The truth about Jan. 6 will not bring Trump down as long as Fox News exists: analysis
Supporters of President Donald Trump storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Tyler Merbler/WikiMedia Commons)
December 16, 2021
The revelations from this past week about Jan. 6 should destroy any chance that Donald Trump could win -- or even be allowed to run for -- the presidency again, but he'll likely survive these latest bombshells thanks to the help of some of the conservative media figures who turned up in the new evidence.
The House Select Committee released new evidence of behind-the-scenes efforts to deprive Joe Biden of the presidency he won, and panicked messages from Trump family members, Republican lawmakers and Fox News broadcasters to the White House asking Trump to call of his mob of supporters -- and all those individuals have since denied basic facts about the riot and tried to block any investigation, reported CNN analyst Stephen Collinson.
"The mendacity of the conservative media propaganda machine was exposed by Cheney's reading aloud of texts sent to Meadows by several Fox News powerhouses, including Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, pleading with Meadows to get Trump to intervene on January 6," Collinson wrote.
"Both anchors later condemned the violence on January 6," he added. "But they have been among Fox News personalities who attack the investigation as a political vendetta against Trump rather than a probe into one of the worst assaults on democracy in American political history. And television disinformation is only a small part of the problem; social media networks teem with falsehoods about the election and boost Trump's lies in what is almost a fact-free zone."
But the twice-impeached one-term president's defenders have learned the best way to escape accountability is to flood the zone with lies.
"This week's revelations have been damning for Trump, his former aides and the conservative media propagandists who sustain him," Collinson wrote. "But if history is any guide, the truth will not bring him down."