Right Wing Media Circle the Wagons

One might be comforted hearing Lindsey Any-Way-the-Wind-Blows Graham on the Senate floor admitting that Joe Biden won a fair election and saying  “it’s over,” or hearing Chris Christie on ABC saying that Trump’s actions Wednesday were “absolutely impeachable,” or hearing Mick Mulvaney trying to slither away at the 11^th hour by laughably claiming that Trump “has become a different man” from the sober-minded, reasoned President that he’s known. Seeing the violent storming of the U.S. Capitol, the deaths of five people (including a police officer), the bombs planted, and the angry mob roaming the halls of Congress looking to overturn a legitimate election, execute Nancy Pelosi and hang Mike Pence, one might think that Wednesday’s events might have finally brought about the come-to-Jesus moment that so many of us had expected time after time for Republican Party leadership, where they would finally renounce Donald Trump.

But right wing media, which sets the tone for that leadership, has now found their safe space of indignation, and it does not include a repudiation of Trumpism. The basic lines being repeated now on Fox News are:

1. The violence at the Capitol was absolutely wrong and unacceptable, and those who did it need to be held accountable;
   
2. It is infuriating to hear people on the left lecturing Trump supporters about rioting when those same Democrats were either silent or sympathetic during the summer of riots, looting and fires following George Floyd’s death;
   
3. Throughout the summer, numerous Democrats and mainstream media quoted MLK that rioting is “the language of the unheard.” Why aren’t they applying that same quote here?
   
4. White Democrats see this riot as different because white Democrats are elites, and nothing scares them more than seeing an uprising from the less fortunate “proles” who look like them;
   
5. It is ridiculous to suggest that Donald Trump should be removed from office for inciting the riot. He is not responsible for the 5 deaths, any more than Nancy Pelosi is responsible for the riots over the summer where 30 people died after she said that she didn’t see why people weren’t rioting in the streets, or when Maxine Waters said to “get up in the face” of Republican politicians: the rioters were responsible their own decisions;
   
6. The left is now trying to paint all Trump supporters with the violence at the Capitol, when in reality most Trump supporters were aghast at what happened and in no way support it;
   
7. The left is cynically using the Capitol riot as a distraction from “legitimate questions” about the integrity of the election, hoping that those questions will now simply go away;
   
8. Big tech is siding with the Democrats censoring the President – and by extension all Republicans – by kicking him off of Twitter and Facebook, and by wanting Parler to set standards regarding content that includes plans for violence: people on the right are victims once again, and this is yet another example of “cancel culture” where the left stifles free speech.

For what it’s worth, I actually agree with points 1, 2, 3, and 6, and wish that we could occasionally look inside and grant the “other side” some credence when they point out our flaws. Rioting is unacceptable no matter who is doing it, and it is also an understandable expression of indignation over an injustice that the rioters feel has been ignored. In the case of the summer’s riots, it was the injustice of decades of oppressive violence and unwarranted suspicion by a segment of police toward people of color. In the case of Wednesday’s riots, it was the manufactured injustice of an election that the President, his sycophants, right wing media, and the social media echo chamber had all proclaimed was deeply fraudulent, yet which was poised to move forward unchallenged.

I keep hoping for an inflection point in all this – something where right wing media see an excuse to pull of the highway of crazy disinformation that they’ve been on for so long. When Fox News had the audacity to refer to Joe Biden as the President-elect after all the votes had been counted the first time – losing many viewers to NewsMax in the process – I thought that perhaps the day had arrived for them to start pulling back from their steady stream of insanity. Hours into the storming of the Capitol, when Bret Baier said that he was getting messages from government officials around the world saying that what they were seeing was the kind of thing that the U.S. used to lecture them about, I was optimistic that Fox was indeed changing course for the better. But somehow, the Tucker Carlsons, Sean Hannitys and Laura Ingrahams have won out – if only to try to claw back that lost share of viewership – and the narrative of an atrocious event that should unify all Americans has once again become polarized along political lines.  I fear that we are in for a bumpy ride ahead.

– rob rünt