SATURDAY, JANUARY 31, 2026
Fox & Friends Weekend explains: Yesterday, on a chilly day, they were at it again.
People were marching in the streets--"thousands," or possibly "tens of thousands." marching in "sub-zero windchills." Why were those citizens out in those streets? This morning, at the start of the 7 o'clock hour, Fox & Friends Weekend explained.
Griff Jenkins posed the question. Rachel Campos-Duffy responded:
JENKINS (1/31/26): You know, I was just having this conversation with Ted, our cameraman, off camera. You wonder, are they really--
Are the protesters in Minneapolis dealing with like the most frigid temperatures for a long time because they are into the issue? Or are they being paid?
CAMPOS-DUFFY: They're probably being paid. And they're a little crazy. You couldn't get me out there for any amount of money, by the way. I hate cold weather.
[LAUGHTER]
On Fox, it's standard messaging. Viewers are constantly told that the others are being paid. For the record, Charlie Hurt had kick-started the rumination by saying this:
HURT: It's like a crazy [UNCLEAR]. The crazier you are, the more you like negative 12 degrees to go outside and scream at people.
[LAUGHTER]
In Hurt's world, the others weren't out there stating a view. They were out there "screaming at people."
Jenkins, Campos-Duffy and Hurt are this program's regular co-hosts. To our eye and to our ear, they seem to be three different people.
Jenkins strikes us as wholly sincere. We'd be inclined to venture different capsules concerning the other two friends.
That said, this messaging is constantly offered to viewers of the Fox News Channel. They're out there marching because they've been paid! In our view, there's no way a large modern nation can hope to function this way.
That's an example of the sifting of message which emerges from Silo Red. That said, over here in Blue America, we're also subject to tribal messaging. Consider a highly unusual comment in Michelle Goldberg's new column:
The Fathomless Resentment of Tucker Carlson
[...]
I’ve been thinking about bad faith a lot since reading “Hated by All the Right People,” Jason Zengerle’s shrewd new biography of Tucker Carlson. In the Trump era, many people have shocked their former friends with their authoritarian transformations, but few more than Carlson...
[...]
Carlson’s journey isn’t unique. JD Vance, his closest political ally, has traveled a similar route, from worrying that Trump could be “America’s Hitler” to serving as his vice president. And just like Carlson, who once praised the Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orban for being “hated by all the right people,” Vance has been fueled by hatred. “I think our people hate the right people,” Vance told The American Conservative in 2021. This psychological reliance on loathing, I suspect, accounts for Carlson and Vance’s similar affect. Neither seems, despite phenomenal success, to be very happy. Instead, they radiate spite and grievance, forever making a show of incredulity about the awfulness of their enemies.
Bad faith, obviously, doesn’t belong only to the right. (Just look at the Democrats who assured us all that Joe Biden was up for a re-election campaign.) But Trump’s Republican Party requires of its adherents an exponentially greater degree of mind-warping rationalization. Occasionally this rationalization becomes insupportable, and people break away from Trump’s movement. More often, it’s just corrosive.
Say what? "Bad faith, obviously, doesn’t belong only to the right?" Is Goldberg allowed to say that?
Goldberg occasionally slips such observations into her columns. She sees the problem as much worse in Red America. But she says that an undisclosed number of unnamed Democrats also engaged in "bad faith" in recent years, in the manner she describes in that parenthetical passage.
(Also, perhaps, when the future replacement candidate was sent out to say that the southern border was shut up tight as a drum? When every sane person in America knew that it actually wasn't, often from watching videotape on the Fox News Channel?)
We did this too, President Lincoln once astoundingly said. Given the madness which often prevails Over There within Silo Red, have those of us in Blue America also helped create our former nation's current devolution / descent?
Why were the protesters out in the streets? On the tightly messaged Fox & Friends Weekend, there could be only one answer.
Are those of us serviced by Silo Blue capable of understanding our own tribe's role in this astoundingly dangerous game? Does the inability to see the real world in all its fullness also, at times, afflict Us?
Don Lemon and his friends wanted to terrorize a bunch of white people and their children who were worshipping Jesus. Not sure why Don and his pals aren't facing hate crime charges, too. Hope that changes.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for the government, there are first amendment protections for the press.
Delete
DeleteDemocrats ain't believe in hate crimes no more, Soros-monkey?
They would be more respectable if they were being paid. As it is they're mental patients filled with hate and rage who are at their street therapy sessions where they can try to hide their severe Cluster B derangement under a pretext of "caring." Not one normal person is fooled.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDelete"In Hurt's world, the others weren't out there stating a view. "
What "view"? Are you totally dumb, Bob?
The "view" that the US of A mustn't have any borders, any border-control, and any immigration control? Is this the view being stated out there?
Well, sure, it's certainly a "view" along the same lines as women trapped inside men's bodies, that buggery is perfectly normal, and that we will all die from good weather 5 years from now.
Lol. Thanks for the laughs, Bob, and please keep acting funny, like the crazy-BlueAnon you are!
9:55 is an example of a stupid Trumptard.
Delete“buggery?”
DeleteTriggered, Hillary?
DeleteTrump would have been defeated by 10+ if Democrats did not turn into the most deranged Portlandia caricatures but with the violence and rage of demonic possession.
DeleteNonsense. The people in Portland aren't even like that show -- it is comedy not a documentary. Analyses are showing that vote suppression was the primary reason Harris didn't win. And Russia interfered again on behalf of Trump. Now we are seeing that he was medically unfit to run again and lied to voters about it. The accusations against Biden were a right-wing confession of Trump's own unfitness.
Delete
DeleteYes, Hillary. That's the ticket!
Thanks to Somerby for the earth shattering report that conservatives think or pretend to think that protesters are paid, an “idea” they came up with years ago.
ReplyDeleteUnless of course, you were at the Capitol in J6, or were a tea partier, or the mooks protesting the vote recount in Florida ca 2000, and on and on.
"Say what? "Bad faith, obviously, doesn’t belong only to the right?" Is Goldberg allowed to say that?"
ReplyDeleteGoldberg can say whatever she wants, within the limits of libel laws. The question should be is she correct. Somerby doesn't ask that. Why not? Because he agrees with her. Goldberg is repeating Somerby's own mantra.
Somerby knows the right wing noise machine exists to spread misinformation and propaganda and yet he repeats their messages here day after day. Today, it is that the left is paid or it wouldn't be protesting, and that the left therefore has bad faith when it states its messages. And Somerby says that one of the right's three messengers is in good faith (how can he know that?).
Meanwhile, a new batch of Epstein documents implicates a whole bunch of men, including Trump and Musk, Howard Lutnick, Bill Gates and an aide to Bill Clinton. Crickets from Somerby. The ICE agents in Minnesota have been given permission to round people up without a specific warrant. Crickets from Somerby on that. Somerby doesn't appear to care about the ICE abuses that are the focus of those protesters, just about the weather report and opinions of three right wing goons on Fox. People will say that he was truly fiddling while our democracy was under attack. I don't know how Somerby can live with himself, while calling himself liberal and doing nothing but furthering Fox misinformation and blaming protesters. For what? Marching in the cold or being paid? Recall that every right wing accusation is a confession. How much are those on the right paid, that they would assume the left must be getting paychecks too?
As usual, the first batch of comments today are very right wing. Being johnny-on-the-spot like that is easier if it is not early morning where you live. Europe is 9 hrs ahead of the US, so it is still working hours there, when Somerby's first post appears. And look how ugly their souls are, revealed in bile as they spew hate at the left. Why do they do it? Are they paid? Somerby doesn't care.
ReplyDeleteThe right-wing hate speech against Democrats is probably all coming from just one guy.
DeleteIf you compare Biden's cognitive functioning with Trump, then obviously Biden was as competent to run for another term as Trump was. This idea that Biden was too old and concealed his age from voters is not supported by facts. It was a campaign ginned up by the right and promoted by the NY Times, aided by Democratic donors who were unenthusiastic about his proposed 38% corporate tax rate, who wanted him off the ticket. Those deep fake videos, promoted by mainstream news, did not make themselves. And Somerby did his little bit to push Biden out of the race, without justification by any doctor's report or poor performance (other than one bad debate). The many people who worked with Biden, foreign leaders who met with him, members of Congress, attested to his sharpness and grasp of the issues. No one says that about Trump, who sleeps through cabinet meetings.
ReplyDeleteSomerby had the right to express his opinions and help push Biden off the ticket, then sabotage Harris in her campaign. He does not have the right to come back and claim he is liberal. He clearly is not in good faith when he does that. Nor are his daily essays here anything but distraction from Trump's many failures, his corruption, his bad behavior and his dementia (Somerby won't use that word, even though it is the most descriptive. He is willing to call Trump crazy, because Trump's supporters like him that way. If he were thought to be too old, then those comparisons to Biden would be inevitable.)
Protesters are willing to march in freezing weather but Somerby can't even praise their courage, won't mention Trump's malfeasance, and is part of the distraction campaign to minimize the Epstein misbehavior. Somerby is betraying his country daily. How much is he paid?
I don't think demonstrators were paid, but they were organized by well-funded organizations. Other media are reporting on how the organizing is done and some of the people who are funding it. There is a lot of money behind these demonstrations. Nevertheless, I don't think the demonstrators are being paid. They're just being duped.
ReplyDeleteOf course you think they’re bring “duped.” But why you think anyone who protests against Trump or ICE is “duped” shows how short sighted (or “tribal” to use Somerby’s word) you are, as if you can think of no good faith reason why someone would protest against Trump and ICE.
Delete"well-funded organizations" motivated by the outrage felt by those who recognize Trump's lawbreaking, corruption and bigotry, exemplified by ICE. Being organized in protests is not a crime or even a bad thing. Where does the money come from? From legitimate voters and citizens who want to stop what is happening and are doing so by exercising legal constitutional rights of protest. Duped? Does that mean Pretti and Good are still alive?
DeleteDavid has the nerve to complain because someone donates to community organizations, while Trump grifts off of his supporters and profits off his rallies by charging attendees and selling merch. The hypocrisy of David's hints about well-funded demonstrations is blatant.
Protests are not like an election. There are no laws limiting who can pay what to whom, because this is not a campaign. It is largely a spontaneous outpouring of outrage about how Trump is treating immigrants (legal and illegal) and citizens using a paramilitary guard that doesn't obey the law or the edicts of our courts. The number of people in the streets reflects the strength of our concern about Trump's abuses -- not how much some wealthy person cares, given that they are not putting anyone into office or supporting legislation or doing anything useful to donors. The people are behind this, not the wealthy. The wealthy are mainly busy bribing Trump and laundering Russian money. That David would focus on protester donations instead of the huge graft among Republicans shows David's dishonesty.
"Other media are reporting on how the organizing is done and some of the people who are funding it. There is a lot of money behind these demonstrations."
ReplyDeleteCites or just pulling it out of your ass again?