“Man Of The People”: Fox & Friends Tag-Teams With Hannity To Crown Trump Debate King
During Friday’s broadcast of Fox & Friends, Fox News host Sean Hannity (fresh off pretending to make nice with colleague Megyn Kelly) called in to do what he does best — pimp for Donald J. Trump.
Discussing the upcoming second presidential debate, Hannity and the F&F hosts came to the conclusion that the GOP nominee’s experience doing softball so-called town halls on Hannity’s program, along with his 30-minute make-believe forum Thursday night, meant he was more prepared than Hillary Clinton.
From Media Matters’ transcript:
STEVE DOOCY (CO-HOST): Sean, he has — Mr. Trump has actually been on your program a number of times where the venue has been like a town hall, so that kind of experience can help him, right?
SEAN HANNITY: Yeah, I think so, and I can just tell you watching him up close in those moments, he’s very comfortable in that environment. He seems to enjoy the interaction with other people. I think it gives him an opportunity to connect with people, and I did watch a little bit of last night, and he was connecting with people and thanking them for their question and moving on, and one of the things that maybe, I think with a lot of candidates, is they do over-prepare. And I thought Tim Kaine — he did a really good job of memorizing his robotic lines, but it didn’t work in the end. He came off as pretty unlikable. Constantly interrupting, and Governor Pence used that to his advantage by saying, “OK, you memorized your lines, but this is what matters to the American people,” which I think is the perfect pivot point.
Below is video of the exchange, also courtesy of Media Matters:
Notice how the chyron says ‘Man Of The People,’ as if they weren’t already bludgeoning you to death with the message that Trump is the clear and overwhelming favorite heading into Sunday night’s debate.
Beyond that, the Fox crew also pushed Trump’s talking point that Hillary is in hiding, perhaps even resting because she doesn’t have the ‘stamina’ to deal with the virile beast known as Trump. Mediaite’s J.D. Durkin highlighted this in his piece Friday, noting Clinton is actually preparing, just like she did before the first debate in which she trounced Trump.
So, the “they” Fox & Friends “cited” this morning isn’t a “they” at all, it’s from the false dribble that their candidate of choice spouted off at last night’s town hall, an event that Olivia Nuzzi of The Daily Beast called“make believe” and “fake.” Even The Washington Post called it, at best, a “friendly town-hall audience,” where — and this is true — “Some added words of encouragement for Trump to their questions.”
Added words of encouragement for Trump to their questions? What was it, an episode of Fox & Friends: Live?
On the contrary, the former Secretary of State is not resting; although she’s off the campaign trail, she is instead focusing her resources on vigorous debate prep; CNN’s Tom Kludt and Dan Merica write, “Clinton will hunker down with a select group of aides later this week to refine her attacks on Trump and prepare for the added level of difficulty created by a live audience that asks questions.”
Now, we all know the curvy couch sitters of Fox & Friends are fully on the Trump Train. We know this already. And we also know that Hannity is Donald Trump’s biggest cheerleader in all of media. Once again, none of this is a surprise.
However, even if you are completely and unabashedly in the tank for someone, it doesn’t mean that you need to delude both yourself and your audience. Because when you keep your blinders on and mislead your viewers, reality becomes a lot tougher to swallow.
