues that affect people’s lives. Again, she pointed to the spectacle that Fox viewers consume unthinkingly.
The Fox News interview will not win over voters, by itself. But Harris turned Fox into an issue. She called out Baier, repeatedly, for interrupting her. He kept doing it.
She also revealed things that don’t get covered at Fox. Harris mentioned having just been on the stage with Trump’s former staffers twice. She mentioned his former aides saying that he was not fit to be President. She mentioned Trump’s accusations there’s an enemy within. She mentioned that Mark Milley said that Donald Trump was a threat, without raising the word fascism (after which Baier attempted to dismiss it by specifying it was a quote in Bob Woodward’s book, telling viewers where to find more). She described Mike Pence’s criticisms of Trump and joked that Pence’s opposition to Trump is why the job was open to pick JD Vance.
All of these are things that are not permitted on Fox News.
During several of those exchanges, Baier’s face looked pained, as if he was acutely aware of the danger of letting such things be aired on Fox News.
After 25 minutes, as Baier was trying to drown out Harris’ criticism of Trump’s handling of Iran, he said, “We’re talking over each other, I apologize.”
Harris responded,
I would like that we would have a conversation that is grounded in full assessment of the facts which includes — I think this interview is supposed to be about the choices that your viewers should be presented about this election. And the contrast is important.
Baier interrupted again. As Harris told viewers to go check out her site to see her solutions, Baier interrupted again.
It’s the term, “we both know” which Harris used at least four times, that resonates.
Someone commenting after the interview voiced the same impression I have of it: It’s a Google interview. [Update: It was Brian Stelter.] No one will be convinced by it. But a number of people might Google to find out what the hell Harris was talking about — to find out what Milley said, to find out what Republicans supporting her have said to explain why, even to find out her plans to help people buy homes.
And when they discover that it’s actually Fox — and not CBS, as the Fox-fueled conspiracy holds — that is hiding stuff from its viewers, they may grow to question what they’ve been told.
But the Baier interview was, in my opinion, only the third most important TV yesterday. That’s significantly true because there are far more undecided voters among Univision’s viewers than among Fox’s. And Trump showed contempt in that situation. He showed contempt to undecided Latino voters, to their face. And he refused to answer the questions that no one else will ask.
Normally, the whitewashing that Fox does for Trump hides how contemptuous he is of American voters. Yesterday, there were several places where voters might see the cracks in that whitewashing.
At the Fox Town Hall, Trump was asked to clarify his ‘enemy from within’ comments. He confirmed he was talking about Democrats, and he name-checked ‘the Pelosis’. Not just Nancy Pelosi, the whole family. Someone should ask Trump if he plans to pardon DePape, the guy who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
California, perhaps anticipating another Trump presidency, also convicted DuPape on five state charges. No presidential pardon for those.
I watched a replay on YouTube. I think KH did a superb job handling Baier. It is quite unlikely that this will change the mind of any hard core FOX-MAGA voters and unknown how many undecideds/swing voters will even see the event.
I think the repeated mention by Baier about needing to “wrap” – with the final hard wrap call – at the end is an indication that FOIX wanted to minimize damage.
She done good. Very good.
PS
I know what the media says Harris is not articulate, etc. Anyone with even just some of their five senses can easily compare Trump and Kamala and figure out who is not “all there” – by a long shot. I’d like to see someone take “common questions” of Trump and KH and splice in their responses to show them back to back. It would be pretty obvious who is and is not “all there”.
It may not change the mind of any “hard core FOX-MAGA voters,” but that doesn’t describe all of the people who passively hear FOX in waiting rooms, workplace and commercial spaces, or even within their households. Yes, she done good.
Edit: Sorry, I missed that mickquinas also addressed this in his second paragraph below.
mods: oops. typo in username on previous comment.
Baier interrupted again…
Says it all.
What I’ve been trying to remember, that I think the Harris campaign is well aware of, is that a whole lot of people are too busy trying to survive in an enshittified (h/t Corey Doctorow) world to maintain the political awareness that is assumed by pundits and poll-watchers on either side of the beltway. A whole lot of people are just now tuning in to this race, and for them the political reporting of the last year or three has been background noise. They remember being horrified by January 6, but haven’t kept up with (what feels like) the dragging prosecution of it even as they know that the former president was involved (not least in his failure to act).
Harris isn’t winning regular Fox viewers by facing off with Baier, but Fox is sadly the default in a lot of places (bars, lobbies, waiting rooms, etc.) where folks are just starting to pay attention to politics. I remember the line from “V for Vendetta” where the dictator berates his co-conspirators telling one, “we are drowning under the weight of your inadequacies!”
20 years ago, any of the things that have happened (hurricane lies, hunting FEMA, COVID tests to Putin, “so what” if Pence is in danger, 39 minutes of ?) since October 1st might have been enough to end Trump’s candidacy, and it’s horrifying that for maybe a third of registered voters the chaos is already priced in to their voting decision. Today, none of them qualifies as an “October Surprise” and it’s difficult to imagine what would actually serve to break the spell. But each seems to be another drop, eroding perhaps a few votes here, a few votes there, not merely the ongoing and unfolding testimony to his inadequacy but also the building demonstration of Harris’ fitness, a steady drip-drip-drip until, hopefully, finally, this particular stain is washed away.
Lawrence O’Donnell pointed out yesterday that Brett Baier is not the straight-news guy, as opposed to another Hannity, that others in the media are portraying him as. Baier is the guy who ran around with his hair on fire in 202, telling Fox to lie about its own election desk’s prediction that Joe Biden had won Arizona He was adamant that it change the story and lie, especially as it took another four days for other networks to come to the same accurate conclusion.
As a coda, O’Donnell noted that Brett Baier was still with Fox, but the very good people at its election desk, who accurately predicted Biden’s win in Arizona, Fox fired. Brett Baier is a fraud and a liar. But that’s not breaking news.
No edit button. I know it seems like Baier and Fox have been around since Adam left the garden, but I meant to type the year “2020,” not “202.”
WRT the end of the Fox interview, with Baier repeatedly forcefully saying he was being told they had to wrap, I also wondered if the producer realized that information was leaking into the hermetically sealed universe. I doubt we will ever know for sure, but noticed repeated comments on Twitter shortly afterward from blue check accounts claiming the Harris campaign had pulled the plug, which leads me to believe that Fox hitting the brakes was a real possibility.
My one big disappointment in VP Harris’ answers was her letting Baier’s use “illegal immigrants” as a descriptor for people released before hearing after an encounter with the Border Patrol. She had the opportunity to humanize the many good people fleeing terrible conditions and arriving at the border, and the need to handle them with compassion and in line with international law while protecting the country from those seeking to exploit the weakness in processing the Trump administration had left (hence her answer that the first legislation the administration pushed was immigration reform). She played immigration on the Fox defined field, and suffered for it. She then rebounded well in the rest of the interview.
Disagree. She juggled several balls in the air just fine, notwithstanding that Baier kept throwing new ones at her while she was doing it. She didn’t need to recover from anything.
Brilliant rundown and analysis of those three events, Marcie. Thank you.
As to whether the Fox interview will end up being a Google-prompt or something more, I’m hoping it will also be craftily featured in her ads, going forward (as commenters above have noted, with the plural “Pelosis” featuring footage of the attack on Paul).
In one (minimalist) sense, the Fox interview was good because it takes a weapon out of the hands of the Trumpists: “She refuses to do interviews.” That was always BS, but still, any time you can take a weapon out of the hands of an agressor, it’s good.
As to the Unavision video, I really wondered if Trump understood how condescending he was being, what it would look like to a non-cult audience.