Fox News is welcoming former President Donald Trump back to its airwaves, in stark contrast to the previous two years in which Trump was allegedly banned from the networks’ live programming.
Trump’s live appearances on Fox often included incessant misinformation that, in the absence of rigorous fact-checking, lead to the network’s culpability in spreading dangerous lies. Many networks and hosts – including Fox News’ Senior Vice President Neil Cavuto – have responded to Trump speeches by cutting off and fact-checking Trump-affiliated live events.
Yet on an appearance during Fox’s midday panel show Outnumbered on Tuesday, “straight news” anchor Bill Hemmer gave full endorsement of airing Trump live, without mentioning any concerns of spreading misinformation.
During a segment discussing the recent Supreme Court decision ruling states cannot kick Trump off the ballot, Hemmer accused other media outlets of “TDS” or “Trump derangement syndrome."
He specifically noted how MSNBC and CNN broke away from Trump's speech after the South Carolina Republican primary and lamented how Fox News carries President Joe Biden live and would “listen to what he has to say.” Hemmer complained that instead, “our competition sometimes refuses to take the winner.” He concluded that if the networks failed to carry the entirety of Trump’s speeches, they should “take ‘news’ out of your name.”
Hemmer’s comments fly in the face of the practice set by Cavuto, who has a history of cutting live coverage of the former president when he is spreading misinformation.
In the last month, Cavuto has cut into Trump-affiliated events twice to remedy lies. On the February 23 edition of his show Your World, Cavuto noted “the former president is entitled to his opinions, he's not entitled to his own set of facts” after Trump falsely took credit for recent market records. The next week, Cavuto also fact-checked Trump’s election lies. “He still lost that election, that is not in doubt anymore,” Cavuto clarified.
Hemmer’s plea to carry the former president live and his criticism of the other networks “news” faculty is even more absurd in light of the $787.5 million settlement that his own network was forced to pay for spreading Trump’s lies about the 2020 presidential election. (Cavuto also previously broke away from carrying a Trump press conference shortly after the election, when then-Trump press secretary and current Outnumbered co-host Kayleigh McEnany accused Democrats of “rigging and cheating.” In response to Cavuto’s clarification that there was no evidence to support the claim, then-Senior Vice President Raj Shah “notified senior Fox News and Fox Corporation leadership of the ‘Brand Threat’ posed by Cavuto’s action.”)
Mainstream reporters were quick to celebrate the demise of the network’s love affair with Trump, citing former Fox Corp.'s chairman Rupert Murdoch public distaste for Trump and the alleged propagation of then-presidential candidate Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL). But fearing the loss of viewership and profit that Trump’s radical base brought, Fox News has crawled back to him as he cruises to the 2024 Republican nomination.
Hemmer calling on networks to carry Trump live despite the risk demonstrates that Fox News is beholden to all-things Trump, calling into question the anchor’s use of the word “news” to describe the network’s own propaganda.
