Why did Trump refuse to accept the results of the presidential election?
The answer is obvious: for Trump’s sake. Trump is not a gracious loser. The man had forged an image of himself as a winner, boasting about everything from his wealth to his fame, popularity with women, physical attributes and sexual prowess. Trump used his skills to avoid seeing the image that he had built for himself destroyed after his defeat to Biden, whom he had called sleepy and physically unfit for office.
Nonetheless, he lost to Biden. The other reason he refuses to accept defeat is that Trump is determined to get his supporters to buy into the narrative that he is a victim of a conspiracy plotted by his enemies… a narrative that he can invest in and propagate to mobilize them during his new campaign.
We can understand Trump’s motives if we read his personality correctly. However, why did Fox News go along with him, adopting his claims? Indeed, here it is now, paying the price as it lets go of its most prominent commentator, Tucker Carlson. It has undermined its reputation and must pay a $ 787 million settlement to Dominion Voting Systems after having launched a defamation campaign against it and accused it of rigging the elections.
Fox News stepped on a mine that eventually blew its feet off. It got itself in legal trouble, explicitly calling out Dominion without having evidence, which is penalized by the law. Here, we should remember the chorus sung by Trump’s lawyers, who held many press conferences claiming that they would reveal the truth, pushing the deluded idea that their client would return to the White House after the evidence was made public.
However, nothing has come of these promises so far. It was a ploy intended to deceive Trump’s furious supporters, tranquilizing them so that they do not wake up to reality.
As for Fox News station, it was driven by fears of losing its high viewership. This fear left the broadcaster pushing the claims Trump had been repeating, despite its knowledge that they were untrue.
The fact is that his supporters do not like seeing anything he says criticized or questioned. Thus, it became his personal propaganda arm after a while, attacking even the other Republicans who disagreed with him, such as the highest-ranking Republican at the time, Mitch McConnell. Driven by this fear of infuriating his supporters and losing them as viewers, Fox News ignored the most basic journalistic standards, refusing to scrutinize or genuinely examine his assertions, and enthusiastically embracing all of his nonsensical claims.
Defending lost and doomed causes, to ensure higher ratings or that the demands of the audience are met, is like driving a car without brakes. It can go at full speed, but it could also flip over or crash into reality. CNN did the same thing. It also got carried away, pushing false allegations that Trump had colluded with the Russians to win his election. CNN devoted a lot of its airtime to the attempt to overthrow Trump, only for Mueller’s report to demonstrate that these allegations are baseless.
CNN’s credibility was greatly undermined as a result, and it is now trying to rebuild its image, returning to its moderate editorial line and focusing on the news instead of opinion after having been hijacked by a handful of enraged left-wing activists.
Some conservative media outlets knew when to stop, refusing to cross the line and rush behind Trump and his camp. They continued to defend conservative stances, on everything from family values, education, gender identity, immigration, the police, and the environment, reasonably and objectively, without becoming deranged and making things up.
Their approach contrasts with that of Fox News, which is now paying the price. The editorial team is to blame. It should have put an end to the fiasco after things got out of hand. Those who run Fox should have put the egos of its prominent broadcasters in check, as the latter put themselves and their fame before the interests of the broadcaster. In fact, Fox News did so in the past, firing Glenn Beck, a famous pundit who now mixed reality with fiction. After a few deranged rants, Fox made the right decision and fired him despite his popularity. This time, it went wrong.
Defending lost causes and turning into a propaganda machine costs media outlets dearly. Fox News now echoes the Tweets of the far-right. They repeated all the lies about the harmful side effects of the vaccine and the conspiracy theories about the companies making them. They shed doubt about the real intentions of the rioters who stormed the Capitol, portraying them as peaceful protesters whom the police would open doors for.
Although Trump had taken the vaccine, before even leaving the White House as he shared doubts about it, Fox News continued to warn its viewers about the dangers of the vaccine. All of these fears proved nothing more than conspiratorial nonsense. However, Fox was trying to exploit the rage of its audience once again, telling them what they wanted to hear for fear of losing them to competitors.
Nonetheless, this audience is now hurling bricks at Fox after it fired their favorite commentator. In turn, Carlson turned on his former employers in his first tweet following his departure. He spoke about the death of large institutions and the elite, referring to the Murdoch family that owns the network. It was a bitter pill that Fox News had to swallow, and it will continue to suffer from the side effects for a long time.
