Episode Details

It may be tempting to roll your eyes and say, “there they go again.” But please don’t shrug your shoulders at the now notorious “Fox and Friends” segment from over the weekend, during which the MAGA media outlet tried to pull a bait-and-switch, showing video of a hatless Donald Trump at the dignified transfer of U.S. service members at Dover Air Force Base. As the astute X account, “Bad Fox Graphics” quickly pointed out, that video (see above) was from a similar ceremony last year. Fox apparently did not want to play for its viewers what actually occurred. Trump wore one of his tacky “USA” baseball caps at last Saturday’s dignified transfer (see below) - yet another sign of disrespect from a president with a track record of thumbing his nose at the idea of military service. Fox has since apologized for what it has described as an honest mistake. Please. Nobody is buying that. But this is more disturbing than just another example of Fox blocking and tackling for Trump. This Orwellian incident of bending reality to fit a pro-Trump narrative should be regarded as a cautionary tale for what Americans can expect if this nation continues down the path toward state media in the U.S.

First, let’s deal with the meat of Fox’s defense - that a producer grabbed an old piece of video from its archives and mistakenly played that clip during the Dover segment. Hogwash! There would be no need to do that. As a veteran of cable news, I can assure you the authentic Saturday footage at Dover, featuring Trump in his baseball cap, was easily available in whatever platform the network uses for playing graphics and video on its shows. Remember, the video came in Saturday. With a few keystrokes, any control room team should be able to call up the same clip the next morning. There was no need to dig into the archives unless somebody directed a member of the production team to find the 2025 footage. Further, that old video would have been clearly marked as entered into the network’s internal digital storage system last year. Pardon the double negative but there is no way that this was not flagged to the F&F producers in charge of the Sunday program. The Saturday video would have been easy to find. The old footage would have required some legwork. Sorry Fox, but this doesn’t add up.

Then there are the countless times, of course, that Fox has betrayed the public trust. Let’s not forget this is the same network that was forced to pay a nearly $800 million dollar settlement to Dominion Voting Systems for baselessly parroting the claim that Dominion was involved in an effort to rig the 2020 election for Joe Biden. Dominion lawsuit Add to that the revelations unearthed by the January 6th committee whose members discovered that some of the biggest stars at Fox understood Trump had indeed lost his first bid for reelection and, yes, instigated the attack on the Capitol. Fox and Jan 6 The crown jewel of the Murdoch media empire is, for all intents and purposes, a partisan house organ for Trump. I’ve seen the outlet’s anchors cozying up to Trump at administration events. As former White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham once told me, Fox works “hand in glove” with the Trump White House. Sure, we know how “The Five,” Laura Ingraham, and Sean Hannity would have covered Barack Obama wearing a baseball cap at such a somber occasion. Yes, it would have been nonstop outrage. But the stakes are bigger than that. Today’s Fox acts in many ways like Trump’s ministry of information. And its coverage of Trump’s undignified trip to Dover underlines the dire state of American media today.

In the aftermath of Paramount’s purchase of CBS, that network’s news leadership has already demonstrated a willingness to perf