Fox News gave Republican senate candidate Rep. Tom Cotton (AK) the royal treatment, giving airtime to his latest campaign ad and inviting him on for a softball interview with host Eric Bolling, who failed to challenge Cotton on his faulty assertions that the Affordable Care Act is “failing” for the people of Arkansas.
Filling in for Neil Cavuto, Fox's Bolling took the reins of Fox's 4 p.m. show Your World and invited Cotton on the program for the second time this month. The Fox host aired the entirety of the senate candidate's latest campaign ad, then proceeded to ask a series of open-ended questions, many loaded with an anti-Democratic premise.
“I read somewhere where Senator Pryor said that he would vote for Obamacare if he had to do it all over again,” Bolling said. “You want to comment on that?” Bolling then allowed Cotton the opportunity to attack the health care law as a “failure” without noting for Cotton or viewers that Obamacare is working for the people of Arkansas.
According to the RAND Corporation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) will increase the state's GDP, create over six thousand jobs, and provide 401,000 more Arkansans with health insurance.
Republican legislators even passed a bill last month that will take advantage of the ACA's expanded Medicaid funds to increase health care access to low-income Arkansans, another development Bolling and Cotton ignored.
The GOP has already committed to a strategy of trying to win the Senate by demonizing Obamacare, and Fox News appears more than willing to aid and abet them with the smears and myths necessary to accomplish that feat in the face of the law's success.
Softball treatments of Republicans like Bolling's interview with Cotton are nothing new for Fox News. Nine different Fox News hosts and contributors have headlined fundraisers for Republican organizations around the country in 2014, including Bolling's co-host on The Five, Andrea Tantaros. During the 2011-2012 election cycle, Fox News figures backed Republican efforts in over 300 instances, ranging from official endorsements to recorded advertisements and helping to push money to candidates through GOP-aligned groups.
Republican attack ads frequently find unpaid airtime in Fox broadcasts, and Fox has already kicked into high gear to help other Republican senate candidates running in 2014.
To be fair, Bolling says Fox tried to reach out to Pryor, saying, “We asked Mark Pryor to join us, why do you think he said no?” Given the extent to which Fox and the GOP are intertwined, that question shouldn't be difficult to answer.