Kamala Harris punctures the Fox News bubble in her own way

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The alternative universe of the right-wing media ecosystem

You go where the votes are. period

It’s not validating Fox News agreeing to an interview in hopes of reaching voters, especially disaffected Republican women in this case.

The idea that Kamala Harris’ interview with Bret Baier was a kind of Daniel in the Lions Den moment combines the relatively simple task of dealing with a hostile interviewer with the extremely difficult task of penetrating a closed news bubble and which is self-reinforcing based on endlessly repeated falsehoods, incessant appeals to tribal identity, and the delegitimization of people of color and political enemies.

When it came to facing a hostile interviewer, Harris more than held his own against Baier. Here he’s dismissing the misleading clip Baer showed him of Trump speaking earlier on Fox News, which wasn’t one of many recent examples of him warning of an “enemy within” but a tepid defense of his own rhetoric :

WOW – Kamala Harris strongly calls out Bret Baier for airing misleading clip whitewashing Trump’s ‘enemy within’ comments pic.twitter.com/JmIwSQXVjv

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2024

As for puncturing the Fox News bubble, Harris’ presence essentially did, albeit for less than 30 minutes on a Wednesday evening in October. There’s only so much you can do. It reminds me of this smart thread about debunking against prebunking from two years ago by Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M: “Every day our political discourse is dominated by an agenda war (what issues ) we should talk about) and a war of frames (how we should frame/understand these issues). Again, much of our political discourse is about controlling our political discourse.”

Harris didn’t have much control over Fox News’ agenda-setting — “immigration,” by which we really mean the smearing of people of color as “other” — dominated the first 10 minutes of a 26 minute interview, and the abortion never. came up But he was relentless in maintaining his own framing of the issues that arose. The trade-off — losing a battle to set the agenda to fight and trying to win a framing battle — is the calculation the Harris campaign made to decide that it was worth reaching some subset of voters.

And it never hurts to force some reality into the faces of Fox News viewers.

Watch the full interview

quote of the day

Kamala Harris, defending the Constitution at a campaign appearance in Pennsylvania:

Kamala Harris: “We know the Constitution is not a relic of our past, but it determines whether we are a country where people can speak freely and even criticize POTUS without fear of being thrown in jail or targeted by the military.”

(image or embed)

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) October 16, 2024 at 4:36 pm

The Georgia State Board of Elections came down again

For the second day in a row, a state judge has rejected last-minute rule changes by the MAGA-dominated Georgia State Board of Elections.

“Unconstitutional Government Interference”

An advocacy group filed a federal lawsuit to stop Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) administration’s lobbying campaign against television stations from airing ads in favor of passing Amendment 4, that would protect abortion rights.

2024 Ephemeral

• Fox News poll: Trump leads Harris 50% to 48% among likely voters nationwide, a turnaround from last month when Harris led Trump 50% to 48%.
• WaPo: Inside Elon Musk’s plan to trigger a ‘red wave’ for Trump
• WSJ: Republicans rush to shore up Trump’s ground game

Hard day for Project 2025

Two related news:

• In an internal tiff, the former director of Project 2025 condemned the “violent rhetoric” of Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation, which served as the project’s incubator for a Trump II presidency. In an interview with the WaPo, Paul Dans also asked JD Vance to retract the foreword he wrote for Roberts’ book. Dans blames Roberts’ inflammatory public comments for the negative publicity Project 2025 has received
• Donald Trump Jr. is leading an effort by Trump’s transition operation to compile a list of people banned from working in a Trump II administration that includes … wait for it … people linked to Project 2025. “It’s clear that people who work on Project 2025 are blacklisted.” a former Trump official told Politico. Be skeptical, though. Banning Project 2025 may be a pre-election tactic that can easily be reversed after a victory in November.

Strong and Proud

After raising the question dozens of times since July and mostly bobbing and weaving on it, a reporter on Wednesday pushed JD Vance to say he didn’t think Donald Trump had lost the 2020 election.

UPDATE: Donald Trump Prosecutions

• Mar-a-Lago case: With a trial in the classified documents case now dismissed, months or years away at best, two prosecutors on special counsel Jack Smith’s team have returned to their regular jobs at the Justice Department.
• case January 6: U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan rejected the vast majority of Donald Trump’s claims that he should be granted more discovery in the case, but she threw him a bone in some of his sole· discovery requests.
• case January 6: Trump asks Chutkan to advance deadline related to presidential immunity arguments until after election.
• case January 6: Special counsel Jack Smith argues in a new filing that Trump is legally and factually responsible for Jan. 6:

Contrary to the defendant’s contention … that he bears no factual or legal responsibility for the “events of January 6,” the superseding indictment clearly alleges that the defendant deliberately caused his supporters to obstruct and attempt to obstruct the proceedings by summoning them to Washington, DC. , and then ordered them to march to the Capitol to pressure the vice president and lawmakers to reject legitimate certificates and instead rely on fraudulent voter certificates.”

Donald Trump is still trying to silence Stormy Daniels!

As recently as this summer, while settling his lawsuit against Stormy Daniels, Donald Trump’s lawyers presented the porn actress with a new hush money deal, reports Rachel Maddow:

Sigh…

The North Carolina gunman arrested Saturday for allegedly threatening FEMA workers says he was motivated to intervene in person by that flurry of fake social media posts about withholding Hurricane Helene aid, and semi admits to being duped: “I went up and saw there was absolutely nothing there, so I stayed and volunteered all day.”

The full report, including a phone interview with the man, from WGHP in Greensboro:

$50B Double Whammy

Hurricanes Helene and Milton are expected to exceed $50 billion in damage. Only eight previous hurricanes have produced this much damage, but five of those have been in the past seven years.

Jimmy Carter lives long enough to vote for Kamala Harris

Former President Jimmy Carter, who just turned 100 and has been in hospice care since February 2023 when he was just 98 years old, fulfilled his wish to live long enough to vote for Kamala Harris.

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