Fox News was in full attack mode Tuesday night, throwing everything but the kitchen sink at Kamala Harris. From depicting her as a “radical running mate” to mocking the pronunciation of her name to suggesting Joe Biden didn’t actually select her himself, the conservative network’s prime time lineup was in overdrive.
Frankly, if you stripped the network’s programming of any identifying labels or names, and just looked at a transcript of the 8pm to 11pm hours, you’d be forgiven if you mistook the channel for a Trump 2020 campaign livestream.
Of course, that isn’t terribly surprising. The alliance between Fox News and President Trump has been well documented. But the attacks on Tuesday night serve as a guide for what the Trump campaign and right-wing media at large are going to throw at Harris. So I thought it would be useful to provide a tick-tock of the network’s coverage here.
Carlson mocks name
Tucker Carlson started his show attacking Harris as a “one-dimensional” candidate who he described as perhaps the “single most transactional human being in America.” Carlson said that “there are time-share salesman you could trust more” than Harris and “payday lenders who are more sincere.”
Hannity and Trump team up to bash
Sean Hannity’s opening monologue was fairly predictable — and it’s not hard to envision Hannity reciting the same monologue for any of the other candidates who were under consideration. Hannity framed Harris as a supporter of socialism with a “radical extremist record” that is “atrocious.” In Hannity’s words: “This pick solidifies what’s the most extreme radical far-left out of the mainstream ticket of any major political party in American history.” And on and on it went, with Jeanine Pirro openly saying that she was “not sure” Biden himself actually picked Harris and wondering, “Who really picked this woman to be the vice presidential candidate?”
Trump eventually phoned into the show and the two continued beating up on Harris. Trump didn’t quite say anything new or notable. He suggested Biden didn’t have control over the Democratic Party — even though it will formally nominate him for president next week — and railed against the news media for some time. What was noticeably absent from Hannity’s conversation: the coronavirus. Hannity only lobbed a softball to Trump on the topic at the very end of his 30+ minute chat.
Meanwhile, Ingraham scrapes bottom of barrel
Laura Ingraham opened her show by perpetuating the theme from right-wing media that Biden won’t actually be in control of his White House. Ingraham read what she characterized as a “telling tidbit” from Biden’s email to supporters in which he said, “I’ve decided that Kamala Harris is the best person to help me take this fight to Donald Trump and Mike Pence and then to lead this nation starting in January 2021.”