OMG!!! the media and the internet is all agog over The New Yorker‘s investigative reporter Jane Mayer’s article on how Fox News was all in for Donald Trump in 2016.
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News channel knew about Donald Trump’s illegal hush money payment to a pornographic film actor ahead of the 2016 election but killed the story because the media mogul wanted him to win, it was reported on Monday.
Fox journalist Diana Falzone “had obtained proof” of Trump’s alleged extramarital affair with Stormy Daniels, as well as emails that showed his lawyer, Michael Cohen, planned to buy her silence in nondisclosure agreement, according to the New Yorker.
But the report, a potentially huge scandal that could have damaged Trump at the polls, never saw the light of day. Fox News executive Ken LaCorte reportedly told Falzone: “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go,” the New Yorker article says.
The magazine adds that LaCorte denied the comment, but one of Falzone’s colleagues confirmed having heard the account. Falzone was later demoted, sued Fox and reached a settlement that includes a nondisclosure agreement preventing her from speaking about the matter.
The symbiotic relationship between Trump’s White House and America’s most watched cable news network has become well established, with one amplifying the message of the other, for example by fanning fears of illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border. The president is a frequent Fox News viewer, often live-tweeting his reactions to the channel during his so-called “executive time”, and he has given it more than 40 interviews (compared to none for CNN).
This and the news that Trump, in an attempted abuse of power, tried to have White House advisors order the DOJ to block the Time Warner/CNN merger because he was mad at CNN, was also reported in Mayer’s piece.
In the late summer of 2017, Trump asked Gary Cohn, then Trump’s chief economic adviser, to pressure the Justice Department to file a lawsuit to block a planned $85 billion merger between the two companies, according to the magazine.
“I’ve been telling Cohn to get this lawsuit filed and nothing’s happened!” Trump reportedly fumed to Cohn and White House chief of staff John Kelly during an Oval Office meeting. “I’ve mentioned it 50 times. And nothing’s happened. I want to make sure it’s filed. I want that deal blocked!”
As they walked out of the meeting, Cohn reportedly told Kelly not to call the Justice Department, saying, “We are not going to do business that way,” according to the source.
While Donnie Doll Hands has CNN in his sites, CNN’s president, Jeff Zucker, is playing the “both sides do it” game and has consistency hired right wing commentators and managers that push, as Trump likes to call it, fake news. Take CNN latest hire, Sarah Isgur Flores, a GOP operative and former spokesperson for the Trump Department of Justice, as the new political editor. CNN has had a bad habit of hiring discarded Trump staff and GOP propagandists like former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA), Jeffrey Lord, Kayleigh McEnany, Jason Miller and Steve Cortes, giving them a platform for outright lies and misinformation almost without challenge. CNN seems to be fixated on hearing White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway filibuster their hosts with her litany of White House lies. If this is Zucker’s idea of “fair and balanced” to win over ill informed Trump supporters, he’s missing by more than a country mile.
Telling us something we already know, that Fox News has been an arm if the Republican Party for years, is an necessity. We need to remember that most Americans can’t remember what they ate yesterday and need to be reminded a they are being fed propaganda by the corrupt Trump administration aided by a news media looking for ratings. While it may seem like we are hearing news we already knew, it is important that when new information and facts are found it be reported to reinforce the truth exposing the criminals and the corrupt.