They could just be hedging their bets, but when DumFux News almost directly countervails their own prime time commentators, I have to think there's something more to it than that. Like maybe they understand how wacky they've made some of their viewers, and how dangerous it is to throw just a few too many signals out to the Lone Wolf cray-zoids - like the freak who threatened CNN.
.@DonLemon: There's "nothing random" about the arrest of a Michigan man who threatened to kill CNN employees. "This is what happens when the President of the United States repeatedly attacks members of the press simply for reporting facts he does not like" https://t.co/b7oXT900iO— CNN Tonight (@CNNTonight) January 24, 2018
Vox:
Fox News just published a story that directly cuts against a conspiracy theory being pushed by the network’s television hosts, congressional Republicans, and the president himself.
Yes, that Fox News.
For the past few days, Fox News has been featuring wall-to-wall coverage of an unknown number of text messages between FBI agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page that had disappeared from FBI server records. Previous Strzok and Page messages had included a number of vitriolic comments about President Trump — even a reference to an “insurance policy” against his election.
So the missing texts were taken by the White House, pro-Trump Republicans in Congress, and many in the conservative media as proof that the FBI was covering up a vast anti-Trump conspiracy at the bureau.
“This is like Watergate but far worse,” Sean Hannity said on his Monday night Fox show. “This reeks of law-breaking, it reeks of conspiracy, and it reeks of obstruction of justice.”
Yet on Wednesday afternoon, Fox published an article on its website by reporter Jake Gibson, saying this theory was flatly wrong. Gibson writes, citing “federal law enforcement officials,” that the messages were deleted by a technical error, not malice — one that had affected not just Strzok and Page’s phones, but “thousands” of Bureau-issued devices between the dates of December 14, 2016, and May 17, 2017.
“The gap in records covered a crucial period, raising suspicion among GOP lawmakers as to how those messages disappeared,” Gibson writes. “But Fox News is told that the glitch affected the phones of ‘nearly’ 10 percent of the FBI’s 35,000 employees.”
So either one of two things is happening here: Fox News has gotten a huge story wrong in a way that deeply undercuts the president, or its big-name talk show hosts like Hannity have been peddling a narrative that has absolutely zero basis in fact — but dovetails directly with a broader attack on the FBI aimed at undercutting special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
We report, you decide.
Or maybe we could call it Fox-on-Fox Violence(?)
Anyway, it's another very strong indication that we've got some serious Daddy State bullshit goin' on - and maybe the Press Poodles in legitimate media are finally wising up and taking it to heart.
But also too, 45* still approaches this like it's all part of the show. He phonies up a villain; he stages a confrontation; he waits to see how the audience reacts; then he adjusts the script (which includes changing facts and flat-out making shit up) to maintain the tension - and to tease whatever cliff-hanger he's ginned up this time around - so the hero (him, of course) always comes out on top.
It's axiomatic that if you stay in it long enough, show biz will make you crazy - fingers in your mouth, jumping up and down crazy.
45*'s trick is that he's using everything at his disposal to make us think we're the crazy ones (standard gaslighting tactics) - and more than that - he's convinced his "base" that they're the only sane ones, and that they can only stay sane by going along with whatever weird shit he comes up with next.
Cult45 - and that kinda explains why the Evangelicals feel so much at home with his malarkey, don't it.
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