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ffr

(22,670 posts)
Wed Dec 13, 2017, 08:08 PM Dec 2017

NYT OP-ED: Fox News v. Robert Mueller



If only we could dismiss Sean Hannity, Jeanine Pirro, Laura Ingraham and the other well-paid propagandists at Fox News as though they were harmless drunks at the end of the bar, ticking off their conspiracy theories to anyone who will listen. Unfortunately, the guy sitting on the next stool is the president of the United States, and he’s all ears.
<snip>

It would be one thing if Ms. Pirro were only spouting off on television. But she is a friend of Mr. Trump’s and has met privately with him and his top advisers to sell her half-cocked theories. After Mr. Trump’s victory last year, she interviewed to be his deputy attorney general, a job that would have empowered her to fire Mr. Mueller on her own.

To put it mildly, this is insane. The primary purpose of Mr. Mueller’s investigation is not to take down Mr. Trump. It’s to protect America’s national security and the integrity of its elections by determining whether a presidential campaign conspired with a foreign adversary to influence the 2016 election — a proposition that grows more plausible every day.

If the president’s supporters are upset about how close that investigation is getting to the Oval Office, they should ask not whether any F.B.I. investigator has ever held an opinion about politics, but rather why Mr. Trump chose as his closest advisers people with a tendency to talk to Russian officials and then fail to tell the truth, again and again, about the nature of those communications.
<snip>

When the propagandists say, “Get rid of Mueller,” it’s not the truth they’re trying to protect; it’s Mr. Trump himself. - NYT

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dchill

(38,502 posts)
2. The "harmless drunks at the end of the bar..."
Wed Dec 13, 2017, 10:03 PM
Dec 2017

get their conspiracy theories from the likes of Hannity, Pirro and Ingraham. The majority of these public places have FoxNews on their big screens all the time.

 

SCVDem

(5,103 posts)
3. I have lost my favorite bars.
Wed Dec 13, 2017, 10:10 PM
Dec 2017

They would not turn off Faux despite advertising as a sports bar.

Their loss!

dchill

(38,502 posts)
4. I used to go to my local McDonald's for breakfast.
Wed Dec 13, 2017, 10:16 PM
Dec 2017

FoxNews is the main reason I quit. I should be grateful, I guess. But I'm mostly offended.

dchill

(38,502 posts)
9. NW PA. I hear the workers hate it, but the store is not...
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 12:15 AM
Dec 2017

locally owned, and the big TV and Fox are corporate policy! MUST BE ON FOX!!

A friend tells me that most of the time, these days, the volume is muted and nobody watches.

Brainstormy

(2,380 posts)
7. Hey, if you live in Georgia
Wed Dec 13, 2017, 11:08 PM
Dec 2017

you get Faux everywhere. Don't even THINK about going in for an oil or tire change!

 

Gabi Hayes

(28,795 posts)
10. Name any state that, outside urban or university centers,
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 12:16 AM
Dec 2017

ISN’T Deliveranceville, including most of the northeast

Dunno about Hawaii

NewJeffCT

(56,828 posts)
13. Not sure about that
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 12:03 PM
Dec 2017

I know in Mass and Connecticut, many of the suburbs at least lean Democratic if not are reliably blue. And, even the lean Republican areas tend to be more moderate - my town in the Hartford area leans Republican, but voted for Obama over McCain in 2008 and Clinton over Trump in 2016 by a big margin - Romney beat Obama here in 2012.

Sure, if you get beyond the suburbs, you will see pickup trucks with confederate flag decals or homes with a confederate flag in the window, but those towns are mostly very small

Internationalist

(27 posts)
16. In some ways, Fox fits in with a sports mindset
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 05:46 PM
Dec 2017

Most hardcore Fox viewers are sports fans at heart. All is well so long as their ‘team’ is winning.

D_Master81

(1,822 posts)
19. Have noticed this too.
Fri Dec 15, 2017, 12:12 AM
Dec 2017

Ive noticed over the past few yrs. Its really become more about winning than anything else

Grammy23

(5,810 posts)
11. One of our local hospitals has TVs all around their Out Patient Diagnostic Center.
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 12:29 AM
Dec 2017

I have never been there when they were not tuned to HGTV. Home and Garden. The most controversial thing you will see is if the homeowners like or despise their surprise makeover. Many people pretty much ignore it or regard it as background noise but a sizable number of people watch out of boredom or nervousness. But it sure as hell beats Fixed Noose blathering on, poisoning the well.

Honestly though, can’t we go back to the days when waiting rooms had old, tattered magazines and most people tended to their own knitting. With SMART PHONES is their any reason to have a large screen, high definition TV blaring at us?? Must we be “entertained” or programmed constantly?

Botany

(70,516 posts)
12. To Trump and his supporters it is all "fake news."
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 11:28 AM
Dec 2017

Mueller is closing in.

"The constant revelations create such a blur that context sometimes is overlooked. Trump and his
operatives have lied repeatedly, denying that they had any contacts with Russians. Now we now
know of at least 19 meetings among 31 interactions."


https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-10/the-trump-russia-probe-is-about-to-get-uglier

bigbrother05

(5,995 posts)
15. Would suggest that enough digging would unearth anti-Dem rhetoric from his team
Thu Dec 14, 2017, 12:30 PM
Dec 2017

The Hatch Act doesn't prohibit politics, it just restricts Government employees using their position to endorse or stand for a partisan elected office.

Mueller himself is a Republican, but is able to remove his personal opinion from his professional duty. Kind of think his background makes him more determined to get to the bottom of this, most mainstream GOP'ers have an anti-Russian/Communist history.

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