Rush: Why Fox News Hosted Crazy Bernie’s Town Hall

[mystery-ak]

Why Fox News Hosted Crazy Bernie’s Town Hall

Apr 17, 2019




RUSH:  The Bernie Sanders town hall on Fox News has got people on both sides of the political divide agitated.  The Fox News fans are livid that Bernie Sanders was given the forum and access to that audience, a larger audience than Bernie can find on any other cable news network out there, which is true.  In fact, Bernie created the highest rated town hall yet on any network.  It was by no means a record audience, but for town halls it was: 2.6 million people, 50,000 people in the demo 25-54.

From 6:30 to 7:30 p.m., so it was a big number, but it’s not anywhere near a record.  My appearances on Fox generate no less than four million. Ahem. But for town halls, within that universe, it was bigger than any town hall there ever has been on CNN or PMSNBC.  But not only is the Fox News audience irritated and ticked off and threatening to abandon the network, the left is ticked off!  They are livid at Bernie for doing it!

They’re so mad at Bernie, they’re saying that this is a classic example of how Bernie Sanders is selfish and thinks only of himself and is not a team player, and his appearance is undermining their efforts to destroy Fox.  They’re openly admitting this.  Bernie Sanders showing up — and now, since Bernie had a record town hall, guess who’s raising his little hand there and wants to be next? (impression) “Hi, I’m Mayor Pete! I’m Mayor Pete!

“Can I do one? C-c-can I come on?  I — I — I mean, I did really well in the CNN talk, really good. Can I come on?”  And they’re thinking about having Mayor Pete come on to do it. They are.  But, folks, I need to explain this.  There’s so much more involved in this.  I especially want those of you who are mad at Fox to hear a couple of things. I’m not gonna try to talk you out of being mad, but I think there’s always more to these things than appear on the surface.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I said one of the reasons the left is ticked off at Bernie is because he’s selfish. He’s selfish. He’s not a team player. He went on Fox News to benefit himself!

How can a guy be accused of not being a team player when he allowed an election to be rigged against him and didn’t make a beef about it? I mean, I think Bernie Sanders in one sense is the ultimate team player. He knows full well what happened in 2016. Hillary Clinton and the DNC, Debbie “Blabbermouth” Schultz, rigged the primaries for her. And he knows it. And he took it. And he didn’t make a big deal of it.

He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t accuse them of it. He just marches on to come back another day. If that’s not being a team player, I don’t know what is. Unless, of course, they’ve had a figurative gun pointed to his head, which given we’re talking about the Clintons, nothing is outside the realm of possibility.

But they did. They succeeded in rigging the Democrat primary. They tried to rig the presidential election, and they failed. So they then had to cover up what they had done, and that’s the Mueller investigation, in a nutshell.

Okay. To the audio sound bites because I am gonna get into the Fox News thing here in just a minute, ’cause I’m overrun with emails from people and comments from Fox News viewers who are livid. And not just at Crazy Bernie’s town hall. They’re livid that Donna Brazile’s been hired and all these other Democrat commentators. They’ve all got their theories as to why. And the theories run the gamut.

They’ve heard about the Murdoch sons and they’ve heard the comments that one of the Murdoch sons is very liberal, his wife is very liberal, and he’s tired of being embarrassed when he’s out with his friends, with his friends ripping into him about how conservative Fox is so he’s gonna change it.

Or the pressure that Fox is sick and tired of being considered right-wing because of their prime time programming, and so they’re doing everything they can to tell the world that they’re not a bunch of depraved right-wingers by having all these Democrats. I mean, the theories are all over the place.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now the Fox News story. And it’s kind of fascinating to go beyond just the surface. As I say, a lot of Fox News fans are livid because they even gave an hour to Crazy Bernie. It’s the largest audience in cable news, and a bunch of conservatives, “Why are we turning that audience over to the Democrats? They can’t build audiences like this on their own networks. Why is Fox doing this? It’s not right.”

And so people evolve a bunch of theories. “Fox is tired of being criticized and they want to be respected by the rest of the media, and they don’t like being called right-wing and so forth. They’re just going overboard. They’re destroying what they built. I’m never watching again.”

Then on the left there is so much anger at Bernie Sanders, you can’t believe it, folks. You don’t see it because you’re too busy focused on your anger at Fox. But the left, the radical left, the socialist left, the mainstream left is livid at Bernie for daring to go on Fox. And you know why? Because in their view, Bernie is validating Fox, and he is humanizing Fox, and he is making Fox appear to be mainstream by willingly appearing there. And this is undercutting their efforts to destroy Fox.

What are the efforts that they are employing to destroy Fox? It’s advertiser boycotts. I can’t tell you how filled with rage they are because they are afraid that Bernie Sanders appearing on Fox is going to create new advertisers for Fox who approve of this, which will be financially beneficial to Fox and will undercut their efforts to boycott advertisers of Tucker, Hannity, Ingraham, Shannon Bream and wherever else around the network.

And so they are livid at Bernie because they think Bernie is single-handedly destroying their effort to destroy Fox by mainstreaming it, by giving it credibility, and they are deathly afraid that Bernie Sanders — and Pete Buttigieg is next, that these liberal Democrats doing town halls is going to further mainstream Fox, which is going to make it more amenable to additional advertisers, which will then further undercut the left’s boycott effort.

As angry as you may be at Fox, trust me, they are livid at Bernie Sanders for this. They are single-handedly running these boycott campaigns. They happen every day. They’re so mainstream media now that they don’t even make the news. But they’re running these advertiser boycott campaigns, and Bernie’s undercutting ’em.

Dan Pfeiffer who was a famous Democrat spokesman, Clintons, Obama, “Fox News will use these Democrat town halls to attract new advertisers, which will help keep Hannity and Tucker on the air, undoing a lot of grassroots pressure on advertisers.” The DailyKoS. “Yeah, this is a great thing for Sanders personally. But he’s undermining everybody’s efforts to destroy Fox’s ability to sell advertising.”

And they’re really mad that Sanders set the record. They’re mad that more people watched Sanders on Fox than have ever watched a Democrat town hall on CNN or MSNBC. They can’t believe it! They’re livid! Bernie is a sellout, he’s selfish. And they’re trying to whip up a bunch of anti-Bernie Sanders pressure.

But what they’re really worried about is that every other Democrat is now gonna want in on this. And Mayor Pete (impression), “Hey, can I come on? I want to come on. My husband and I would love to kiss each other on Fox. Man, that would be great, would be great. We’ll do a town hall.” And then Eric Swalwell be right behind ’em and the rest of the Democrat parade and they’ll go, “I want to kiss my husband on Fox, too, oh-ho-ho! That would be so wonderful!”

And they are livid and paranoid that their own Democrats are gonna undercut their effort to destroy Fox’s financial viability. There are a couple other aspects of this thing as well. Some of them are saying, to support their contention that Bernie’s being selfish, “There isn’t anybody watching that’s gonna change their mind and vote for Bernie. Nobody is watching. This is the Fox News audience. They’re not gonna watch a Bernie town hall and decide, ‘Hey, Bernie’s a good guy, I’m gonna vote for him.’ That isn’t gonna happen.”

So they think Bernie’s wasting his time, that all he’s doing is helping mainstream and humanize Fox. It’s one of the reasons why whenever there have been decent profiles of me, the left goes nuts. They can’t stand that I would be humanized. Because their efforts have been for 30 years to dehumanize me, to make me some gigantic bogeyman or what have you. The same thing that’s happening here with Fox.

So for all of you Fox fans livid here at what’s happening, you think they’re selling out, they may be, I don’t know. But at the same time, there are benefits accruing to them financially for this. And it’s turning a bunch of left-wing donors and activists against Crazy Bernie at the same time. So just a few additional things to put in the hopper for you to consider.

https://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2019/04/17/why-fox-news-hosted-crazy-bernies-town-hall/