[Hot Air] The Fox News break room must be pretty awkward these days whenever Shep walks in, huh? Hannity’s pronouncing Mueller’s investigation "over," Tucker’s running "Tainted Probe" segments, and Shep’s on the air in the middle of the day casually assuring Fox viewers that it’s all BS. The hate mail he gets must be *kisses fingers*. I don’t know why he stays. He’s a big enough name that CNN would be eager to poach him, possibly even in primetime. Maybe he views his relationship to Fox primetime the way Kelly, Mattis, et al. allegedly view their relationship to Trump: Someone’s gotta be in the room to keep the populists calm.
It wasn’t just Shep either. Chris Wallace, another big name on the "hard news" side of Fox, also tried to chill viewers out a bit, albeit in a lower-key way: "I’m not sure that talking about deep state coups against the president or corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, I’m not quite sure we’re there yet." That’s the second clip below. Wallace grumbled a few months ago about certain unnamed commentators on his network piling on the press ("I don’t think they recognize that they have a role at Fox News and we have a role at Fox News. I don’t know what’s in their head."), making him another obvious candidate to leave sooner or later. Although, precisely because the opinion side of Fox has moved so far into the West Wing in carrying Trump’s message, maybe Wallace and Smith have FNC over a barrel. They and Bret Baier are key to Fox’s "fair and balanced" pretensions. Lose the hard news guys and all that’s left is Hannity pounding the table about a "deep state coup" forever. |
