Fox News shouldn't have been surprised by the U.S. Capitol takeover: Right-wing media gathered the tinder and Trump lit it on fire

CNN

Trump supporters' siege on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday "was a jarring scene. But no one should have been terribly surprised — particularly not anyone working at Fox," says CNN's Oliver Darcy. "The disturbing scenes that played out on national television Wednesday were a natural consequence of the lies and conspiracy theories about the presidential election that have for weeks now been fed to Trump's supporters. Experts had warned that disinformation about the election results could lead to real-world violence — but many in right-wing media did not heed those warnings." Fox News, he says, was chief among them. "Since the November election, Fox News hosts — many of whom use their platforms to work as propagandists for Trump — have promoted disinformation about the election results and helped spread conspiracy theories aimed at casting doubt on Joe Biden's victory," says Darcy. "These Fox News hosts, along with a cohort of propagandists on smaller right-wing cable networks, talk-radio, and online platforms have shamelessly lied to their supporters and undermined the American electoral system. Which is to say that while Trump may have been the one who lit the match under what happened on Wednesday, dishonest media personalities allied with the President had been laying down gasoline-soaked wood for the bonfire for weeks beforehand." Darcy says the right-wing media has "enormous power over the Republican Party and the direction in which it is heading. But instead of wielding such enormous power responsibly and telling their audiences the truth about what happened on Election Day, they've done the very opposite and provoked anger by promoting the notion that the vote had been rigged and the presidency stolen. Then, to compound what they had done, they lied more and acted as if a free and fair election could be overturned and Trump inaugurated again, giving those audiences who depend on them false hope. Those lies and conspiracy theories have real-world effect, as demonstrated Wednesday by the throngs of Trump's supporters who genuinely believed the election was corrupt and that they were acting patriotically by fighting on the President's behalf."

ALSO:

• Fox News anchors have already begun casting doubt on whether the rioters were Trump supporters: “I’d like to know who the agitators were," said Sean Hannity, while Laura Ingraham said: "I have never seen Trump rally attendees wearing helmets, black helmets, brown helmets, black backpacks — the uniforms you saw in some of these crowd shots.”
• Fox News' Laura Ingraham, Brit Hume and Tucker Carlson helped spread the false conspiracy that antifa played a role in the U.S. Capitol takeover
• Fox News' PR team won't comment when asked about its personalities promoting antifa U.S. Capital takeover conspiracies
• Newsmax covered the U.S. Capitol insurrection sympathetically: "If you believe that there’s a certain romance in anti-democratic death-cultism, then, sure, I guess romance was in the air on Capitol Hill this afternoon," says Justin Peters of President Trump's favorite news network. "As such, Newsmax TV’s coverage of the siege of the U.S. Capitol was a testament to the notion that love means never having to say you’re sorry."
• Brian Kilmeade admits on Fox & Friends that "the president’s behavior has been terrible" since Election Day
• Joe Scarborough drops the F-bomb on Morning Joe in accusing the Capitol Police of opening "the f*cking doors"