On Fox, they discussed the murder all night!

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Could that new survey be accurate?  As with any such survey, it might be "right," but it could always be "wrong."

That said, the survey was described as "shocking" by Mediaite's Isaac Schorr. We can easily see why he would have said that.

Headline included, here's what Schorr's report said:  

SHOCK POLL: Trump Has a Positive Favorability Rating, Biden’s Is 11 Points Underwater

A shocking new poll from Harvard University’s Center for American Political Studies and Harris X suggests that former President and likely Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is well-positioned to retake the White House come this November.

In addition to boasting a 6-point (48%-42%) lead over President Joe Biden, Trump’s favorability rating has recovered to the point where he is now seen positively by a plurality of the country. While 36% of the 2,022 respondents indicated that they view Trump very unfavorably and additional 11% view him at least somewhat unfavorably, 30% say they view him very favorably and an additional 20% view him at least somewhat favorably.

These figures look particularly good when they’re contrasted with Biden’s on the same question. Thirty-nine percent view the incumbent very unfavorably and 15% more at least view him at least somewhat unfavorably. Biden’s favorable numbers summed, meanwhile, add up to only 43%. That means that while Trump’s head is above water for what seems like the first time in ages, Biden’s is underwater by 11.

We can see why those numbers came as a shock. Also, we wouldn't assume that those numbers just have to be "wrong"—although, of course, they could be.

Why in the world would half the country be placing Trump in the "favorable" basket? That could reflect the state of certain high-profile policy issues—issues which may favor Trump even more solidly now than when that recent survey was taken. 

Also, it could reflect the clowning which occurs on our nation's dueling "cable news" programs. Consider the distribution of issues which prevailed on red and blue cable last night.

On MSNBC, prime time starts at 4 p.m. (Deadline: White House.). On the Fox News Channel, prime time starts at 5 p.m. (The Five).

Below, you see the way Jesse Watters started The Five last night. This is journalism at its dumbest, but we'd have to guess that the news event in question strongly favors Trump:

WATTERS (2/27/24): It's five o'clock in New York and this is The Five.

[Introductory music]

Shocking details in the slaying of a Georgia nursing student, Laken Riley, at the hands of a criminal illegal immigrant. The liberal media is trying to blame everything except Joe Biden's open borders insanity for what happened.

For starters, Watters forgot to insert the word "allegedly" into his capsule statement.  Absent-mindedly, he had already convicted the man who has been arrested and charged with this brutal crime. 

That was an obvious though relatively minor point. The depth of the dumbness grew when Watters authored this claim at 5:02 p.m.:

WATTERS: The Associated Press is doing everything they can to avoid mentioning the suspect is illegal, referring to him as "an Athens resident" and focusing their headlines on the dangers of women jogging alone.

This silly 47-year-old child was up to his tricks again.

Question! Had the Associated Press been doing everything it could to avoid mentioning the fact that "the suspect is illegal?" 

Actually, no. No, but also sad!

By that time, the AP had published at three basic, full-length reports about the arrest of Jose Ibarra, age 26. Below, you see the headlines from the reports along with the AP's account of Ibarra's immigration / citizenship status:

Saturday, February 24
Police arrest man in killing of nursing student at University of Georgia

It wasn’t immediately known if Ibarra had an attorney who could speak on his behalf. [University of Georgia Police Chief Jeff] Clark said Ibarra doesn’t have an extensive criminal history and is not a U.S. citizen, but he did not know Ibarra’s immigration status.

Saturday, February 24
Georgia university town is shaken by the killing of a nursing student who was out on a run

Jose Ibarra, 26, was taken into custody for the slaying of Riley on Friday, police said. Ibarra is not a U.S. citizen and is from Venezuela, but his immigration status is not yet known, said Clark, the university police chief.

Monday, February 26
Republicans say Georgia student’s killing shows Biden’s migration policies have failed

The man charged with murder in Riley’s beating death, Jose Ibarra, is a Venezuelan citizen who immigration authorities say unlawfully crossed into the U.S. in September 2022.

[...]

U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement says Ibarra, 26, was detained by the Border Patrol on Sept. 8, 2022, after entering from Mexico near El Paso, Texas. He was released for further processing, according to ICE. It’s unclear if Ibarra applied for asylum.

At the time of the initial AP reports, Ibarra's immigration status hadn't been officially reported. The AP reported the facts which had been reported, then added the fuller information in yesterday's report. 

As of the start of last evening's program, had the AP been "doing everything they can to avoid mentioning the suspect is illegal?" That was just the usual persiflage from the silly child Fox has chosen to be the smirking face of its "journalism."

The silly child's silly complaints were based on a single offshoot report by the AP, a report which bore this headline:

The killing of a nursing student out for a run highlights the fears of solo female athletes

In that offshoot report, the AP did not discuss Ibarra's immigration status. 

We can't say it's entirely clear that the AP should have done so in that report. It also isn't clear that the AP should have run that report in its current form at this time at all.

It is clear that Watters' claims—his claim that the AP was avoiding Ibarra's immigration status, along with his initial childlike claim about "the liberal media"—were merely the latest examples of the silly child's inexcusably childish "reporting." 

(To appearances, the silly child's sweeping claim about what "the liberal media" is doing was based upon that one offshoot report by the AP.  Watters behaves in such dimwitted ways on a stunningly regular basis. If some one columnist at some one publication says A, B or C or X, Y or Z, Fox News viewers are instantly told that "the media" said it!)

Waters is a practiced clown, a journalistic trained seal. That said, the coverage of this particular murder has a lot to show us about the way our discourse works under the arrangements we've described as "segregation by viewpoint."

Consider what happened last night:

As we've noted, the Fox News Channel's prime time schedule started with The Five. That program began with a 13-minute segment concerning this brutal murder. From there, the topic drove prime time programs on the channel all the way up to midnight.

Over on the blue tribe's channel, a different judgment prevailed. As best we can tell, there was no mention of this murder on any of MSNBC's programs, starting with the two-hour broadcast of Deadline: White House from 4-6 p.m.

On one channel, this topic drove eight hours of primetime reporting and discussion. On the other channel, the topic doesn't exist. However you may assess the dueling news judgments, our tribes are now living in two different worlds with respect to topic selection and delivery of information. 

Red tribe viewers live in one world. Our blue lives in another. 

What was being discussed on MSNBC last night? Does anyone need to ask? The one standard topic was being flogged:

Trump Trump Trump Trump Jail! Next up, Stormy Daniels!

Today, President Biden has finally decided to travel to the southwest border. Last week, he finally went to East Palestine, Ohio, more than a year after the environmental disaster he was supposedly there to investigate.

News reports say the president plans to discuss "shrinkflation" in next week's State of the Union address. It's stunning to see the way this White House has lost control of basic issues, the southwest border chief among them. 

Beyond that, it's amazing to think that as silly a non-topic topic as "shrinkflation" seems to be dominating the thinking of President Biden and / or his issues team. For a report from page B1 in today's New York Times, you can click right here.

Is it possible that the "shocking" Harvard / Harris survey could actually be accurate? What doesn't kill me makes me stronger, Nietzsche apparently said.

Candidate Trump keeps powering on, a bit like Freddy Krueger. As he does, our blue tribe stars don't seem to be able to stop talking to themselves and to our own blue tribe's highly permissive choir.

Candidate Trump keeps powering ahead! Our White House seems to have lost control of its topic agenda, and our blue tribe pundits can't seem to get their heads out of some very deep sand.

Final point:

We saw a segment on yesterday's Deadline White House which was stunningly unintelligent. To watch Nicolle Wallace lead this discussion on her first day back, you can start by clicking here.

That's just really silly stuff—deeply unintelligent. Cable stars start acting that way when there's no one around with an alternate view—when there's no one on hand to critique their presentations or simply to object. 

Our view? By this time, as derangement and denial seem to be taking over, the mental acuity of our blue tribe's cable news stars seems to be in serious doubt.  

The silly child Watters clowned with that topic yesterday, but then again what is new? In our view, the strength of that emerging topic is clear, with denial and avoidance unlikely to be very helpful. 

(We refer to the Athens murder, and to the southwest border as a general topic.)

Could that shocking new survey be accurate? If it is, our own blue team will almost surely be the last ones to know!