![]() ![]() He goes on, “Covering up what, exactly? We didn’t have any ballots to count and we didn’t have any electoral votes to award.” He describes the “rage” directed at him and the rest of the Decision Desk team, writing, “Amid the geyser of anger in the wake of the Arizona call, Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota, called for my firing and accused me of a ‘cover-up.’” “Me serving up green beans to viewers who had been spoon-fed ice cream sundaes for years came as a terrible shock to their systems.” “Even in the four years since the previous presidential election, Fox viewers had become even more accustomed to flattery and less willing to hear news that challenged their expectations,” he writes. This kind of affirming coverage got worse during the years that Trump was president, he says, and turbocharged the reaction of Trump supporters once Fox called Arizona for Biden. He describes how, over his 11 years at the network, he witnessed Fox feeding its viewers more and more of what they wanted to hear, and little else. At one point in the book, he accuses Fox of inciting “black-helicopter-level paranoia and hatred.” In Stirewalt’s view, the network has played a leading role in the coarsening of American democracy and the radicalization of the right. Stirewalt’s book is an often candid reflection on the state of political journalism and his time at Fox News, where such post-mortem assessments are not common - either because of the strict confidentiality agreements in place for employees, or the loyalty that some network insiders continue to feel even after they’ve left. In the process, the TV host transformed Fox News and became Donald Trump’s heir.
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