I understand that it’s hard to keep up with all the things Trump might be angry about on any given day, but it’s interesting to note that he’s now big mad at Fox News over their surprisingly hospitable treatment of Abdul El-Sayed.
It’s not often that I say this, but he has a point. Based on two extended interviews — one was a month ago, the other last week — El-Sayed has quickly become Fox’s second favorite Democrat, after Pete Buttigieg. Fox and El-Sayed have been of conspicuous use to each other, and it’s hard to imagine stranger bedfellows.
Each interview was over 20 minutes long, which is unusual for any news broadcast. But for a Democratic candidate — let alone for the Senate, let alone from a crucial swing state — that kind of one-on-one time on Fox is utterly unheard of. Trump heard of it, and he wasn’t happy.
Both events were good television in their own way. I’ve often complained about the impermeability of the Fox media bubble, and there’s no doubt I’ll continue to do so. But here was Fox itself letting El-Sayed inside that bubble, and giving him free rein, more or less, to make his case. In both interviews, Fox controlled the agenda, but El-Sayed bent that agenda to his own purposes.
The first interview was 25 minutes with Jesse Watters, the Prince of Smarm. Two alphas squaring off, they got into it right away. Watters tossed off gotcha questions based on the up-is-down Fox worldview. El-Sayed countered with arguments drawn from objective reality, knowing full well that the audience might not recognize this.
It was all surprisingly good-natured, though Watters’s agenda was clear. You need look no further than the chyron copy that ran through the interview to see what Fox wanted everyone to talk about:
EL-SAYED WANTS TO TAX MILLIONAIRES
EL-SAYED WANTS TO SOCIALIZE HEALTHCARE
EL-SAYED CALLED FOOTBALL “TOXIC MASCULINITY”
SEX CHANGE SURGERIES FOR MINORS?
MEN IN WOMEN’S SPORTS
In other words, all the hits. Watters managed to imply — or state outright — that El-Sayed wanted to abolish ICE, institute Sharia law, and cut off the “ding-a-lings” of little boys so they can play in girls’ sports. He even pulled out the old Green New Deal, trying to tie El-Sayed to eliminating fossil fuels. His favorite words were “You’re dodging again, Abdul,” whenever El-Sayed’s replies went any deeper than chyron level.
But El-Sayed got way deeper than that. He knew what he wanted to say, he stayed on message, he refused to be baited, and he got what he came for: the opportunity to speak directly to the Fox audience.
He repeated his basic talking points often enough for even a Fox viewer to understand, and those points couldn’t help but hit home. As the real world starts to penetrate the bubble, El-Sayed was giving voice to all the things Fox can’t explain away — insane wars, insane tariffs, insane president — try as they might. Fox viewers are not immune from crushing prices at the gas pump and the checkout counter. They still don’t understand how screwed they’ve been by the very people they so stupidly elected.
And there’s El-Sayed, not foaming at the mouth apparently, explaining how the blame lies with Trump and his Republican toadies, specifically Mike Rogers, El-Sayed’s opponent. He repeatedly called Rogers a “beta,” suggesting that Watters and El-Sayed were the alpha bros Rogers aspires to be.
Watters laughed at that. He was having fun, and it showed even through the smarm. It was riveting television, which helps answer the question “What’s in it for Fox?” Hold that thought.
The second interview, with Martha MacCallum last week, was a whole different animal, in both tone and content. She led off with a clip of Zohran Mamdani, basically addressing the question “What is socialism?” MacCallum then asked El-Sayed, as an avowed capitalist, to comment.
Let’s move past the underlying Muslim-baiting here, the need to ask one guy with a funny name to comment on the sound bite of another, because hey, they’re all alike, right? Let’s focus instead on El-Sayed’s reply.
He deftly turned the question around, asking MacCallum if she’d gone to good public schools (she had). Did she generally drive on good roads? (Yup) Did she breathe clean air? (Nod) You could see where he was going, but the crazy thing was that she let him go there.
What followed was a concise explanation of safety-net capitalism, simple enough for even dumbshits to understand. It led to several minutes of what sounded a lot like legitimate discourse. On Fox.
Like Watters, MacCallum seemed to be having a good time, and her interview went on for about half an hour. She bravely defended her indefensible Fox-ish arguments, even as El-Sayed politely shredded them. It was almost as if she was agreeing with him, but couldn’t say it. She even gave him a minute or so at the end, where he spoke straight to camera. Addressing the audience directly, he laid out his messages once again: “Money out of politics. Money in your pocket. Medicare for all.” Exactly what they need.
El-Sayed was under no illusions. He knew the audience was rooting for Watters and MacCallum, but that wasn’t the point. I think he senses that there are actual votes to be had. Objective reality can be quite relentless, and El-Sayed seems to be assuming a certain skepticism creeping in at the edges of the bubble. El-Sayed was telling Fox viewers things they may never have heard before. And while he knew they might rail against his ideas and hate him with every racist bone in their bodies, he also know that they can’t un-hear the things he’s saying.
To me, both interviews were a clear win for El-Sayed. But what was in it for Fox?
No, they’re not growing a conscience. But they are, perhaps, recognizing that their material is getting stale, which can be the kiss of death for any media.
When Trump gets furious at them for not covering every minute of his rallies, he can’t even grasp the favor they’re doing for him. Fox understands, even if he doesn’t, that his verbal incontinence is getting him in lots of trouble, and that he loses votes every time he gets in front of the people who voted for him.
So what does a propaganda outlet do when its main attraction can’t be trusted not to unzip his fly on camera? Fox has apparently decided that one way to spice things up is to bring on Democrats. It lets them pretend they’re a real news organization. It lets them bring trace amounts of objective reality into the conversation, just for the sake of variety. And it lets them put their hand-picked Democrats on display, sort of like zoo animals — Abdul the closet terrorist, Buttigieg the out-of-closet sodomite.
Fox is spinning the Trump insanity as best they can, but they can’t spin the fact that their own viewers are hurting and can see exactly where the hurt is coming from. As the wanton corruption, sheer madness, and willful abuse of power grow ever more obvious, this is surely as much a WTF moment for Fox as it is for everyone else.
Not that I feel sorry for them — indeed, I wish them all the worst. But if the solution to their problem is to put the likes of Abdul El-Sayed on the air, then by all means, solve away.
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