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Bannon and Giuliani rip Fox News: ‘Why do they have their thumb on the scale for a loser like Pence!?’

August 4, 2022 | | Print Article

Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon and former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani lashed out at Fox News this Wednesday over the network having seemingly become so zealously anti-Trump.

Speaking on his “War Room” podcast, Bannon kicked off the discussion by complaining specifically about Fox News’ lack of coverage of former President Donald Trump’s speech in Washington, D.C. late last month.

Recall that, despite it being Trump’s first speech in D.C. since leaving office, Fox News chose to completely snub it.

It especially annoyed Bannon how Fox News did, however, dedicate heavy coverage to a speech that former Vice President Mike Pence had delivered hours earlier.

Listen:

“The other day, Donald Trump returns to Washington, D.C., for the first time since he left to give a keynote address on law and order and anarchy in our major cities. Mike Pence gives a 17 minute bromide like a high school kid, cut and paste. Absolutely ridiculous,” he said.

“They [Fox News] cover 17 minutes [of Pence] and they blow a commercial break, which is like a mortal sin over at Fox. They blow a commercial break to cover all of that. Why do they have their thumb on the scale for a loser and a coward like Mike Pence, and they’re up against and trying to defeat again Donald J. Trump?!”

Bannon then asked his guest, former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, for his take. Giuliani responded by reminiscing about the way Fox News had initially behaved during the 2016 election.

“Well, I mean, they were doing it back then before they realized Trump was going to win and they wanted to go with the winner,” he said.

During the early portion of the 2016 primaries, Fox News seemed combative toward Trump, likely because, much like everybody else, the network assumed someone else would ultimately win the GOP nomination.

Giuliani then complained about Fox News snubbing him on Sept. 11th.

“I mean, how can they not have me on Sept. 11th? They went through Sept 11. as if I never existed. It’s amazing. They’re part of the ‘make up history the way you want it to be’ network,” he said.

Not only was Giuliani mayor during the Sept. 11th attacks, but he’d played a pivotal role in directing the city’s response to the heinous terror attack.

However, because of his close ties to Trump, he’s become a pariah to the establishment right.

But it gets worse.

“Giuliani has been banned from Fox News for almost three months. As if the sting of that weren’t painful enough, the ‘9/11 mayor’ learned of his banishment … on the eve of Sept. 11,” Politico reported at the time.

It appears, for all intents and purposes, that Trump himself is also banned from the network.

“It’s been more than 100 days since Donald J. Trump was interviewed on Fox News. The network, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and boosted Mr. Trump’s ascension from real estate developer and reality television star to the White House, is now often bypassing him in favor of showcasing other Republicans,” The New York Times reported last Friday.

“In the former president’s view, according to two people who have spoken to him recently, Fox’s ignoring him is an affront far worse than running stories and commentary that he has complained are ‘too negative.’ The network is effectively displacing him from his favorite spot: the center of the news cycle.”

Two days later, The Washington Post ran its own report reporting that “there are signs” that the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, has been persuaded by the Jan. 6th committee’s hearings “that the former president is losing his political expediency.”

“Speculation over the 91-year-old media executive’s thinking crescendoed after the first set of hearings concluded this month and two of his papers published nearly simultaneous editorials. ‘Trump’s silence on Jan. 6 is damning,’ the New York Post declared. ‘Character is revealed in a crisis,’ the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board concluded. ‘… Mr. Trump utterly failed his,'” according to the Post.

That being said, an anonymous “Fox News on-air personality” did tell the Post that it’s unlikely the network “would ever turn on him,” which him of course being Trump.

While this may be true, it’s clear by the rhetoric being espoused by Bannon and Giuliani that many in the conservative base just don’t believe it …

Vivek Saxena
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