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Only Thing Paul Ryan Is Good For Is Killing Your Granny. Ryan Does Next To Nothing About Fox Lies. [1]

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Date: 2023-03-07

“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” John Stuart Mill

Former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan is the poster child for the above quote from John Stuart Mill, and this is on nauseating display with Charlie Syke’s interview with Paul Ryan on the subject of Fox caught lying to their viewers with their support of Trump’s Big Lie. Sykes wasn’t even really trying any gotcha questions on this subject, but he exposed Ryan’s moral cowardice and ineffectual leadership on dealing with Trump’s lies and Fox wanting to keep its ratings up.

For those not keeping up with Granny Killer Ryan, he landed a gig as a board member on the Fox Corporation. And as a board member, Ryan got himself entangled with Fox’s efforts to support Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 Election was stolen. According to deposition transcripts from Dominon’s lawsuit of defamation against Fox, Ryan sent a text message to Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch to resist Trump’s Big Lie:

The document also liberally quotes from two other Fox Corp notables: director former Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) and the network’s top lawyer Viet Dinh, a former top-ranking official in the George W. Bush-era Department of Justice. Dominion says that Ryan called for “solid pushback” against Trump’s election fraud claims, in a text message to both Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch. “[W]e are entering a truly bizarre phase of this where [Trump] has actually convinced himself of this farce and will do more bizarre things to delegitimize the election,” Ryan was said to have written in the message. “I see this as a key inflection point for Fox, where the right thing and the smart business thing to do line up nicely.” Ryan called for Fox to put forth “solid pushback (including editorial) of [Trump’s] baseless calls for overturning electors.” Dominion claims that Lachlan Murdoch disregard the advice.

And that was that. They kept going with Trump’s Big Lie, and Ryan did nothing else. Ryan didn’t quit the board out of protest or go public with his concerns for the sake of the stockholders.

As Charlie Sykes says, Ryan wanted to “stay in the room.”

After Donald Trump’s election, Ryan made the calculation that it was better to be in the room than to defy a president he knew was manifestly unfit. To publicly criticize Trump, the former speaker told Mark Leibovich in 2018, would just be counterproductive. He tends to speak of the commander in chief as if he were sharing a coping strategy on dealing with a Ritalin-deprived child. “It boomerangs,” Ryan says of being too critical of Trump. “He goes in the other direction, so that’s not effective.” He added, “The pissing match doesn’t work.” So he opted to stay in the room, telling Leibovich that he preferred to tell Trump how he felt in private, rather than speaking out about his recklessness, racism, and serial lies. Staying quiet meant that Ryan would stay relevant, stay in the game, and, as he told himself, stop all sorts of awful things from happening. He was hardly alone. Wrote Leibovich: He joins a large group of Trump’s putative allies, many of whom have worked in the administration, who insist that they have shaped Trump’s thinking and behavior in private: the “Trust me, I’ve stopped this from being much worse” approach. “I can look myself in the mirror at the end of the day and say I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy, I avoided that tragedy,” Ryan tells me. “I advanced this goal, I advanced this goal, I advanced this goal.” I locked in on the word “tragedy.” It sets the mind reeling to whatever thwarted “tragedies” Ryan might be talking about. I asked for an example. “No, I don’t want to do that,” Ryan replied. “That’s more than I usually say.”

Sykes and others like Joy Reid have pointed out that this staying silent in public but remaining in the room FAILED when it came to Trump! The man lead an insurrection against the government on Jan 6th! And Ryan’s failure to do anything more allowed Fox to spread Trump’s Big Lie and HELP foment an insurrection!

And what was WORSE than an insurrection with death? Ryan won’t say! But take his word, there was far worse tragedies that could have occured if Paul Ryan wasn’t in the room!

Besides being a failed leader and coward, Sykes brings out something that I think most have missed when it comes to Paul Ryan and Fox. Ryan still believes that Fox is necessary to save the conservative movement. And Sykes asks about this:

This was the point I was trying to make in the May 2021 open letter to Ryan that he claimed he had never read or heard of. Paul, your position right now is unique [I wrote]. You are not just the former vice-presidential nominee of your party and the former speaker of the House. You sit on the board of directors of the media company that is shaping and distorting the future of the movement to which you have given your life…. What brighter red lines could possibly be crossed? If this isn’t the moment to draw your own line, what would be? If you want to make a difference, isn’t this the moment? If you want to change your legacy, isn’t this the time? When I asked him directly about red lines last week, he explained why he wanted to stay in the room. PR: I want to see the conservative movement get through this moment. And I think Fox is a big part of the constellation of the conservative movement. [crosstalk] CS: Is it the solution or the problem? PR: Oh, no, I think it’s gonna have to be a part of the solution if we're going to solve the problem in the conservative movement.

Fox is “gonna have to be part of the solution if we’re going to solve the problem in the conservative movement.”

We critics and cynics “understand” why Ryan cannot quit Fox. This propaganda network has helped Republicans to amass and maintain power. Without Fox propaganda, Republican voters might not have been forced fed disinformation for 27 years. And don’t forget how the rest of the dumbasses in the MSM pick up on “news” that Fox spews out. Fox gets to help set the media narrative.

So I see why Ryan doesn’t want to see Fox destroyed.

But Fox is a corrupt institution. In fact, it’s been pushing lies for decades now. Anyone remember all that shit about WMD in Iraq? Fox is also pushing anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. And let’s not forget all the lies about global climate change.

Fox has helped create the present day conservative movement. And it’s all Trumpism now. It’s a monster that is attacking the villagers. You cannot save the monster. You can only kill the monster, figuratively speaking.

What I would love to see is Fox being hit so hard on punitive damages that it sparks a stockholder revolt. Maybe that might be enough to force Fox into bankruptcy someday? I know. We won’t get that lucky, but a boy can dream.

But Fox as being part of the solution to our present problems? Ryan is still full of shit. But hey, Ryan is in that fuckin’ room!

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/7/2156636/-Only-Thing-Paul-Ryan-Is-Good-For-Is-Killing-Your-Granny-Ryan-Does-Next-To-Nothing-About-Fox-Lies

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