2021-07-16 09:06:21
Fox News has tried to play coy ever since Donald Trump lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. On the one hand, the network finds itself needing to have a modicum of journalistic responsibility to its audience and recognizes that it has to live in the reality that Trump isn’t president anymore because he lost. On the other hand, Fox has to placate to its right-wing audience who largely believe Trump when he insists he won and was the victim of widespread voter fraud. This tightrope walking was on full display on Tuesday when Texas State Representative James Talarico went on Fox News for an interview with Pete Hegseth. The two debated Texas’s new voter suppression bill that some Democratic lawmakers fled the state over in order to avoid a quorum and prevent the bill from being voted on. It’s obvious that this bill in Texas, along with the many others working their ways into law in red and purple states around the country, would not exist if Trump never told his “big lie” about there being rampant voter fraud in the 2020 election. These bills are truly solutions in search of problems and that’s exactly what Representative Talarico was trying to argue to the Fox audience.
Talarico pressed Hegseth on a topic that’s really at the heart of the matter with these voter suppression bills. He said, “you have made a lot of money personally and you have enriched a lot of corporations with advertising by getting on here and spewing lies and conspiracy theories to folks who trust you. . . . So what I’m asking you to do is to tell your voters that Donald Trump lost the election.” When Hegseth pretended not to hear his guest at first, Talarico reiterated: “did Donald Trump lose the election in 2020?” Hegesth stumbled around and looked uncomfortable, which Talarico capitalized on. The truth is that the Fox host would have looked silly answering yes or no to Talarico’s question, because either he’d be transparently lying or admitting that Donald Trump, who’s beloved by the Fox audience, is transparently lying. Every left-leaning guest on Fox News should be asking this question because it really highlights how absurd the network and the right-wing position is on this topic.
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