What They’ll Do for Donald Trump …

In Robert Bolt’s 1960 play A Man For All Seasons, an overly ambitious little man named Richard Rich commits perjury against his friend, a great man of conscience, Sir Thomas More – perjury that he knows will send Thomas to his death.

And why does he do it? Because Richard Rich needs to be somebody bigger than he is. He needs recognition. He betrays his friend in exchange for a job he thinks will give him status – Attorney General of Wales.

After the trial, when Sir Thomas knows he is doomed, he confronts Richard Rich and utters a verse from the Bible – with a twist.

“It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … but for Wales?” – making sure Richard, a status-seeking careerist, understands what he has just done: that he gave his soul not for the whole world – but for a trivial job in a trivial place. None of us is pure. Few of us are as noble as Sir Thomas More. We make accommodations. Sometimes we convince ourselves that our motives are noble, when in fact they’re selfish.

But if we’re going to sell out our principles, we should be motivated by something of great significance. Each of us can decide what that might be, what would cause us to abandon our long held beliefs.

Selling out always comes with a price.

Sir Thomas lived in the 16th century, but his stinging observation holds a message even now, some 500 years later. And so in his final days in office, a question comes to mind about our current president: If it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world … why do it for Donald Trump?

Donald Trump no longer fascinates me. By now, I know who he is and I wish he would just go away and leave us alone, his legitimate accomplishments notwithstanding.

But his most loyal supporters are another matter. Not his rank and file passionate allies, many of whom aren’t as formally educated as the liberal and progressive elite. They aren’t as sophisticated, at least not as the elite define sophistication. They’re more likely to vacation in Branson, than in Martha’s Vineyard. They felt the scorn, the disrespect of the elite class. And they saw Donald Trump as a man who cared for them.

They also understood that he wasn’t the Hitler or Mussolini his unhinged critics claimed he was.

And I’m not talking about the Latinos or African Americans who voted for Donald Trump in numbers many on the left found both surprising and troubling. Under Donald Trump’s stewardship the economy helped minorities and they understandably wanted four more years with him at the helm. They’re not the ones who fascinate me. I understand why Donald Trump was and still is a hero to many of them. But the media elite, the ones who abandoned their conservative principles for Donald Trump; the ones who sacrificed their dignity for Donald Trump … they fascinate me.

In a recent column on this site, John Daly names names. “People like Mollie Hemingway, Mark Levin, and Greg Gutfeld, who were once outspoken Trump critics, turned into some of the president’s most shameless sycophants and defenders,” he writes. “When one looks back atNational Review’s famous ‘Against Trump’ issue from 2016, they’ll find contributor names like , Ben Domenech, Brent Bozell, Katie Pavlich, and Dana Loesch … all of whom now bend over backwards not to say anything the slightest bit disparaging about Trump. Some [were] even busy … promoting Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories.”

There are others in the media who sold out for Donald Trump, a man who if it suited his purpose would abandon them without a second thought.

Does really admire a chronic liar and narcissist like Donald Trump? I have trouble believing that he does. Yet Rush can’t say enough good things about Mr. Trump. Such is the hold our soon-to-be former president has on otherwise strong willed individuals.

Evangelical leaders are just as bad, maybe worse. I understand why they believe Donald Trump would be more in tune with their conservative values than Joe Biden.

But surely they know that Donald Trump maliciously ridicules and humiliates his opponents. That he mocks their looks. That he makes fun of their physical disabilities. That he lacks empathy. If white evangelical leaders don’t like Joe Biden, fine. But enthusiastically supporting a man like Donald Trump who has trashed so many Christian values strikes me as shameful.

And in Donald Trump’s world, no one is safe, not even his political allies. Just ask Jeff Sessions, his earliest supporter in the U.S. Senate. One “wrong” move and he was banished — and humiliated by his former boss on the way out.

Or more recently, ask the president’s treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who spent many long hours negotiating a COVID relief bill with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer only to have Donald Trump blow the deal up at the last minute, calling it a “disgrace.”

Loyalty is important to Mr. Trump – but it’s a one-way street.

In addition to everything else, “Trump has taught his opponents not to believe a word he says, his followers not to believe a word anyone else says, and much of the rest of the country to believe nobody and nothing at all,” as Bret Stephens put it in .

The sycophants must know this. Maybe they’re afraid of Donald Trump, afraid of what he might say about them if they held him accountable. Maybe they just like being close to power, to give the president advice, to convince him that he’s as wonderful as he thinks he is. Don’t overestimate the lure of a pat on the head from the man at the helm. Maybe the pols fear retribution from his adoring base if they stand up to him. But is any of that worth their dignity?

Or to put it another way: “It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world” … but for Donald Trump? Where Will Media-Conservatism Go After Trump?

By about six months into the Trump presidency, most media- conservatives had figured out how to win back over the freshly remodeled right-wing audience they previously thought they understood.

Standing up to runaway spending and big-government overreach were no longer winning themes. Neither were promoting free markets, personal responsibility, and moral decency. Constitutional conservatism? That was yesterday’s news. So was the importance of strong and competent American leadership both domestically and abroad.

A few things remained the same, like the culture war and those evil left-wing progressives hell-bent on destroying the America we love. But the broader formula that would all but assure those who followed it a healthier and more lucrative future in the business (at least for the next four years) was Trump fandom. I’m talking about the folklore portrayal of Donald Trump as America’s great savior, a man who defied enormous odds to win the presidency, and was working tirelessly to deliver the country from years of societal decay brought on by the political left and the government establishment. For that, according to those who’d adopted the narrative as the central thesis of their brand, Trump deserved celebratory, unconditional loyalty and obedience. And those who stood in his way, or even so much as criticized him, or questioned his judgment, rhetoric, and actions, were the enemy.

Often that enemy was the media, usually the liberal media but really anyone who was reporting stories that were inconvenient to the president. Conservative commentators who rejected were seen as especially horrid individuals — traitors in fact, even when they hadn’t changed their political and ideological positions on anything.

Particularly unsettling was watching a number of 2016 election-era “Never Trump” conservatives, upon realizing what Trump’s White House tenure could mean for their careers, do a rhetorical about-face on much of what they’d stood and spoken out for over many years. They even started publicly attacking their conservative colleagues (including friends), for still saying what they themselves had been saying just months earlier.

Principles were out. Trump-partisanship was in. And little has changed since then.

Those who chose to maintain their intellectual consistency, personal integrity, and conservative sensibilities paid a significant professional price in the era of Trump — a price that included lost radio shows, less air-time, contributor contracts not being renewed, speaking engagements drying up, and far fewer web-hits.

Those who sold out, by and large, reached new professional heights.

Looking back at that time, it’s still pretty striking how easily the political makeover came for some. People like Mollie Hemingway, Mark Levin, and Greg Gutfeld, who were once outspoken Trump critics, turned into some of the president’s most shameless sycophants and defenders. When one looks back at National Review’s famous “Against Trump” issue from 2016, they’ll find contributor names like Glenn Beck, Ben Domenech, Brent Bozell, Katie Pavlich, and Dana Loesch… all of whom now bend over backwards not to say anything the slightest bit disparaging about Trump. Some are even busy at the moment promoting Trump’s 2020 election conspiracy theories.

But as stark as such changes were, Trumpist commentary proved to be pretty simple, at least from an argumentative standpoint. It was definitely easier than laying out intellectual, good-faith thoughts on nuanced political topics. All one had to do is follow a cookie-cutter approach:

You begin with the premise that anything you said prior to the Trump era no longer applies, because the stakes are so much higher now. It’s even acceptable to pretend you never said those things in the first place. Sure, others will occasionally draw attention to your past statements, to point out your breathtaking hypocrisy, but you can just ignore those people because Trump and the Trump base — your key audience — don’t care about such things. All that matters is what you’re saying now, in service to Trump.

Next, you insist that the good things that have happened during Trump’s tenure (and there certainly have been some good things) are historically unprecedented in their greatness, and wouldn’t have come to fruition under any other president’s leadership. It doesn’t matter that in some cases Trump had little or nothing to do with them. It doesn’t matter that in some cases, good decisions he has made were so elementary that they would have been made by any president, or that they weren’t even “unprecedented” to begin with. It doesn’t even matter when the perceived victories are purely symbolic. Under Trump, they are glorious, single-handed achievements for which he should be recognized as one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Lastly, you rely on the whataboutism game whenever you can. It is effectively your Trump card to be played whenever you find yourself in the unenviable position of having to comment on the latest, outlandish and indefensible thing our president has done. Sure, true believers in Trumpism (like Lou Dobbs) will directly defend literally anything and everything the president does, but those who see value in not coming across as psychologically deranged on national television prefer the less clinical whataboutism route. The tactic lets you run interference for Trump by evoking similarly bad past behavior from someone on the political left (often in the mainstream media). Doing so serves as a magical defense against whatever Trump just did.

Sometimes the whataboutism comparisons line up, including in weight and scope, but far more often they don’t. A lot of times they’re not even in the same ballpark, and require rather absurd straw-man support from “the deep state” and “the establishment” to pull the pieces together. And when even that doesn’t work, it’s the unhinged reaction from some on the left, to whatever Trump just did, that becomes the real topic of concern.

But it all comes back to the narrative that Trump’s behavior is always defensible because liberals (and his other opponents) have created — in some way, shape, or form — a precedent or need for it. And those who preach this narrative can pull it off without drawing much attention to their past or current condemnations of the other side’s conduct, because — again — hypocrisy doesn’t matter when it’s delivered in service to Trump. But now, the Trump era (at least in its current form) is almost over. In just a few weeks, Donald Trump will be gone from the White House, and Joe Biden will be sworn into office. While I don’t expect for a second that Trump will fade from the media spotlight (at least not anytime soon), it will be interesting to see how media-conservatives who went all-in on Trumpism will adapt to the new environment.

The culture war and “liberals gone wild” stuff will certainly remain big themes. So will liberal media bias. Those items transcend the landscape, regardless of who’s in power, and often deserve to.

But I suspect we’ll see far less whataboutism once Trump and his antics are no longer occupying every news cycle. His conduct as a private citizen won’t demand nearly the attention nor clean-up work that it currently does, and no one’s going to spend a lot of time running interference for Trump’s goofy acolytes in congress, like Matt Gaetz. I do, however, expect whataboutism to grow far more prevalent on the left, after four years of the “anything goes” mentality from Trump and the right. It’s hard to imagine that arsenal of protective shields going unused.

And of course, whenever they do use it, the right will cry foul without a hint of expressed irony.

Will media-conservatives suddenly care about conservative things again? Like moral character, personal responsibility, and small-government principles? Will they go back to lambasting careless, demagogic political rhetoric? Hey, remember how the national debt was a really big deal… about $7 trillion ago?

While it remains unclear if these people will wondrously revert back to their old selves from four or five years ago, they’ve already proven that past positions and rhetoric don’t particularly matter… which means it’s entirely feasible. Or perhaps they’ll just keep saying whatever they think the base wants them to say on any given day. Confirmation bias, after all, is a very powerful thing.

I’m guessing a lot of these individuals don’t even know the answer themselves, and are still trying to figure it out.

It will also be interesting to see what’s in store for those in the conservative media who didn’t sell out to Trumpism. I’m talking about that much maligned crowd who took a huge professional risk by continuing to play things straight. Jay Caruso of the Washington Examiner recently recognized some of these folks in his weekly newsletter. It was a good starter list. To it, I’d also add Jay himself, Guy Benson, Stephen Hayes, and this website’s owner, Bernie Goldberg.

“They all decided the proper path meant telling the truth instead of choosing sides,” wrote Caruso.

I think that’s an important point, and I hope it carries some weight as things begin to settle in the post-Trump media landscape. What I do know is that the Trump-era made clear which conservative commentators were saying what they responsibly felt their viewers, listeners, and readers, needed to hear… and which ones chose to cash in by feeding enthusiastic Trump fans a steady diet of red, hyper-partisan meat.

Let’s hope that sincerity and credibility matter a bit more in the future.

—

Note from John: I’ve been writing a weekly non-political newsletter since October, covering topics like art, music, humor, travel, society and culture. I’ve been surprised by, and thankful for, how many people have been signing up for it. If it sounds interesting to you, I’d love for you to subscribe (it’s free). Order John A. Daly’s novel “Safeguard” today!

The Five’s ‘Mitt Derangement Syndrome’

A wise man once said, “Friends don’t let friends watch ’s The Five when Dana Perino is on vacation.”

Well, I’m not sure how wise that man actually is. He’s a guy I follow on , and he at least seems to have a good head on his shoulders. The two of us commiserate from time to time over the current state of the conservative media.

The joke (though it’s not really a joke) is that Perino, who’s been co-hosting The Five since its debut in 2011, is the only levelheaded voice that remains on the nightly panel. And when she’s not there to balance out the commentary with some reason and a healthy dose of intellectual consistency, her heavily partisan colleagues (with the exception of whoever happens to be sitting in the liberal seat that night) tend to use the opportunity to engage in a no-holds-barred competing display of slobbering Trump sycophantism that would make even blush.

That was certainly the case last Wednesday, when morbid curiosity led me to tune into a Perino-less episode just to see how four fifths of the panel would spin Trump’s extraordinary public statements from earlier that day, in which the president ripped General Mattis’s performance as Defense Secretary, and offered a bizarre defense of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The Twitter hot-takes from Trump’s cabinet meeting were pretty amusing:

Watching clips of that train wreck, you can see John Bolton in the background looking as if he wanted to hide behind his mustache.

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) January 2, 2019

Sad news: I have gone deaf just from imagining the screaming that would have followed if Obama had made the foreign policy remarks Trump made during his cabinet meeting today — Leon Wolf (@LeonHWolf) January 2, 2019

I’d watch a 12-hour episode of Drunk History in which Trump, stone-cold sober, explains the past 50 years in foreign affairs

— Allahpundit (@allahpundit) January 2, 2019

Unsurprisingly, the show’s producers chose to lead the show with a different story: Mitt Romney’s Washington Post op-ed from New Years Day, where Romney (in addition to laying out his plans as a freshman U.S. Senator) criticized President Trump’s lack of character.

The Five knows its audience, and political feuds with Trump are always a much hotter topic with that crowd than the president’s typically hard to follow (and even harder to defend) foreign policy ramblings. And as is usually the case in regard to those who publicly criticize Trump, Romney was portrayed as the villain. But not just any villain, mind you… A super-villain.

The fervor that accompanied the segment was really something to behold. Someone tuning in late might have mistakenly believed, based on the hosts’ reactions, that Romney hadn’t criticized an elected leader, but rather penned a piece endorsing child abuse.

Still, there was indeed some value to Wednesday’s A-block, and it came in the form of a visual outline describing the symptoms of a partisan disorder suffered by many on the political right. It’s been around for about three years now, and it will assuredly worsen in the coming months. It’s called Mitt Derangement Syndrome.

Totally original name, right? Don’t judge me too harshly. Anyway, one of the key symptoms of MDS is Media Bargaining, in which sufferers contend that when Mitt Romney criticizes Donald Trump (which he has done on a handful of occasions now), he’s not doing so because he sincerely believes what he’s saying, but because he wants to seek acceptance or approval from the Mainstream Media.

“It’s tempting for Mitt. It feels good to get hugs from the media…” explained The Five’s Greg Gutfeld. Illustrating an amazing ability to read Romney’s deepest inner thoughts, he addressed the senator directly: “…this attention is just strange new respect that’s gone by tomorrow. The media may pretend to like you because you hate Trump, but they’re just using you.”

Gutfeld added, “So Mitt, that warm glow you feel from the left isn’t true love. It’s a bug zapper. They’ll pull you in as long as you dis Trump, but only until it’s time for them to fry your ass.”

“Burn!” some teenager from a decade ago might have said.

Now, there’s no doubt that the liberal media loves it when top-tier Republican leaders are criticized by other Republicans. This has been true for a very long time, and it goes without saying that the “new respect” liberal journalists claim to have for such folks is almost always disingenuous and short-lived.

What’s amusing is the notion that Romney (who took more abuse from the liberal media during his 2012 presidential run than Gutfeld will in his lifetime) doesn’t already know this. Anyone who’s been the victim of as many unfair political attacks as Mitt Romney obviously understands how media bias operates. And if he were truly interested in feeling a “warm glow” from those who previously portrayed him asevil , he would adjust his political positions to accommodate their liberal beliefs. But Romney hasn’t done that. In his op-ed, he expressed the non-partisan importance of character in American leadership, as well as support for conservative policies that the liberal media fervently opposes.

What’s interesting is that Gutfeld himself was actually a frequent Trump critic up until election night of 2016, when it was clear that the Republican party and Fox News programming was committed to a new direction. Were his criticisms back then done to seek favor with the liberal media? I sure didn’t think so at the time, but by his current logic, they were.

Speaking of irony, it’s fun to watch Trump supporters point out that the media now likes Romney only because he’s critical of Trump, as they themselves trash Romney… only because he’s critical of Trump. After all, the media-conservatives that have been coming after Romney for his op-ed haven’t been refuting or challenging anything that he actually wrote. They just don’t like the fact that he had the nerve to write it.

The Five’s Jesse Watters covered a second symptom of MDS: Political Projection.

Again, rather than taking issue with Romney’s thoughts on Trump, Watters defended Trump by hurling a list of political criticisms at Romney.

“He just has awkward political instincts, and he does things in self-serving ways,” said Watters. “I think, remember how he changed his position on abortion, the individual mandate, immigration? In the 1980s, he says he wasn’t a Reagan Republican.”

So let me get this straight… Watters, who is one of Fox News’s most shameless and consistent Trump flatterers (the president even tweets quotes from him on occasion), has principled objections to self-serving politicians with awkward instincts, who weren’t lockstep with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and have changed their positions on abortion, universal healthcare, and immigration?

Back in the old days, when breathtaking hypocrisy was readily mocked, Watters would have been laughed out of the studio.

This brings us to Breathless Name-Calling, which Dan Bongino was thankfully on-hand to illustrate. Bongino, who was reportedly banned from at least one other Fox News show for issues related to his temper, is allegedly one of President Trump’s favorite political pundits (which would explain why the network has kept him on other programs).

“I’m pretty pissed about this. What a fraud,” said Bongino. He described Romney’s criticisms (past and present) as being disingenuous, and he described Romney himself with the following names: a big phony fake, a total hoax, the biggest fraud in politics, an idiot, a swamp rodent, a clown, a joke.

You won’t find this level of crack political insight on CNN, folks.

And frankly, you would have had a hard time finding it on Fox News in the pre-Trump era, even in a discussion about President Obama.

How did Bongino qualify his hatred of Romney? Again, it wasn’t related to the content of Romney’s op-ed, but rather Romney being insufficiently appreciative of Trump. You see, Trump endorsed Romney for president in 2012 (which Romney solicited) and for the U.S. Senate last year (which Romney didn’t solicit). Bongino also believes Romney owed Trump his gratitude for considering him for Secretary of State early in his administration.

Conservative commentator Guy Benson, did a good job of laying out the loyalty component of Bongino’s argument in his column the other day:

“Trump loyalists who call Romney an ingrate are mostly missing the point. It’s true that Romney welcomed the president’s endorsement shortly after announcing his bid to replace Orrin Hatch, and that he entertained the president’s consideration for Secretary of State after the 2016 election. It’s also true that Romney has sought or accepted Trump’s backing at various moments in his political career, particularly when he perceived Trump’s blessing to be useful to his own interests. But it would be absurd to suggest that Romney somehow owes his Senate seat to Trump. He was already going to be the odds-on favorite to win both the primary and general elections in Utah (whose citizens are not exactly Trumpist Republicans) in 2018; indeed, he prevailed by massive margins in both contests, having issued a handful of Trump denunciations along the way. And the Secretary of State gambit appeared to be Romney exhibiting a willingness to serve the country, despite harboring suspicions that his very public courting may have been an elaborate and vindictive act of retaliatory humiliation.

In short, Trump and Romney owe each other virtually nothing at all at this point. But both have been chosen by Republican voters, then general election voters, to represent them — so they owe it to those constituents to work together as much as possible to achieve worthwhile ends.”

It should also be noted that President Trump, despite not being in politics all that long, has a significant history of throwing fellow Republicans under the bus, including people like Jeff Sessions who endorsed and supported his presidential campaign and even served in his administration. I’m sure, in the interest of consistency, that Bongino was quite upset with the president on those occasions.

Yes, I’m being sarcastic.

This brings is to our final symptom Mitt Derangement Syndrome: Selective Word Sensitivity. There’s a popular pro-Trump narrative often repeated on The Five (usually by Greg Gutfeld) that what President Trump says really doesn’t matter. The argument is that people in the media (and beyond) always transfix on Trump’s often outrageous language, when they should instead be paying attention to his deeds. It’s an interesting thesis, but for some baffling reason (as in the case of MDS), those same folks never apply that same standard to individuals who criticize President Trump.

I mean, if we’re supposed to judge elected leaders by their policies and not their rhetoric, why do the proponents of this narrative reliably get worked up whenever an elected leader says something negative about Trump? Aren’t we supposed to judge those representatives exclusively by their policies? And if so, what exactly is the policy complaint about Mitt Romney?

It seems that were it not for double standards, some news- commentary shows would have no standards at all. The Other Politicization of Mollie Tibbetts’ Murder

Ricochet’s Bethany Mandel wrote a good, thoughtful piece the other day on the inclination of partisans to immediately politicize certain types of tragedies — the latest example being the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, after the revelation that her suspected killer was in this country illegally.

As Mandel points out, such circumstances elevate what would typically be considered a local crime story to a politically- hot national story, compelling vocal players from both sides of the immigration debate to jockey for position.

We see a similar call to arms in the wake of mass-shootings, in regard to gun control. And unfortunately, what’s often lost in such battles is sensitivity to the pain felt by the families of the victims.

Mandel writes the following: “I can’t help but think about Mollie’s parents today, and the awful fraternity of families they have joined. Mollie’s parents, like those killed in Sandy Hook and Parkland, and the parents of Seth Rich have experienced the most excruciating loss imaginable, the violent murder of their child, and then watched that child’s death politicized and turned into conspiracy theories and political volleyballs.”

Her point is something everyone should consider, even those who have legitimate reasons for believing that their political stances, had they been implemented into law, could have spared the victim(s).

What makes the Tibbetts story somewhat unique is that it was immediately met with a second tier of politicization, due to the timing of when news of her fate broke. It all unfolded last Tuesday, just as two former close associates of President Trump — Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen — were being convicted of (in Cohen’s case it was a plea deal) multiple serious crimes.

Bizarrely but perhaps not unsurprisingly, this led to a number of political pundits converging these completely unrelated (and very different) stories into a larger narrative, with the clear intent to trivialize the story they found less accommodating to their political sensibilities.

On the Right, commentators suggested that because no one was killed in the cases of Manafort and Cohen, Americans shouldn’t deem their legal woes (and their potential to harm President Trump) to be worthy of public interest. This sentiment was expressed rather vehemently on Fox News’s The Five (before being carried over to the network’s prime-time shows).

“In terms of what is important, I think no one at the Trump rally tonight will give a damn about Manafort or Cohen, but [the Tibbetts case] will probably be fresh in their minds,” Greg Gutfeld said. He later added, “I know that Cohen isn’t squeaky clean. I know Manafort isn’t squeaky clean. Hell, I know Trump isn’t squeaky clean. That’s filler for local radio.”

Gutfeld went on to dismiss the media attention Manafort and Cohen were receiving as attempts to “reverse an election.”

Dagen McDowell said that people would be talking about the Tibbetts case and illegal immigration over the dinner table that night, “rather than two bad white collar criminals.”

“I just can’t believe we’re talking about this,” Dan Bongino complained, referring to the coverage of Manafort and Cohen. He described the Cohen story as a “taxi cab confession” and dismissed Manafort’s conviction as meaningless. “I mean, this is incredible,” he added.

Some on the Left portrayed coverage of the Tibbetts murder as little more than a conservative-media distraction from Manafort and Cohen. Referring to the two former Trump associates, frequent MSNBC guest, Christina Greer, reflected those sentiments.

“I’m sure we’ll hear what [Trump] has to say about this at his rally,” said Greer, “but Fox News is talking about a girl in Iowa and not this, right?”

Juan Williams made a similar point, chiding the producers of yesterday’s The Five (along with his co-hosts) for leading the show with the Tibbetts story.

“In Trump’s case he’s using this to distract and deceive people,” said Williams. “In terms of the big news of the day which is about the Michael Cohen plea deal, about Paul Manafort being convicted. At this point you have the president’s personal lawyer, his campaign chairman, his national security advisor — all convicted felons. And oh no… Instead, we want to talk about a murder. Well there are lots of murders in America. There’s a lower rate of violent crime among illegal immigrants and immigrants than there is among native-born Americans. But guess what, there are some people who say, Let’s not talk about Trump because it’s bad news for Trump.”

While Williams made a valid point about media-conservatives not wanting to focus on bad news for Trump (one of the points I made above), the idea of the Tibbetts murder not warranting at least a few days of national coverage is just as flawed as the logic used by some of Williams’ co-hosts.

On Twitter, SooperMexican effectively summed up the situation:

CNN & MSNBC: NO ONE cares about Molllie Tibbetts illegal killer, focus on impeachment!!! FOX NEWS: NO ONE cares about Cohen and Manafort, FOCUS on Mollie Tibbetts illegal killer!!!! Me: I own more than one functioning brain cell, I can do both, guys. c137 (@SooperMexican) August 22, 2018 ن !El Sooopèrr¡ —

Exactly.

Both stories warrant coverage, and neither story has anything to do with the other. Comparing and contrasting the two, for the sake of minimizing one of them, is pure politics. And with a situation as personally agonizing as the Tibbetts murder, the young victim’s family doesn’t need a second level of politicization to have to deal with right now.

One is assuredly hard enough. End of an Era: Fox News Cancels Red Eye This week, Fox News announced the cancellation of its 3 a.m. program, Red Eye. As a big fan of the show, especially in its early days, I’m sad to see it go.

I was introduced to the program in 2008, probably in the same way many eventual viewers were. One night, I fell asleep in front of the television. When I awoke, I was groggily drawn into a bizarre world of sharp-witted political tomfoolery, lengthy animal videos, talking makeshift props, masochistic treatment of “repulsive” sidekicks, and jaw-dropping tales of house boys locked in basements.

Cable news would never be the same.

This satirical, take-no-prisoners show bore Fox News’s logo and featured a nightly discussion panel, but its format was unlike anything anyone had ever seen, not just from the network but anywhere.

Filmed on a set that might have been modeled after a janitor’s closet (in the early days anyway), Red Eye savagely lampooned pillars of our politics-heavy news culture, taking on everything from rank partisanship and political correctness to the physical attractiveness of news-anchors (there was a “leg chair” at the panel table reserved almost exclusively for female guests).

Red Eye premiered in 2007 to zero marketing effort put forth by FNC (something that remained the case for years). Thus, the hefty task of expanding the audience beyond channel-surfing insomniacs and citizens of the “tiny island nation of Hawaii” (where the show aired in prime time) fell squarely on the shoulders of the show’s three pioneers: Greg Gutfeld, Bill Schulz, and Andy Levy.

Gutfeld, the show’s host, had made a few appearances on Fox News programs prior to Red Eye, but his talents weren’t fully recognized until he was granted his own platform from which to shine. And shine he did.

His conservative/libertarian views were fresh and frank — well outside the stale boundaries of manufactured talking-points. But it was the presentation of those views that grabbed people’s attention. His monologues were accompanied by odd Internet videos, cheap prop comedy, obscure pop-culture references, and eye-opening innuendo that often ventured into the perverse. Some of the commentary was so irreverent and downright shocking that one had to wonder if the higher-ups at Fox were even aware of what was being aired on their network in the wee hours of the morning.

Regardless of the answer, Gutfeld’s shtick was unmistakably entertaining, passionate, and — yes — smart. And I’m willing to bet that his charming adolescence made some of the celebrity interviews he conducted on the show (whether it be with a movie star or Gwar front-man, Oderus Urungus) among the interviewees’ all-time favorites.

The show’s second banana, Bill Schulz, was uproariously funny in his role as Gutfeld’s liberal, self-loathing whipping-boy. Often accused of harboring outlandish viewpoints, struggling with personal hygiene, and concealing his true gender, Schulz was called upon nightly to answer for various leftist atrocities. And he always managed to do so with a satirical matter-of-factness that was nothing short of brilliant.

“TV’s Andy Levy,” Red Eye’s dry-humored libertarian (and accused cat aficionado), was perfect as the show’s half-time ombudsman, correcting the factual inaccuracies (often willful) of both his colleagues and the guests. Levy’s commonsense insight, in a show that routinely strayed into slapstick, helped keep things grounded.

The program seemed to pride itself in bringing on unconventional (and not always familiar) guests — a hodgepodge of comedians, musicians, writers, political figures, and Fox News personalities. More often than not, they were pretty interesting folks — independent thinkers whose views didn’t quite fit into a box labeled ‘R’ or ‘D’. Rather than partisan mudslinging, the panel discussions were like candid, laughter- prone conversations among a wildly diverse group of friends (that’s not to say that the exchanges never got heated).

With that diversity came a fun, youthful vibe, and I still find myself keeping up with a number of people the show first introduced me to. I even ended up befriending a couple.

A few years back, at its ratings peak, Red Eye was drawing a larger audience than a number of prime-time shows on both CNN and MSNBC. The success was remarkable considering its time- slot, and it was also well-deserved. It’s not easy, after all, to make people laugh out loud — especially stuffy political types. But the Red Eye guys managed to pull it off quite regularly, and they did so through a lot of hard work and creativity.

The show, of course, went through some changes over time. Schulz departed from the network in 2013, and was eventually replaced with Joanne Nosuchinsky. Two years later, Gutfeld (who was already co-hosting The Five) left to start work on his weekend show (The Greg Gutfeld Show). Tom Shillue took over Red Eye’s hosting duties (with Levy switching over to a more prominent on-air role). Shillue kept much of the original format while re-shaping other elements to better suit his own brand of comedy.

As of this time, it’s unclear as to exactly why the show was cancelled, but I can say with confidence that the cable news world is worse off for it. Red Eye was an institution worth preserving, especially in these increasingly humorless political times. The laughs and clever insight the show provided for ten years will be deeply missed.

P.S. If you never had a chance to check out the early years of the show, here’s a good YouTube playlist of some highlights that a fan put together. Also, since Red Eye will close out the week, I’d recommend DVR’ing it through Friday night. I’m betting some classic segments will be re-aired.