Fox News is creating a forcefield around Trump as indictments pile up: report

Donald Trump and his supporters are demanding that House Republicans protect the former president from intensifying prosecutions, and it's clear where that message is being broadcast, the Washington Post reported Monday.

The ex-president and his staunchest supporters have called for House speaker Kevin McCarthy to defund Justice Department investigators and impeach President Joe Biden to thwart the prosecutions, and the Post reported that new polling shows that Fox News and other right-wing media have convinced Republican voters that Trump is innocent.

"The intensifying charges against Trump have led him and his supporters to demand more from the House GOP: They want Biden impeached, more probes of the Biden family’s supposed crimes, Attorney General Merrick Garland held in contempt of Congress and more," wrote Post columnist Greg Sargent, citing new reporting from Punchbowl News.

"But those things could lead to tough votes for vulnerable members. So McCarthy and GOP leaders are fending off this pressure bytentatively supporting a mere precursor inquiry to the impeachment of Biden and letting House GOP committees run wild with lurid tales of Trumpian persecution."

A new poll from the New York Times and Siena College shows Trump with commanding leads over other GOP candidates of likely GOP primary voters, of whom 71 percent don't believe he committed serious federal crimes, but the survey also reveals that Fox News viewers are far more likely to side with the former president over prosecutors.

"A large percentage of these GOP primary voters — over 40 percent, according to Siena’s polling director — rely on Fox and/or other right-wing media sources for their news," Sargent wrote. "And voters who rely on other right-wing sources give answers similar to those of Fox viewers."

A whopping 91 percent of GOP voters who rely on right-wing media don't believe Trump committed serious crimes, compared to 52 percent of GOP voters who consume mainstream media, and 83 percent of Fox-watching Republicans believe Trump exercised his right to contest his 2020 loss, while 58 percent of mainstream GOP viewers believed he acted within his rights by trying to overturn the election results.

The poll also found 85 percent of those who rely on Fox say Republicans must stand by Trump, while only 9 percent disagreed. Those numbers were 49 percent and 46 percent for GOP voters who consume mainstream sources.

"We will never know whether the GOP primary electorate would have been this in thrall to the doctrine of Trump’s absolute innocence if Republican leaders had condemned his conduct at earlier points," Sargent wrote. "But the role of Fox News and right-wing media in this disaster for democracy seems painfully clear."