Fox News and Trump are trying to manufacture another caravan crisis to argue for a border wall

[babylonsister]

https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/01/16/fox-news-and-trump-are-trying-manufacture-another-caravan-crisis-argue-border-wall/222546

Fox News and Trump are trying to manufacture another caravan crisis to argue for a border wall
Blog ››› 6 hours 38 min ago ››› MATT GERTZ

snip//

The network’s caravan fixation comes amid devastating new polls that show widespread opposition to Trump’s shutdown and wall. Fox’s right-wing hosts have been trying to use the caravan to rescue the president, repeatedly citing it as evidence that Trump was correct to partially shut down the government.

snip//

Fox’s all-consuming coverage has caught the eye of the president, who regularly watches hours of the network’s programming each day and uses it to inform his messaging.

When Trump called in to Pirro’s show for an interview minutes after her Saturday night monologue on the caravan, she asked about an “emergency at the southern border” and he listed the caravan among his evidence of a “crisis.”

And on Tuesday morning, Trump live-tweeted Fox & Friends’ caravan coverage, using it as the network had apparently intended -- as a weapon in his battle for a border wall.

Link to tweet

Fox’s heavy caravan coverage, the unsubtle way in which its commentators use the issue to promote the president, and Trump’s own role in running with the network’s angle, all mimic what happened in the run-up to the midterm elections last October. As the migrant caravan traveled through Central America, Fox began flooding the zone with fearmongering coverage that stressed the supposed danger the migrants posed to Americans. The network’s commentators urged Republicans to make the caravan their central election issue, and a watching Trump began feverishly highlighting it in his public statements. The president’s remarks in turn turned the story into major news, and it consumed the other cable news networks as well as major newspapers in the final days of the campaign.

The strategy failed. Fox and Trump were able to focus attention on the issue of immigration, which may have energized some conservative voters. But Trump’s vicious immigration rhetoric “alienated everyone else.” Republicans were swamped at the polls and Democrats won back the House of Representatives.

But a few months later, they’ve taken up the strategy all over again.

[Leghorn21]

1. A Wall, or an Artistically-Designed Steel Barrier, or...or

Yeah, “Peaches” is good

ya fkn moron

[sinkingfeeling]

2. Asking for asylum at a port of entry is not a crime, but the law.

[babylonsister]

3. WE know that. They know that.

Hard to fathom motives for me.