Stephanie Grisham confirms that prime-time Fox News is state news
There were many layers to the coziness between the Trump White House and Fox News: a revolving personnel door, the crossing of ethical lines and access, access, access. On Tuesday morning, former Trump press secretary Stephanie Grisham stressed the most elemental part of the relationship: “That’s just where we went to get what we wanted out,” said Grisham on CNN’s “New Day” while promoting her new book. “They by and large didn’t get tough with us; they just took what we were saying and disseminated it,” said Grisham in an interview with hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman.
When asked whether the network served as “state news” for President Donald Trump, Grisham did say that some people at Fox News practiced journalism. But she confirmed the North Korea model “in the evening” — referring to the prime-time Fox News programs such as “Hannity” and “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” (She also cited One America News as another state-news provider.)
Grisham carries the distinction of serving as White House press secretary without ever having held a briefing, a task she wasn’t eager to undertake given the impossibility of fronting for a lying president. Instead of standing before the White House press corps, Grisham sat with the Fox News press corps, appearing with hosts such as the “Fox & Friends” crew, Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs and Jesse Watters. This was the privatization of democracy.
Story continues below advertisement
Hanging out with propagandists facilitated the work day for Grisham, who juggled three jobs at the time (press secretary, communications director and communications director for the first lady). She told CNN, “I looked forward to going and doing Lou Dobbs because Lou Dobbs would do all the talking about how great everything was and I would just nod and say yes.”
It’s not hard to find evidence to back Grisham up. In a Jan. 3, 2020, interview, for instance, Dobbs railed against Democrats as disloyal opponents who don’t deserve to be partners in governance. Grisham responded, “I couldn’t agree with you more. You’ve got my vote there.” Similarly, in November 2019, Dobbs remarked of the Democrats: “They’ve never produced a president who has done as much as he. Don’t you think they should just, you know, ‘Hip, hip hooray,’ do something to acknowledge his accomplishments?” Grisham just replied with a simple “yeah,” before going on to claim that the cheers for Trump were coming from the “record-breaking crowds at all of his events.”
There were other moments of interest Tuesday, as Grisham spent several segments with the CNN hosts. She admitted to assisting with the degradation of American democracy; shed (more) light on Trump’s petty and vindictive nature; admitted that “I regret any of the lies that I told and I regret working there”; and she gave a less-than-impressive answer to why she’d work nearly the entire four years under Trump (plus working on the campaign) and then decide to blow the whistle and profit from book sales: “I want to sell books so people can read the entire story.”
Story continues below advertisement
On another level, however, Grisham’s input attests to the limits of the soft corruption swirling around the White House and conservative media. There were four press secretaries in the Trump White House: Sean Spicer, Sarah Sanders, Grisham and Kayleigh McEnany. All of them aside from Grisham have or had a gig in right-wing television (Sanders was a Fox News contributor before she launched her Arkansas gubernatorial campaign; McEnany has been a Fox News contributor since March; Spicer is a Newsmax host).
So that leaves one person to tell the truth about telling lies.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.