Mixed Messages from Truckers and Fox News

I understand the trucker convoy is driving laps around the Beltway again today, for no discernible reason other than showing off. See Absurd trucker convoy jamming up the Capital Beltway has me rooting for higher gas prices by Rex Huppke at USA Today.

I had said in an earlier post that the only way you could track the convoy was through local news stories, not national. The national news has been pretty much ignoring the truckers. According to Paul Waldman, even Fox News is paying little attention to them.

When truckers in Canada brought chaos to Ottawa last month and shut down a bridge that carries much trade between the two countries, Fox News couldn’t have been more excited. The network gave it hours upon hours of coverage and then tried to create and promote a similar protest here in the United States.

Yet at FoxNews.com on Monday morning, the sole story about this convoy was pushed way down the homepage, below dozens of stories about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Apparently the protest was a disappointment precisely because it wasn’t disruptive and chaotic enough to capture Fox’s interest.

Or maybe they just look too ridiculous when juxtaposed with news from Ukraine.

Waldman goes on to analyze the Right’s current zeitgeist concerning chaos. In brief — the Right sincerely believes that left-wing political activism is inherently violent, and the Left and President Biden are ushering in an age of left-wing chaos and general awfulness that threatens America. Therefore, it is necessary for the Right to stir up chaos and violence against the Left. Or against anyone who happens to be handy. And right-wing violence is not condemned but valorized and celebrated.

Imagine if a liberal protester killed two people and wounded a third at a protest. Would they have been hailed as a hero, brought to meet a former president and given a soft-focus interview on MSNBC? Of course not.

This is a key irony in the story conservatives tell about the United States today: They portray the country as a nightmare of chaos created by President Biden and Democrats, even as they work to create more chaos wherever they can.

Driving laps around the Beltway is just not confrontational enough to interest Fox.

The organizers of the “People’s Convoy” don’t seem to have gotten the message, at least not yet. If they want to get back on Fox News and become heroes of the right, they’ll have to shut down the capital, cause mayhem and destruction, and maybe bring out the guns some of them surely brought with them. Unless they do that, those who claim to be their allies will quickly lose interest.

And they’ll still look ridiculous. I understand there’s a right-wing dark money group raising money to pay for this nonsense, and I wonder how long they’ll keep doing it. They aren’t getting much bang for their buck.

Speaking of gas prices, today the leaders of the House Ways and Means Committee and the Senate Finance Committee struck a bipartisan deal to ban all energy products from Moscow. This would, of course, have to be passed by both Houses and signed into law by President Biden, so it’s not going to happen just yet. Greg Sargent:

We all know exactly what will happen if President Biden goes through with plans to ban imports of Russian oil amid mounting horrors in Ukraine, as he has been reluctant to do. The same Republicans loudly demanding this step will turn around and attack Biden over any resulting economic fallout.

As for Fox, I notice their position on Ukraine seems a tad schizophrenic. Their page today (you can find it if you want to) is promoting the position that Vladimir Putin is really, really bad, and it’s President Biden’s fault Russia invaded Ukraine. Here’s a story quoting Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-WI.

“When the dust settles, despite the very real bravery on display by the Ukrainian people, deterrence in this case failed. The Biden Administration thought that sanctions and tweets would be enough to deter, but they failed to apply the kind of hard power that would have deterred Putin from launching this war in the first place. By the way, a war that could still escalate and involve us at any moment,” Gallagher said.

Although the world’s attention is on Ukraine, Gallagher warned that Biden’s failure to handle Russia could be used as an invitation for more authoritarian countries to invade other countries. 

I would like Rep. Gallagher to explain exactly what “hard power” he has in mind, especially a “hard power” that would not have started World War III.

Maybe we could have rounded up some guys from New Zealand and sent them to Moscow to do a haka.

That would sure as heck deter me, anyway. And don’t get me started on the former guy’s “handling” of Russia.

But see Putin’s full-scale information war got a key assist from Donald Trump and right-wing media by Margaret Sullivan in WaPo. Using journalists in a target country to promote Russia’s point of view is an old, old trick in their playbook, it says. And certain Fox News hosts have been doing a great job. “Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-N.J.) said that in the run-up to the invasion, his office heard complaints from constituents who watch Carlson and ‘are upset that we’re not siding with Russia in its threats to invade Ukraine, and who want me to support Russia’s ‘reasonable’ positions,'” Sullivan writes.

I’d hire the New Zealand guys to go do a haka in front of Fox News headquarters. Can’t hurt.