Decoding Fox News

It’s becoming increasingly obvious that Trump’s mountain of broken promises, radical foreign policy decisions and unorthodox economic policies are causing deep damage to his MAGA brand.Last week the Supreme Court, with three Trump appointees, ruled against Trump’s use of IEEPA to issue tariffs.The court’s ruling was only one of many failures for Trump last week as newly revised jobs data showed a major contraction in the labor market last year. The trade deficit in 2025 showed little improvement despite Trump’s widespread use of tariffs and the fourth quarter GDP reading was well below expectations.According to multiple polls Americans have tired of Trump’s harsh immigration policies, and military threats to foreign countries. Most voters have no interest in conquering Greenland, crushing Cuba, managing Venezuela or invading Iran.Grocery prices and utility bills remain elevated while Trump gaslights the American public insisting that costs for everything have dropped dramatically. Health insurance premiums for millions of Americans have dramatically increased while SNAP and Medicaid benefits have been cut.Meanwhile the president remains obsessed with his gigantic White House ballroom and plans for an oversized monumental arch built in his honor.The glorious leader has lost support among nearly every demographic except for his cultish base of supporters. There are even signs that diehard MAGA fans are losing faith.Underneath all of the spin more sinister details surrounding Trump’s possible involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s many heinous crimes and sex trafficking operation remains.Fox News is desperate to keep the Trump myth alive either by ignoring stories that make the president look bad or spending excessive amounts of coverage on segments that aren’t political.One sign of the network’s panicked approach was the fact that Barack Obama’s name appeared 74 times in the transcripts last week. No kidding. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

Last week on Fox News Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters and other overpaid Fox News personalities proved there is no limit to the depravity and hypocrisy on the Murdoch owned media empire. The network seemed desperate to focus on the Nancy Guthrie abduction rather than talk about anything that might make its glorious leader, an increasingly demented cruel sociopath, look bad.Gutfeld made dismissive jokes about Nancy Guthrie, an ailing 85-year-old grandmother who was abducted from her home outside of Tucson, Arizona. Two horrifying pieces of evidence in the case include a video of a masked man approaching her front door in the middle of the night and a trail of the elderly woman’s blood scattered across her entryway.The diminutive perpetually angry Gutfeld! host appeared annoyed that his employer was spending so much time on the story so he lashed out at his own network like a spoiled child.Jesse Watters joked that Jeffrey Epstein was some type of fixer who helped rich and powerful men ‘get a girl.’ He could have easily substituted the word woman for girl but chose to make light of the sexual abuse of children.His co-host Kennedy joked Epstein’s associates might need some penicillin presumably for sexually transmitted diseases. Never mind the abuse of children who were smuggled to Epstein’s island from overseas or led to his compound under false pretenses.Some of Epstein’s victims have committed suicide. A U.N. panel found Epstein could have been running a global criminal enterprise that included crimes against humanity.The hundreds of child sex trafficking victims were reduced to an inconvenience for their older and much more powerful abusers. This is after months when Watters spent more time than anyone else on Fox News condemning Epstein for his crimes. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

As Fox News featured footage of jackbooted masked federal agents terrorizing a Northern Midwestern city the network told its viewers to ignore any reports that showed Americans were unhappy with Trump’s mass deportation efforts.The soccer moms and angel faced five-year-olds fleeing clouds of tear gas in quaint tree-lined residential streets were covert socialist sleeper cells financed by the Chinese communist party and radical Islamists determined to overthrow the U.S. government.The true victims of the chaos in Minnesota were the valiant members of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol agents. They were brave men and women who had to cover their faces to avoid being doxed by crazed capitalist hating agitators.Things got truly surreal as several Fox News hosts showcased the mugshots of various undocumented immigrants convicted of heinous crimes while they downplayed the latest release of documents related to convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.The Epstein files revealed close personal relationships with several high-ranking officials in the Trump administration as well as the president himself.When the network wasn’t promoting outlandish conspiracy theories about nonexistent socialist uprisings and downplaying Trump’s once close relationship to a sadistic sexual predator it was heavily promoting the First Lady’s insipid documentary and making light of Trump’s plan to openly rob the U.S. treasury of $10 billion.It was an especially crazy week at Fox.Meanwhile Fox News polling came out with terrible numbers for Trump across several categories which Fox News personalities mostly ignored. The network also failed to tell its viewers about layoffs at Amazon and UPS or of a huge spike in the trade deficit. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

As Donald J. Trump damaged decades-long international relationships in Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum, Fox News lauded him as a champion of American strength on the global stage.Trump managed to insult all the former Allied powers in World War II multiple times then also disgraced the sacrifice of hundreds of fallen non-U.S. NATO soldiers who died in Afghanistan after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.Trump and his entourage were cartoonishly stereotypical of boorish Americans. His long rambling speech at the event was full of lies and exaggerations that centered on his accomplishments that were based in delusion more than reality.When Trump wasn’t insulting our close long-term allies, he was demanding that Denmark hand over Greenland as if it was part of a real estate deal.The network went all in on Trump’s reckless demands to conquer or purchase the Danish territory even though the U.S. has had a broad sweeping treaty with Denmark that allows the U.S. military to build un-limited bases on the mostly ice-covered island.Fox also dedicated much of its airtime to the then escalating anti-ICE protests erupting across the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. The network presented the demonstrations as an assault on beleaguered federal law enforcement. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

Last week while the streets of Minneapolis filled with angry protesters choking on clouds of tear gas and images of ICE agents terrorizing people flooded social media feeds Fox News set its sights on the real danger - radicalized left-wing women.According to the network suburban soccer moms and urban childless cat ladies were pawns for a sophisticated Democratic Party domestic terrorist plot. Naive women were the foot soldiers to sacrifice at the altar of open border policies and foreign criminal syndicates.ICE agents might have weapons, body armor, face masks, tear gas, pepper spray, and the ability to take away a person’s liberty plus the backing of a corrupt federal government but un-armed, loud women with shaved heads and protest signs are the real threat.The word ‘women’ appeared 194 times in the transcripts last week. The word appeared 72 times in transcripts from Jesse Watters Primetime.Watters was working out his misogynistic baggage as he reduced women to helpless creatures who were tools in a game they didn’t understand. Watters is the same Fox News host who constantly whines about his damaged relationship with his mother, tells embarrassing stories about his second wife and pontificates on what he believes is proper masculine behavior. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

Last week Fox News started with lighthearted special episodes dedicated to New Year’s celebrations while the network hammered Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for a fraud scandal in his state. By Friday night Fox made an abrupt pivot to focus all its airtime to Trump’s surprise invasion of Venezuela and the capture of Nicolás Maduro. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe

wanted to do a quick update on the newsletter I wrote last month “A Thanksgiving Primer to Help You Deal With your Fox Loving Relatives.”I had to wait until December 18 to get the updated CPI report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The agency delayed it eight days due to the government shutdown. It was also based on a partial gathering of data which is problematic for several reasons.This is an updated version of the Thanksgiving primer! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit decodingfoxnews.substack.com/subscribe