Free Republic

Most television news hosts are spokesmodels. They’re attractive and able to read. Somebody smarter develops the stories and writes the scripts and the telegenic anchor adds colorful inflection, emotive facial reaction and mechanical direction. Sometimes an anchor will engage in fiery debate with a guest. When that happens, often it is the producers who are intensely shouting information and talking points down the line to provide the illusion that the statuesque host has some depth. This is why good producers are so valuable, they are the ones furiously feeding cannon shells into the otherwise empty Howitzer (the host). When a...

While recent seven-day averages concerning COVID-19-related hospitalizations across the country have remained stable, health officials in Michigan have noted an “alarming” rise among unvaccinated individuals. In the first three weeks of March, officials tallied a 633 percent increase in hospitalizations among adults ages 30-39 and an increase of 800 percent among those ages 40-49.

Fox News national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin reported Friday that two anonymous former “senior” U.S. officials had confirmed “key parts” of the Atlantic‘s story about the president, but could not confirm “the most salacious” part.

@ChadPergram A) GOP WI Sen Johnson on Fox: I'm one of the few people pushing back on their inaccurate narrative that there were thousands of armed insurrectionists intent on overthrowing the government on January six. I've condemned what happened. I condemn the breach. I condemn the violence. @ChadPergram B) Johnson: I was comparing what happened on January 6 to the over 500 riots that occurred during the summer..They want us to forget those riots..they do it by reflexively playing the race card. There was nothing racial in my comments whatsoever.

Hours after news broke that Fox News cancelled Lou Dobbs’ Fox Business Network show, Dobbs was active on Twitter thanking people defending him, and retweeting some people taking shots at the network. In a statement provided to Mediaite on the cancellation, Fox News said, “As we said in October, FOX News Media regularly considers programming changes and plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on FOX Business – this is part of those planned changes. A new 5PM program will be announced in the near future.” The news of Lou Dobbs Tonight being cancelled...

If Fox News was already dead to you, it is probably even deader to you this morning. – Lou Dobbs, the pugnacious anchor and loyal Trump guy on Fox Business, saw his show cancelled yesterday in the wake of being named as a defendant in a $2.7 billion lawsuit against the network by Smartmatic. Dobbs has been a fixture on Fox Business for a decade, and has remained a rare bright spot on the network as most of its other programming has veered to the left, causing a collapse in the “news” operation’s ratings in recent months.

Fox News, which has watched its ratings leadership slip since the election loss of President Trump, announced a major revamp of its daytime lineup Monday. The conservative-leaning network, which is typically the dominant leader among cable news viewers, has seen CNN and MSNBC surpass it in the Nielsen ratings in many hours throughout the day since the Nov. 3 election. -snip- The major change is the move of "The Story With Martha MacCallum" out of its 7 p.m. Eastern time slot to make way for a new opinion show, tentatively named "Fox News Primetime," which will have a rotating group...

The rise of Newsmax TV has caused a major shake-up at Fox News, which announced Monday that its early evening show host Martha MacCallum has been demoted back to an early afternoon slot, among other changes to the lineup. "Newsmax's consistently strong numbers during the day and especially at the 7 p.m. ET slot has caused panic at Fox, which rarely makes lineup changes," Newsmax said in a statement Monday, adding with a wink, "The Fox is on the run." MacCallum's "The Story" had long been the #1 cable news show in the 7 p.m. time slot, until Newsmax TV's...

November's Ratings Collapse for Fox News has been catastrophic. From record ratings during Election week, to massive collapse by Wed 12/2. Here are those Fox ratings losses according to Nielsen. Cavuto -81% Fox/Friend -78% Sandra -77% Hemmer -76% Perino -75% McCallum -72% Outnumbered -72% Baier -69% The Five -62% Hannity -55% Ingraham -53% Carlson -51%

NEW YORK — Now that his largely invisible network has suddenly been flooded by fans of President Donald Trump, Newsmax television personality Grant Stinchfield is puffing out his chest. “They don't know what to do with all of us,” Stinchfield said on the air Monday night. “We're killing it here on Newsmax with a tactic they've never tried. It's called the truth, the stone-cold truth, and once you get a taste of it, you will never tolerate being lied to again.” In many cases, the opposite is true. Newsmax, the television arm of a conservative website, has reported falsely that...

Pro-Trump activists have found a new online home to protest vote-counting less than 24 hours after Facebook shut down an organizing group of more than 365,000 members for breaking its policies around inciting violence. Thousands have flocked to such groups on MeWe, a social platform emphasizing users' rights and privacy that anti-lockdown protesters turned to earlier this year after they were kicked off Facebook. Nearly a dozen "Stop the Steal" groups have popped up since Thursday on MeWe, Business Insider has found, filled with posts claiming voter fraud and organizing state-by-state protests of election results. "Stop the Steal," a conspiracy...

Fox Business News host Maria Bartiromo announced on Thursday evening that she was leaving Twitter and joining Parler over the former social media platform's censorship policies. "This is the same group who abused power in 2016. I will be leaving soon and going to Parler," Bartiromo wrote in a tweet. "Please open an account on @parler right away." Bartiromo's comments come shortly after she had multiple tweets flagged by the social media platform for being "misleading about an election or other civic processes." On Wednesday night, she shared an article published by The Federalist that had a headline which read,...

For those of you that might have tuned in and did not see Fox News' "Justice" with Judge Jeanine Pirro on Saturday night, sources told Newsmax the show was suspended over a spat on the network's coverage of President Donald Trump. Sources close to the network tell Newsmax, because she made a very staunch defense of President Trump and wanted to expose the vote fraud that took place in the election, Fox News decided not to air her show. It had extended coverage of Democrat Joe Biden's acceptance speech of a contested election. The sources gave no inclination of whether...

My favorite definition of a cynic: a premature realist. Today we are all cynics or damn well should be. Show me an American who trusts politicians, polls, news organizations and social media bigs who fancy themselves our new masters and I’ll show you a fool. Regarding the forecasts of how the election would go, Casey Stengel’s line about the hapless 1962 Mets fits the moment: “Can’t anybody here play this game?” As we stand on the smoking ruins of shattered predictions, the answer is no, a thousand times no. The usual suspects are bumblers — and that’s being kind because...

in my view, President Trump’s performance was measured, on message, and controlled. Thus, for any remaining undecided voters and Republican-oriented voters who may have been discouraged by the president’s chaotic first debate, Trump’s performance Thursday night likely reassured them and may even have led some to resolve to cast ballots in his favor. Moreover, the president’s performance reinforces an argument I made in a Fox News op-ed earlier this week: that Biden is ahead, but his victory is not a forgone conclusion. And make no mistake, it is within the realm of possibility that Trump will stage a comeback that...

President Trump told NBC anchor Savannah Guthrie on Thursday that he didn't know about the conspiracy theory QAnon, repeatedly pushing back on Guthrie's questioning about the issue. "Let me ask you about QAnon," Guthrie said during the town hall event on Thursday. "It is this theory that Democrats are a Satanic pedophile ring and that you are the savior of that. Now, can you just once and for all state that that is completely not true and disavow QAnon in its entirety?" "I know nothing about QAnon," Trump responded.

Steve Scully got a clear vote of confidence last Friday, from a host of popular Republicans the morning after a tweet from his Twitter account sparked an outcry in the political media. Fox News Host Chris Wallace, Fox News analyst Karl Rove, former Trump White House press secretary Sean Spicer, former chairman of the RNC Frank Fahrenkopf, came to Steve Scully's defense. These comments did not age well, after Steve Scully admitted to lying. See their comments....

President Trump on Monday defended his tax history, saying that he paid “millions of dollars” to the Internal Revenue Service and argued he is "entitled" to tax credits "like everyone else" in the wake of a New York Times report that said he paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

Fox News had high praise for Michelle Obama’s address at the Democratic National Convention Monday night. Obama denounced President Donald Trump for creating chaos and division and failing to lead with empathy and competence. She urged Americans to elect former Vice President Joe Biden. “It’s very difficult to try to connect with an audience without an actual audience there with you but she has the ability to connect with people through the screen,” Fox News anchor Dana Perino said. “You got the sense when you talk about authenticity, she has it in spades. “She has that voice, she has clarity,...

In a new Op-Ed for The Hill, Fox News contributor Juan Williams argues Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic will hurt him with older voters. Williams brings up the examples of Stacey Nagy, who wrote in her husband’s newspaper obituary. “They blame his death…on Trump, Abbott and all the politicians who did not take this pandemic seriously and were more concerned with their popularity and votes than lives.”