The right wing or Republican media has long been engulfed in scandals. Fox “News” fired chairman Roger Ailes and top rated entertainer Bill O’Reilly after they paid out $40 million in settlements for sexual harassment. Fox paid a whopping $787 settlement to settle a lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems after Fox falsely claimed that Dominion stole the 2020 election. Rush Limbaugh nearly lost his show in 2012 after he said he wanted to watch imaginary sex tapes of a graduate student who spoke out against GOP opposition to birth control.
The biggest right wing media scandal of all time was when they waged a campaign against the Covid-19 vaccine in 2021–22. For over a year, Fox’s highest rated entertainers waged a nightly sabotage campaign against the vaccination effort. In addition, Clay Travis and Buck Sexton waged a sabotage campaign on AM right wing talk radio. These are the entertainers who succeeded Rush Limbaugh.
The reason for the sabotage campaign was that the GOP wanted to prolong the pandemic in the hopes that it would hurt Joe Biden and the Democrats. The GOP opposed both mask and vaccine mandates. Trump refused to wear a mask because it would mess up his bizarre make up. And an integral part of the disinformation campaign was waged by the right wing media’s most popular entertainers. This campaign killed their own audience and possibly cost the GOP the 2022 elections.
What made Fox’s sabotage campaign especially outrageous was that 90% of Fox’s staff was vaccinated. The right wing network had a vaccine mandate for its employees. The entertainers who disparaged the vaccine rollout never mentioned it on their shows. In addition, Tucker Carlson refused to answer questions as to whether was vaccinated for Covid-19.
Fox also sabotaged Biden’s vaccine rollout for ratings and profit. A Fox insider speaking anonymously said that the anti-vax commentary is “great for ratings,” and that’s what matters to the network’s owners and shareholders. All that mattered to them was that their elderly and vulnerable audience tuned in. Apparently, it didn’t matter to Fox if their audience died.
CNN — July 20, 2021:
“There’s no dispute that Fox News has been delivering to its audience, of which almost 60% is in the high-risk over-65 age group, dangerously misleading information about the Covid vaccine and its rollout by the Biden administration. A report released Friday by the liberal media watchdog group Media Matters documents that the majority of vaccine-related segments that Fox News aired over the past two weeks “repeatedly fearmongered about and downplayed the need for continued vaccination campaigns.
Carlson emerged as perhaps the nation’s foremost coronavirus vaccine skeptic, using his massive platform to argue that the vaccines are less effective and more dangerous than advertised and that his viewers should be deeply concerned about the campaign to get the public to take them.
Ingraham’s primetime show delves into many of the same themes and she is particularly focused on suggesting that the vaccines are useless by mocking prominent people who were infected despite being vaccinated.
Specifically, Media Matters found the between June 28 through July 11, “Fox News aired 129 segments about coronavirus vaccines. Of those, 57% included claims that either undermined or downplayed immunization efforts.
Even worse, Media Matters notes, “Thirty-seven percent of segments included claims suggesting that vaccines are unnecessary or dangerous.” Just one example cited was Fox News host Laura Ingraham, who on her show last week touted “natural immunity” over the Covid vaccine.”
Media Matters — March 7, 2023 :
“Clay Travis is a prolific purveyor of coronavirus misinformation. He has downplayed the severity of COVID-19, insisted effective precautions such as masks do nothing, and fearmongered about and denied the efficacy of vaccines.
Notably, Travis supported the baseless anti-vaccine conspiracy theory that there is an increase in cardiovascular complications in athletes tied to the COVID-19 vaccine.”
The right wing media’s campaign to sabotage the Covid-19 vaccine rollout was deadly effective. According to the Kaiser Foundation, 92% of Democrats were vaccinated, 68% of Independents, and 56% of Republicans.
As a consequence of the GOP’s sabotage campaign, a disproportionate number of Republican voters were killed by Covid-19.
The states with the highest COVID death rates in 2021:
1. Oklahoma
2. Alabama
3. W. Virginia
4. Arizona
5. Kentucky
6. Mississippi
7. Wyoming
8. Florida
9. Georgia
10. S. Carolina
Source: Johns Hopkins; U.S. Census; CDC
Trump carried 8 out of 10 of these states. None of them are blue states.
National Public Radio conducted a study and issued its findings on May 19, 2022:
“NPR examined COVID deaths per 100,000 people in roughly 3,000 counties across the U.S. from May 2021, the point at which most Americans could find a vaccine if they wanted one. Those living in counties that voted 60% or higher for Trump in November 2020 had 2.26 times the death rate of those that went by the same margin for Biden.
The scale of the preventable loss of life is staggering. According to a recent analysis by Brown University, nearly 320,000 lives nationwide could have been saved if more people had chosen to get vaccinated. The Brown analysis also shows a partisan split in how those preventable deaths are distributed. States that went most heavily for Trump — including Wyoming and West Virginia — have among the highest rates of preventable deaths, while states that voted heavily for Biden — such as Massachusetts and Vermont — had among the lowest. “
According to a 2023 Yale University study:
“Researchers from Yale University who studied the pandemic’s effects on those two states say that from the pandemic’s start in March 2020 through December 2021, excess mortality was significantly higher for Republican voters than Democratic voters after COVID-19 vaccines were available to all adults, but not before.”
Politico on December 8, 2022:
“Republicans accounted for about 80 percent more of the excess deaths than Democrats. Part of this is because of vaccine hesitancy; part of it is because of the age profile of voters.
Now there is evidence that the demographic change spurred by Republicans’ and Democrats’ divergent responses to the pandemic likely cost Republicans a number of key seats in the 2022 midterms. And the fallout, fueled by cross-country migration and even the Covid death toll, could linger into 2024 and beyond.”
Somebody made Donald Trump aware of the fact that his followers weren’t getting vaccinated and that it may cost him future elections. At an Alabama rally on August 22, 2021, Trump urged his followers to get vaccinated. He was loudly booed and quickly backtracked on that advice at the rally. Trump never talked about it again.
Another aspect of this scandal that is never mentioned is that elected Republican officials quietly stood by and took no actions to prevent the right wing media from killing their supporters. That is yet another indicator that Fox and the right wing entertainers on AM radio run the GOP. That is why the GOP is so extreme. As former George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum said: “Republicans originally thought Fox worked for us. Then we discovered that we work for Fox.”
Do you want the GOP in charge again? It is no coincidence that the last two Republican presidents led the United States into disaster. This is the direct result of the GOP’s bankrupt governing philosophy that rejects science, expertise and government itself. The Republicans like to tell us that government doesn’t work and then they wreck government in order to prove it.
Trump and the GOP are overrated by the pundits and the polls. Republicans are celebrating polls. Democrats are celebrating victories.
Be confident going forward. Take nothing for granted. Keep working hard.
It’s America or Trump. Choose wisely.
