Fox news

The news media of the late 1700s and early 1800s consisted almost entirely of partisan political operations. Ron Chernow, the biographer of Washington and Hamilton, describes the newspapers of that era as 'avowedly partisan’, with 'no pretense of objectivity'. It was, Chernow, writes, a 'golden age for wielding words as rapier-sharp political weapons’. Some two centuries later, we are returning to a media landscape in which the majority of sources are 'avowedly partisan' with little pretense of the objectivity that only a few decades ago was a hallmark of American journalism.

President Trump is feeling miffed. A new poll from Fox indicating that a majority of registered voters wants to see him depart the presidency sooner rather than later has apparently bruised his feelings. In his inimitable fashion, Trump dismissed the news as so much hooey. He declared, 'From the day I announced I was running for President, I have NEVER had a good @FoxNews Poll. Whoever their Pollster is, they suck. But @FoxNews is also much different than it used to be in the good old days. With people like Andrew Napolitano, who wanted to be a Supreme....' He concluded, '...

Has Donald Trump outfoxed himself? In the past few days Trump has been lashing out at the network for publishing a poll showing that his popularity is in the doldrums and that a variety of Democratic candidates would administer a thrashing to him. 'There’s something going on at Fox,' Trump announced on Sunday. 'Something' is one of Trump’s favorite words when he wants to signify that there is some vast conspiracy out there. The hunt was on. In between bashing the turncoat Anthony Scaramucci — 'nobody ever heard of this dope until he met me' — Trump assailed Fox personality Juan Williams, calling him 'so pathetic' and 'nasty and wrong!' He piled on, claiming that Williams had beseeched him for a photo, which Williams says is baloney.

If President Trump secures re-election next fall — a prospect growing less likely by the day — it won’t be because of his scintillating ability to staff his own government. On that score, he doesn’t seem to care. Personnel is the Achilles’ heel of this presidency. Trump sometimes describes the goings-on in the administration as if he were still a bystander in the American power game. His retweet of a Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theory this weekend is funny, but frustrating: to whom does the Department of Justice report, again? The personnel issue is partly by design. The president prefers a lean, freewheeling staff, like he had at his personal business, a former senior administration official said.

Tulsi Gabbard, Democratic congresswoman of Hawaii and lefty presidential candidate, appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Monday. 'Here’s the bottom line: it’s really about the unchecked power these big tech monopolies have over our public discourse,' she said. 'We’re talking about Google, Facebook, Twitter, these are big tech monopolies that have this unchecked power.' With that, Gabbard, a pro-choice, slightly Hindu, fiercely anti-war Democrat earned yet more credibility among Fox News viewers. For the left and right, increasingly, Big Tech is the bête noir.  Sneering centrists might put Gabbard’s appeal on the Right down to a very simple fact: she’s a looker. That’s not lost on anyone.

The strong favorite for the Nobel Peace Prize this year is Greta Thunberg, a girl who lectures grownups about climate change. In a sane world, the award would go to somebody who stops wars. In 2019, that somebody should be Tucker Swanson McNear Carlson. Carlson is a Fox News host, which means the smart people who give out awards will never take him seriously. In the last few weeks, however, he may have done more to advance the cause of peace than any other human on the planet. Anyone with half a brain can tell that some of President Trump’s cabinet and his advisers are itching to bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran — as the late, hawk Saint John McCain so delicately put it, to the tune of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann.

Is a #NeverBernie faction starting to emerge among Democrats? Sanders is on a roll after his appearance at a town hall meeting on Fox News where he garnered the applause of many in the audience and attracted several million viewers. He attacked Trump as a ‘pathological liar’ and defended his sweeping healthcare — BernieCare? — plan. After Bret Baier asked how many in the audience were willing to trade in their current plans for Medicare for All, a majority raised their hands, much to his surprise. President Trump was clearly irked by Sanders’s successful foray into hostile territory, tweeting “So weird to watch Crazy Bernie on @FoxNews. Not surprisingly, @BretBaier and the “audience” was so smiley and nice.

There are some furrowed brows (as well as some furtive giggles) over Tucker Carlson’s recent hypothetical musings about what the president might do should he decide he wanted to lose his 2020 reelection campaign. Maybe he would cut funds for E-Verify, gratifying businesses that profit from exploiting the low-wage labor of illegal immigrants (that’s ‘undocumented workers’ in weeny-speak), but hurting American workers. Maybe he would make cuts to Medicare. Maybe — most deadly — he would raise taxes on gasoline, something that would matter hardly at all to those East coast elites who don’t drive much but that would have an immediate effect on those in the heartland who tend to drive more and are on a tight budget.