'Living under dictatorship': Historian says Fox News just hit 'outright North Korean' low

Vanderbilt University historian Nicole Hemmer believes that Fox News has hit a new low in its coverage of President Donald Trump's global trade war.

In an interview with The New Republic's Greg Sargent, Hemmer marvels at the way Fox News spun Trump backing off his most extreme tariffs as a four-dimensional chess move rather than a panic move that came in reaction to turmoil in bond markets.

"It is fascinating to see Fox move from state TV to outright North Korean television," she said. "At this point, they’re just chasing whatever Trump does and trying to provide cover as much as possible. When the tariffs were in place, they were his manly tariffs, People were going to feel pain, but they were going to get better afterward. And now that the tariffs have been changed—not removed, but changed—it is this celebration of 'the art of the deal.'"

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Hemmer also wondered whether Fox would continue to bring on correspondent Charles Gasparino after he reported that Trump's fear of bond market volatility led him to back off his most extreme measures.

Hemmer also said that the type of propaganda being espoused on Fox News has bled over to Trump's own administration officials, which she again said was reminiscent of living under a dictatorship.

"Certainly cabinet members have praised the president that they serve under, but this level of over-the-top ... Again, there are few examples better than North Korea for this type of: We must flatter in the most extreme terms this president because that’s what he responds to, and that’s how you get into his good graces and stay in his good graces," she said. "It was one thing in the first term where it was something novel. It was one of those things where you’re like, People are sucking up to Trump. But combined with Trump’s consolidation of executive power [and] the way that he is ruling as an authoritarian, that actually casts this flattery in a different light—because it is combined with this unprecedented use of executive power."