Britt Hume is the managing editor so he absolutely positively had to be in on it. Could be that Murdock went around Ailes to Hume. Ailes is not a editor he hires fires and pays the bills. Plus I think Trump and Ailes get along well. Ailes has zero reason to go gunning for Trump. Trump has been a regular on Fox for years.
I think that you’re on to something with that and as Trump said this morning, he has since had a discussion with Ailes that ‘cleared the air’. Regardless, here are the main points I take away from all this:
1. It was the worst format I’ve ever seen for a ‘debate’…. In fact, the definition of debate doesn’t apply to what Fox put on the air. For the life of me, I don’t know why any Party would feel beholden to any network for hosting a debate…. The candidates and the Party should put their collective heads together and select the format and moderators and then go to all the networks to ‘shop it out to them’ to see who will carry it. Otherwise, it will always be a case of being beholden to someone who likely has an agenda that is to do you harm (since we know that all the networks are left-leaning).
2. A cardinal rule of journalism is that you NEVER inject yourself into the story…. the perfect ‘debate’ should be one that is so well run that the viewer walks away with a ton of valuable information that helps in making up one’s mind about the candidates and scarcely even knows who the moderators are because they were so invisible.
3. It’s fairly clear that the three Fox moderators went into the evening with an agenda and it was to knock Trump out. If this is a fact, no one should ever watch the three of them again and to go further, those within Fox who ‘were in on it’ should all have their employment terminated. If there are no firings, than this means that the ‘agenda’ does in fact go right to the top of the organization and should be a clear signal for viewers to never turn their dial to Fox again….. the same rationale for why I would never watch say NBC again.
4. While the vitriol here seems to be directed at Kelly, she was just the mouthpiece and the other moderators and their ‘handlers’ are just as guilty. With reference to points 2 and 3, the entire affair was unprofessional and Fox as a network jumped the shark…….a phrase that should not be used loosely as it means that they undertook an action that has precipitous results of a permanent decline.
5. However, with regards to point 4, if Trump had of been prepared for Kelly’s question (and Wallace’s later question about the 4 bankruptcies), he could have viewed them as softballs that he could slam out of the park. The fact that Trump wasn’t as prepared as he should be should not be conflated with the stupidity of the question or the agenda of the moderators.
6. Fox needs Trump far more than he needs them. Ailes recognized how bad the shark jumping was and immediately reached out to Trump…..damage control that probably cannot stop the bleeding. In a strange turn of events, it might not be even reaching too far to say that the shark jumping was so severe that Trump now controls the future of Fox.
I think that the interesting to watch will be the upcoming CNN ‘debate’…. Rest assured they are watching what went on with Fox very closely and although this goes against their nature, I’ll bet they are recognizing how pi$$ed off viewers are with Fox and will attempt to appeal to them accordingly.
Hume is firmly in the Bush camp and GOPE born and bread. This was a setup to get Trump at all cost. The candidates were not doing the bidding of the Chamber of Crony Commerce and GOPE shills so they probably called in a favor to FNC and demanded they take out Trump. Megan, Wallace and Brett were all to eager to comply because it made inroads with all their liberal friends in other state run media who ritualistically have to trash FNC.
FNC will lose viewers over all because of this eventually. Their days are numbered.