Fox News hammered for 'shielding' voters from more extreme parts of Trump agenda

Fox News was accused Wednesday of helping Donald Trump and his Republican allies downplay deeply unpopular policies.

House Democrats launched a task force last week to push back against the Project 2025 blueprint for a second Trump presidency that's being drawn up by conservative groups led by the Heritage Foundation, whose leader then denounced the opposition as a smear campaign against the united effort to restore self-governance to everyday Americans," wrote author Sarah Posner for MSNBC.

"[Heritage Foundation president Kevin] Roberts’ description of Project 2025’s goals as the restoration of 'self-governance' is an audacious deception," Posner wrote. "When it comes to reproductive freedom, for example, Project 2025 yearns for a government that bans abortion pills, restricts access to contraception, and gives Christian conservatives sweeping powers to impose their beliefs on others."

"But as Roberts’ deception implies, these policies are highly unpopular with voters," she added. "So Trump and Republicans have been scrambling to downplay their extremist base’s deep opposition to reproductive freedom while masking their true intentions to other voters."

Project 2025's policies aren't just poisonous to independents or swing voters, they're also unpopular with many Republicans — and that's where conservative media comes in.

"Fox News is shielding its viewers from Republican assaults on IVF and contraception," Posner wrote.

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The network spent just two minutes reporting on the Southern Baptist Convention’s approval of a resolution condemning IVF, according to an analysis by Media Matters, and former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway assured voters that Trump and “every single Republican senator running for election this year" also support the fertility treatment.

"Yet within about an hour of Conway making this assurance, all but two Senate Republicans filibustered a Democratic bill that would have protected access to IVF," Posner wrote, although the network did not report on the introduction of the bill or Republicans killing it.

Overwhelming majorities of Americans support IVF and birth control, and a substantial majority believe abortion should be legal in spite of the Supreme Court ruling striking down Roe v. Wade, so Posner said Republicans can't let voters know their true intentions.

"Trump has proudly owned his central role in appointing the Supreme Court justices who put the final nail in the coffin of Roe v. Wade," Posner wrote. "But at the same time, he and his allies want to hide the consequences. They are doing everything they can to keep a base committed to fringe beliefs happy, while duping everyone else into believing Trump and the GOP’s views are no different from those of most Americans.