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Howard Kurtz slams DeSantis for grooming girls with alcohol - is Fox burying Ron? [1]

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Date: 2023-03-26

Howard Kurtz and the 'groomer' DeSantis

Fox News had shit-canned Trump and was pitching woo at Ron DeSantis. The Florida Governor had replaced the marmalade miasma as Fox’s golden boy of Republican presidential wannabes. DeSantis was riding high on a stunning reelection win, buoyed by Trump's insipid campaign announcement and propelled by a general sense that the ex-President was a spent force.

Now he has blown it. Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “When you strike at a king, you must kill him.” However, when DeSantis struck at Trump with an offhand remark about paying hush money to pornstars , he singularly failed to land a fatal blow. Instead, the object of his jibe cracked a metaphorical 2-by-4 upside his head, and Ron has reeled ever since.

Now Fox has noticed. Howard Kurtz today repeated the Trump slam that DeSantis was partying it up at an alcohol-fueled social gathering with 17-year-old girls when he was 23. Kurtz twisted the knife by pointing out Ron was their teacher — and he was grooming them.

Kurtz is reputed to be a serious journalist — at least by Fox standards. Yet he adopted the network tactic of suggesting the crime at the top of his report before revealing there was no evidence for it later.

"Trump is actually questioning DeSantis' sexuality and recycling a two-decade-old suggestion about grooming young girls when he was a high school teacher again 20 years ago. Maybe he shouldn't have been at a drinking party with young women when he was a teacher, but there hasn't even been a whisper of an allegation... Did he have any relationship with any of these students?"

Was Kurtz reporting as an independent agent — or was he floating a trial balloon on management’s orders? Who knows? Either way, I suspect Fox will stop covering DeSantis with such acclaim — despite the financial sword of Damocles limiting their options.

For years Trump walked on Fox News’ water. In Rupert Murdoch’s calculation, he was a sinner whose winning ways and ratings absolved his short-fingered immorality. The coin of the cable realm is viewers — and there was no one better at minting profits. However, blind loyalty came at a price — as the state propaganda channel discovered when it did something it rarely does, reported the news. In a shocking piece of apostasy, they declared Biden had beaten Trump in Arizona and called the 2020 election for the Democrat.

Trump turned like a feral beast and went for the throat. His MAGA cultists dropped Fox in search of a more comforting craziness. Panicking, Fox’s prime-time liars sang Trump’s anthem, “we wuz robbed.” They promoted every wisp of insanity as granite truth. During the two-week period after Fox News declared Joe Biden was the president-elect, the network questioned the results of the election or pushed conspiracy theories about it almost 600 times ,

They presented people they knew to be liars to spread election fraud lunacy. The star of their election denial was a Trump lawyer that Trump had never even hired, Sidney Powell — whose source of election truths was a woman who gained insights from experiencing something "like time-travel in a semi-conscious state."

Then the voting technology companies Fox had slandered demanded billions — Dominion, $1.6 billion , and Smartmatic, $2.7 billion . American copyright law, interpreted by the Supreme Court in New York Times vs. Sullivan , mandates the target of a defamatory statement must show that it was made with knowledge of or reckless disregard for its falsity. Justice Brennan called it "actual malice."

It was a tough challenge — until it was revealed in Dominion’s discovery process that both Fox’s on-air talent and the cynics in its executive suite knew, from their coifs to their loafers, that they were peddling actual malice. There was no, “He said. She said.” They spelled out their awareness of the falsity of their claims in emails and texts rife with the derogation of their putative experts.

This cynicism opened the door for Desantis. He walked into the jamb. Fox did their best. By the middle of March this year, DeSantis overtook Trump in the weekly number of mentions on Fox News. However, all was not well for the ‘Fox primary’ winner.

DeSantis had a regular Tuesday appearance on Fox and Friends. Host Brian Kilmeade decided to highlight the MAGA enthusiasm for the younger sociopath with a live segment at a diner . To stack the deck and maximize Ron’s chances of looking like a winner, Fox picked a restaurant in Ponte Vedra Beach, FL, which was part of the ex-US Representative DeSantis’ congressional district.

It was an embarrassment. Everyone was pro-Trump except for one woman wearing a DeSantis t-shirt who, when asked who she backed, said, "Oh, gosh! I don't know. Trump or DeSantis — I'm either/or."

Fox is in a no-win mess. They need to back someone — they do not prosper by being neutral. But their choices are to throw in with a man who smells like a loser. Or to return to a man whose cause they once championed — but which will add ammunition to their legal opponents.

Delicious.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/26/2160356/-Howard-Kurtz-slams-DeSantis-for-grooming-girls-with-alcohol-is-Fox-burying-Ron

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