On Deadline: White House, Angelo Carusone explains Fox's Bret Baier’s role in radicalizing viewers and spreading right-wing lies
Carusone: “Fox is, it's poison. It's radicalization, as evidenced by Bret Baier”
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From the October 17, 2024, edition of MSNC's Deadline: White House
NICOLLE WALLACE (HOST): Vice President Kamala Harris firing up supporters in Wisconsin, wrapping up a campaign event at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse, watching along with us, Democratic strategist Aisha Mills and the president of Media Matters for America, Angelo Carusone. Not to upstage either of you, but Mark Cuban, who introduced the vice president today at that event, is making his way to the risers and he's going to pop in and join our conversation in progress.
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Well, I mean, "watch him" is something that is so layered. And I'm not sure Trump appreciates any one of the many layers, but we do. I'll layer it out. She garnered 7.1 million viewers last night on Fox News. Donald Trump, I think his ceiling is about 2.5, 3 million on the same network. So, the idea that even his home turf is more attracted to watching her field questions from someone who is Fox News to the core. I think Bret Baier wasn't out there, he describes himself as sort of separate from the opinion folks. He didn't present to those 7.1 million viewers that way last night. But the vice president seems to have gained energy from that encounter, and certainly brought it with her to Wisconsin, Angelo.
ANGELO CARUSONE (MEDIA MATTERS PRESIDENT): Yeah, I mean, that's totally right. And she chose her time well, and she also engaged in the interview well, right? She went in understanding that it was going to be hostile territory -- it's like participating in, you know, another campaign's event or a PAC. I mean, that's the way she treated it, but instead of being hostile and adversarial, she was consistent and she just really tried to penetrate and pierce the bubble with a few key essential pieces of information.
Then also just her demeanor, which I think was as significant. You know, with the rest of the Fox bubble, that doesn't matter. Because if you watch Fox today, how the interview is playing out is that they're calling her "hostile." They're saying that she got angry. They're saying that she wasn't able to control herself, that she was attacking the media and the press and her behavior because she can't handle tough questions. That this was the first time she was confronted with follow-up questions because it was the first time she was engaging with the journalists.
So, Fox is going to lie to their own people, but part of it, and this sort of ties in with what the last guests were saying too, is part of what makes it harder for Trump to perpetuate the lie is two things. One, these kernels get into the Fox bubble, and then the second part is that the rest of the mainstream media has to stop enabling the lie that somehow Trump has all of his faculties together. I mean, a sixth of the coverage right now to Trump's age and acuity is what the top five papers are giving than compared to what they gave to Biden's age in February, for example. So, they're not doing their part, either, and in order to get that narrative to shift and draw that contrast, you have to sort of see this terrain and you have to sort of shift the broader narrative. And that's what the interview was designed to do, and it did it.
WALLACE: I mean, I love that you monitor Fox News so we don't have to, but I think what's so interesting -- I just got the ratings -- is they're going to try to tell the 7.1 million people who saw it with their own eyes that they didn't see what they think they saw.
And what's so amazing is that Bret Baier, who was I think the first person, sort of -- or not Bret Baier, but Brit Hume -- has the stature that he's kind of the guy that people go to first. So, on Fox's own air after the interview wraps and before all the disinformation and talking points have circulated, Brit Hume comes out and basically gives her strong marks for how she conducted herself.
And I actually think some of the strongest moments of the interview are not the ones, you know, getting sent around. I think it's when -- it shows that even Bret Baier, someone who is a smart person, whatever you think of his journalism, he's a smart person, is consuming from the tainted supply of disinfo about Kamala Harris. He presumes a bitterness and anger in her that you'd have to presume to try to get her to say she hates Trump supporters. She doesn't hate Trump supporters.
She's run a campaign from the very beginning where she's only interested in contrasting herself with Donald Trump. She's the most disciplined candidate of the Trump era. There's actually never been anyone who has run against Donald Trump this way, which is why he's like the baby deer on ice, you know, can't figure out how to get up. And I wonder what you make of sort -- of the hope that enough truth will get out in these last 19 days, Angelo?
CARUSONE: I mean, I think the thing to consider is, I do think -- the way I think about Fox is, it's poison. It's radicalization, as evidenced by Bret Baier. Like you said, whatever you think of him. But the poison got in, it's seeped in and it's affected his behavior and worldview. You think he would have learned his lesson by now, but five days before the 2016 election, he reported a totally bogus story that Hillary Clinton was about to be indicted, based off the reopened FBI investigation. Total bust, right?
I mean, he's gone through these periods before. He lives in the poison. That's the effect of it, and to unwind it, it isn't going to be an event. There's not one single thing that sort of is deradicalization. Deradicalization is a process. You know, Dick Cheney didn't wake up one day and just decide that he was going to endorse Kamala Harris and vote for her. It was a process. So, you need these key pieces of information to, as a string of pearls, in that process. So, on balance and I live in the right-wing fever swamp, so it's hard for me to be hopeful and optimistic because I'm a realist. And I know what matters and these little kernels do make a difference. They really do matter. They're harder for them to sustain the house of lies when you start to chip away at the foundation like that. And that, I think, I am hopeful about that part of it.