DAN PFEIFFER (CROOKED MEDIA): Let me say my bigger point here, which is the Fox -- a lot of very important grassroots work has been done, by Sleeping Giants, Media Matters, a lot of incredibly important reporting from people like Jane Mayer, and Gabriel Sherman to expose Fox News for what it is, which is not some conservative version of MSNBC. It is a corporate-funded racial-grievance machine for the sole purpose of electing Republicans. It exists to protect Trump, it exists to destroy Democrats, news is the coffee grinds in which they smuggle in the cocaine of propaganda. And a great amount of work has been done to make that case to advertisers, to make that case to the public, to make that case to other reporters to take what they say as a grain of salt. We have come a million miles since Obama was dealing with Fox when we were in the White House in terms of public understanding of the danger of Fox. And if all of a sudden 19 Democrats all go on Fox, it undermines that work. Right? It allows Fox's advertising department to go back to the advertisers who have pulled out because of things Sean Hannity has said, Tucker Carlson has said, Laura Ingraham has said and say look: Bernie Sanders comes on here, Amy Klobuchar comes on here, Pete Buttigieg comes on here, and see we are legitimate and to get those advertising dollars back.
JON FAVREAU (HOST): You think that works? You really think that the advertisers would be like oh, I'm going to second-guess my decision to pull the ads because Bernie's on the channel?
PFEIFFER: That's the view of Media Matters, which has been leading the effort to do this. I mean, basically during the Tucker Carlson, Fox has been showing basically dead air because they can't get enough advertisers to fill the inventory for that show. And see, money is fungible so that comes out of Fox's bottom line. So I do think we have to think about the fact that if you do things that help Fox sell more ads, what you are doing is making it easier for them to keep Tucker Carlson on air. You are supporting their white supremacist programming, which is incredibly dangerous to America, right? And I think that is my concern, is that in -- if the Democratic Party all of a sudden embraces Fox again, and I think we're doing it for sort of dumb political reasons outside of the context of your own campaign strategy. We are doing a lot of work to rehabilitate Fox in the minds of corporate America and the public writ large. And I think that is potentially damaging the long-term progressives' cause of undoing Trumpism in America which requires limiting the influence of the danger of propaganda networks, most notably Fox.
