Watching Fox News after Tuesday’s presidential debate, it’s hard to describe the atmosphere. It was heavy, like a funeral for a beloved cat who’d been eaten by a political demon.
Donald Trump had just spent most of his 90-minute debate with Kamala Harris yelling into the microphone, a complete 180-degree contrast to his last debate with Joe Biden. If he started off calmly, Trump quickly fell into the traps Harris set for him: the size of the audience, his reputation among military leaders, his status among world leaders. The results were disastrous. For viewers who had forgotten what the Trump era was like, it was a stark reminder.
When the ABC hosts finally wrapped up their show and the lights came up on the Fox News panel, the hosts seemed just as shaken as the viewers. It was soon clear that things were bleak when host Jesse Watters tried to argue that there was no winner. “I don’t think the American public is watching the show and thinking that any of these guys won,” Watters stammered, before admitting, “This has been tough. It’s been pretty stressful.”
The network’s chief political analyst, Brit Hume, took a harsher stance. “Make no mistake: Trump had a terrible night,” Hume told Fox viewers. “This was her night.” Hume expressed frustration, complaining that Trump had repeatedly been provoked by Harris, which led Trump to re-raise “a lot of old grievances that he had long thought he’d learned didn’t produce political victories.” Harris, meanwhile, was calm and prepared, Hume said. “She kept her cool.”
“Are you saying she had a good night?” host Bret Baier asked.
“I say that he did,” said Mr. Hume severely.
On MSNBC, the difference couldn’t have been starker. Chris Hayes was seething with excitement. Lawrence O’Donnell gleefully proclaimed that Harris had given the best debate performance ever. Rachel Maddow gleefully read the news of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris to Gov. Tim Walz on air as if it were a message from God.
But at Fox News, the strategy after the initial shock wore off seemed to be to attack the real bad guys: those pesky ABC journalists who asked follow-up questions and fact-checked during the debate, informing the American people that there was no actual evidence for Trump’s bluntly racist claim that the good ol’ pets of Springfield, Ohio were being devoured by Haitian immigrants.
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Harris set a series of traps, and Trump fell for them all.
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Soon, familiar faces from Fox News were called out one after the other. A devastated-looking host, Sean Hannity, claimed ABC was the “biggest loser of the debate” and slammed fellow network journalists David Muir and Lindsey Davis as “far-left hosts.” Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who sounded grateful to be invited on TV, complained about “the obvious bias of the hosts, who constantly fact-checked every little thing about President Trump.” Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called the hosts “a disgrace to journalism.” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis told viewers he much preferred the hosting style of CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash because they “ask questions” and “don’t interrupt.”*
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Eventually, Trump himself entered the debate spin room (a rare move for him) and began something of an impromptu press conference, prompting Hannity to shut Kennedy down so viewers could hear him live. But there was no microphone clearly in front of Trump, forcing viewers at home to strain their ears to hear what he was saying, creating further confusion. Instead of the former president, Fox’s microphone picked up the voices of other people in a room full of journalists and media personnel: “Why don’t they look at her?”, “Why don’t they let her do the performance?”. The spectacle drew chuckles from some.
Trump eventually made it onto Hannity’s set for a televised post-match massage, complaining that he was outnumbered “three to one” but still claiming it was “the best debate I’ve ever been in,” though his sweaty, unkempt hair gave the impression he’d won.
And it was the reaction of the Fox hosts that revealed most about how the night had gone for Trump. Watters offered viewers a glimpse of honesty. In between defenses, he lamented that Trump had moments where he thought, “Oh my God! Where is he going?” Indeed, there was one stark answer for Fox viewers who wondered where Trump had led them on Tuesday night: “This race is getting closer,” Watters said. He said.
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Correction, Sept. 11, 2024: This article originally misspelled journalist Dana Bash’s last name.