Trump and Kelly
Andrea Austria / Media Matters

How the Fox bubble is reacting to John Kelly calling Trump a fascist

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

John Kelly, who once served as Donald Trump’s White House chief of staff, believes that the former president is a “fascist” and would seek to rule as a dictator if he returns to office in November, The New York Times reported on Tuesday evening. The paper published audio of an interview Kelly gave to the Times’ Michael Schmidt in which Kelly explained that Trump “prefers the dictator approach to government” and believes he should have “an ability to do anything he wanted, anytime he wanted.”

Kelly is not the only retired four-star general now sounding the alarm after working at the highest levels of the Trump administration: Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Trump, has described him as “fascist to the core” and “the most dangerous person ever,” remarks reportedly echoed by Jim Mattis, Trump’s former secretary of defense. Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper calls Trump a “threat to democracy,” while former national security adviser John Bolton describes him as “unfit to be president.”

But while Trump’s top national security advisers have largely abandoned him, he retains the zealous loyalty of the counselors he relied on most of all during his presidency: the faithful hosts at Fox News.

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  • Fox’s Kelly response is silence and spin

    Fox’s evening propaganda rotation of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld all completely ignored Kelly’s clarion call on Tuesday night. 

    On Wednesday’s edition of Fox & Friends, the curvy couch crew avoided the Times story while attacking Kelly and Mattis as defiant, disloyal, partisan figures. 

    The hosts defended Trump from a report in The Atlantic, also published Tuesday, that Trump had been so fixated on wanting military leaders to truckle to his whims that he once said, “I need the kind of generals that Hitler had.” 

    For co-host Brian Kilmeade, such a remark would be a reasonable response to what he characterized as insubordination by the likes of Kelly and Mattis. 

    “After a while, while being investigated, there were probably times where he [indecipherable] off,” Kilmeade said of Trump. “‘Wouldn't it be great if generals actually listen? Can you imagine if some people listened to the commander in chief?’ I could absolutely see that happening.”

    “And they know it in context,” Kilmeade added, “But they said, ‘He could win. I’m going to stop him.’” 

    “I could absolutely see him going now, ‘You know what, it would be great to have German generals that actually do what we ask them to do,’ knowing that's a third — maybe not fully being cognizant of the third rail of German generals who were Nazis and whatever,” Kilmeade offered in a second segment.

  • Fox guards its viewers from the truth about Trump

    Fox’s early handling of Kelly’s warning that his former boss is a fascist is characteristic of the network’s strategy of suppressing unfavorable news about Trump.

    Fox typically hides Republican dissent from its audience. Milley’s description of Trump as “fascist to the core” garnered only a handful of mentions on the network. Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, and the Republican speaker of the House during his tenure, Paul Ryan, both said in exclusive interviews on the network that they would not be supporting his campaign — only for Fox to bury that news as well. When several disaffected Republicans spoke at the Democratic National Convention in August, Fox did not air a second of any of their speeches.

    The network’s stars turned other prominent Republican Trump critics, like former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, into political punching bags, helping the former president drive them from office. 

    By helping Trump control the narratives his supporters are exposed to, Fox maintains his iron grip on the GOP base — and thus on the pliant Republican leadership. And next month, if the election is close and Trump declares victory, the right-wing information bubble Fox helps maintain will become even more crucial to his strategy.