Donald Trump's new pet propaganda outlet, Newsmax TV, has beaten his ex, Fox News, in the ratings for the first time. Monday night, "Greg Kelly Reports" outperformed "The Story with Martha MacCallum" in the prized 25-to-54-year-old moron demo. The margin was narrow, a difference of just 26,000 viewers, but it's still a victory for the little fascist engine that could.
Newsmax was once dismissed as one of many upstart challengers to Fox News. This changed after the election when Donald Trump craved a new drug, one that wouldn't make him sick with reports that Joe Biden had won the presidential election, one that would make him feel like he does when he's with Sean Hannity.
Trump felt personally betrayed when Fox News called Arizona for Biden on election night as that derailed his plans, which he'd broadcast for weeks, to declare victory while he was ahead and demand that everyone stop counting ballots that might displease him.
Fox News anchors such as Chris Wallace have used the verboten term "president-elect" to describe Biden, who is president-elect, and even Trump loyalist Laura Ingraham mournfully told her audience that Biden will be inaugurated on Jan. 20.
Trump, however, has retreated into total fantasy like Bette Davis at the end of Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?Newsmax and OANN provide a retreat from reality for Trump and his cultists, a "safe space," if you will. Facts, as noted on "The Colbert Report," have a “liberal bias," so Fox News showed its true commie colors when it accepted this one, obvious fact.
Newsmax is never gonna give Trump up: Biden isn't the president-elect on those airwaves and Trump still has a fighting chance to overturn the election and plunge the country into civil war.
"Greg Kelly Reports" is a pleasing balm for anyone who shares Trump's madness. He regurgitates garbage conspiracy theories and lies with a straight face. Tuesday, Kelly “reported" that Trump still had multiple paths to victory after losing even more court cases. Trump's sycophants are apparently operating under Lex Luthor's optimistic outlook that he only really has to successfully kill Superman once.
KELLY: We're getting warmer. These lawsuits are coming together. There are a lot of fake news headlines out there right now saying that the Pennsylvania situation is over. It is not. It is alive and well. The headlines are wrong. I was on the phone today with Professor Alan Dershowitz, some of the litigants of the Trump campaign, this thing is going forward.
Yes, the Supreme Court denied an injunction, but that does not mean the case is not on the docket.
I understand why Trump dead enders want to hear these pleasing lies, but it's all nonsense. I almost feel sorry for the suckers watching at home.
There's the old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" “PRACTICE!" Well, you can't reach the Supreme Court by losing every lower court case in the most humiliating manner possible. Trump's post-election legal battles are playing out to the theme of “The Benny Hill Show."
But this is what the (very stupid) people want. Although Fox News still boats ratings four times higher than Newsmax overall, the network's ratings are down from before the election while Newsmax's ratings are on the rise. We're not talking about big numbers ... yet: Fox News averaged 1.36 million viewers total on Monday compared to Newsmax's 316,000 viewers, but as Michael Corleone observed, “The new overthrows the old. It's natural."
“Greg Kelly Reports" barely managed 10,000 viewers overall before Trump lost. Now, in the continuing denial of his defeat, the audience for Kelly's fractured fairy tales on Monday had grown to 949,000 viewers. Kelly's show is usually Newsmax's most highly rated flaming poo bag.
While it's amusing to see Fox News suffer from the very ignorance it's so long promoted, there's no upside to an even dumber Republican electorate.
Is this the beginning of the end for Fox News? Are we seeing history in action? Will we wave goodbye to our friend Tom from MySpace in favor of a ravening monster that will give us actual genocides?
Could happen.
[CNN]
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Stephen Robinson is a writer and social kibbitzer based in Portland, Oregon. He writes make believe for Cafe Nordo, an immersive theatre space in Seattle. Once, he wrote a novel called “Mahogany Slade,” which you should read or at least buy. He's also on the board of the Portland Playhouse theatre. His son describes him as a “play typer guy."
