Politics
The talk was taxes, testosterone and rage when Fox News commentators covered the DNC
While Democrats celebrated with abandon Thursday over the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s presidential nominee, viewers of Fox News received a prolonged disquisition on the many dire shortcomings of the candidate and her party.
Even before Harris took the stage at the United Center, the channel’s star prime-time commentators Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and their guests, headlined by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, belittled the vice president as unqualified, unserious and a threat to the American way.
The messaging came as no surprise to regular viewers of the most influential conservative news outlet, which delivered long blocks of commentary throughout the Democratic National Convention, seldom showing the people or performances onstage in Chicago.
Viewers were told that Harris and running mate Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, would put capitalism and American values in imminent peril, opening the nation to invading hordes of immigrants and leftist economic policy that would turn the U.S. into another Venezuela.
Gingrich took a swipe at Walz, suggesting he wasn’t what he appeared to be and “was never actually a coach.”
The barb had been tossed out earlier by former President Trump via his Truth Social platform, with the Republican noting that Walz had been an assistant coach, not a head coach, for the football team at Mankato West High School. (Such parsing probably wouldn’t please about a dozen members of Walz’s team who reunited on the convention stage to support Walz on Wednesday night and sang his praises in multiple interviews.)
The Fox crew lit into the Democrats not just with spoken words, but also with on-screen headlines and disquieting video. Consider the chyrons that leaped onto the screen as Watters, then Hannity and Gingrich, chatted: “Dems Ditch Policy, Go All In on Emotion”; “When Will Kamala Do an Interview?”; “Kamala Has Never Cared About the Border”; “Vetting the Extreme Harris-Walz Agenda”; and “DNC Repackages Kamala as the ‘Female Obama.’”
Hannity, Fox’s longtime prime-time personality, assured viewers that the Democratic claims of promoting a more joyful public square amounted to a ruse. As Hannity spoke, the message ”Feel the Rage” flashed on the screen, while Fox also rolled video of protesters burning American flags and immigrants wading into a river to cross into the U.S.
“I mean, there’s joy in people smiling and playing music,” fumed Hannity, a close friend and ally of Trump, “but a lot of rage on that stage. Not a lot about how they’re going to fix America’s problems: inflation, the border, energy, America’s place in the world, law and order. I don’t hear a lot about that at all.”
Hannity’s hour also featured a segment with a Fox reporter covering pro-Palestinian protests in the streets outside the United Center.
Chicago police and most observers noted that the widespread unrest that had been predicted by some did not occur, and the planned protests failed to draw the tens of thousands of demonstrators that organizers had hoped for. The vast majority of those who came to Chicago marched peacefully.
Fox’s reporter noted that the marchers had been following the prescribed parade route. The group assembled around him was quiet, standing and holding placards, including some that criticized Harris.
“They say, if people are still dying in Gaza, there won’t be any business as usual,” the reporter said. “So they’re not going to shy away from things like vandalism, disruption, escalation, as they call it.” Despite that prediction, the streets remained mostly quiet.
Back in the studio, Gingrich said that a recent speech by Harris on economics “was so far to the left of [Sen.] Bernie Sanders that Gorbachev and Russia would [have] thought it was a radical speech.”
Hannity and Gingrich agreed that the Democrat’s proposed tax on some unrealized capital gains — on real estate or money invested in the stock market — could lead to everyday Americans losing their savings or even their homes.
The problem with the assertions was that they badly mischaracterized the Harris plan, which calls for increased taxes only on those with incomes of more than $400,000 a year. The tax on unrealized capital gains is designed to hit a much higher tax bracket, according to an analysis by the New York Times.
The salvo foreshadowed what’s expected to become a pattern in the final weeks of the presidential race — a series of charges and counter charges about which party’s tax plan will favor average Americans.
The Fox commentators’ beatdown of the Democratic tax plan raised an incongruity: Much of the network’s commentary in recent days had been about how Harris and Walz had not put forward specific proposals. While Hannity continued to stoke that claim, he also battered the quite specific tax plan. And he portrayed the Democrats as extreme leftists.
“Every once in a while, the mask comes off and you realize you’re dealing with someone who’s crazy,” Hannity said, apparently referring to Harris and her tax plan. “And, of course, with Walz, you have the most radical governor in the country, far to the left of Bernie Sanders, and you have with Harris, a San Francisco radical.”
Appearing before Hannity and Harris’ speech, Watters leaned into some of the culture war issues Republicans have employed against Democrats.
After a segue in which he and Fox host Martha MacCallum discussed how hard they had worked out that day and how strong Hannity was in the gym, Watters showed video of CNN commentator Dana Bash praising Walz and Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, Harris’ husband, for a new brand of masculinity that allows for sensitivity and strength.
Watters used that video as an intro to asking former Democratic House member Harold Ford Jr., a regular Fox contributor, how he felt about the party’s framing of masculinity: “Harold, how embarrassed are you as a Democrat that you guys are now pandering to the low-testosterone men?”
Ford ignored the question and discussed what he thought Harris should do in her speech to show Americans that she is presidential and represents the mainstream of the nation’s politics. Smiling, Watters persisted: “Harold, how embarrassed are you? Your party’s a bunch of low-T guys?”
MacCallum, joining the segment, painted Democrats as too young, gullible or otherwise unaware to understand the shortcomings of the Democrats. “That’s where I think you get those older voters,” McCallum said, “and maybe some white male voters who are not so easily persuaded by feelings and [being] emotional, joyful.”
Watters, who began his Fox career as a smiling and acerbic sidekick to Bill O’Reilly, got in a shot at one other Democrat — California Gov. Gavin Newsom. He suggested that Newsom had not been given a speaking role (outside of announcing the votes of the state delegation) out of Harris’ spite. “He’s being punished,” Watters said. “You can’t be overly ambitious if you’re a man.”
The tone of Fox’s coverage shifted markedly once Harris took the stage and in the follow-up panel discussion.
The cable outlet stuck with the entire 37-minute address and then provided relatively balanced analysis afterward. Fox prime-time anchor Bret Baier and panelists, including Ford, said Harris’ performance was strong.
“It was a forceful speech delivered very crisply, very professionally, with emphasis. There was no stumbling, fumbling, or any of that,” said Brit Hume, a Fox News veteran.
Dana Perino, White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, said Harris’ tough talk on defense and support of Israel were the strongest parts of her address.
But Perino also said Harris had not yet faced tough questions. And she pushed back on Harris’ charge that Trump would invoke Project 2025, a proposal to radically transform the federal government whose authors included many Trump allies and former aides, but which the former president has disavowed.
Plains has no major hotel, a single small gas station and only a couple of restaurants, neither of which is usually open for dinner. Still, for the longest time, the tiny town had something that no other place in Georgia did: Jimmy Carter making it his home.
Especially as Mr. Carter withdrew from public life, the town has had years to prepare for life after him. But now that he is gone — Mr. Carter died last month at 100 — the town is hoping that its prospects as a tourism destination have not been buried along with its most famous son.
The optimism in Plains is grounded in the experience of other small towns known almost exclusively for their ties to a former president, which history has shown can still attract a crowd decades or centuries after that president has died.
Hyde Park, which borders the Hudson River in New York, has a steady stream of tourists coming to visit Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidential library, home and gravesite. Tampico, Ill., has erected signs advertising itself as the birthplace of Ronald Reagan, trying to encourage people to take a brief detour on the way to Chicago to see the apartment where Mr. Reagan was born.
These towns and others are banking on the country’s enduring fascination with its presidents. particularly among the collection of history buffs who find the insights they can offer irresistible.
“I recognized that there was something about getting to experience what they experienced and getting to see the world through their eyes,” said Joe Faykosh, a history professor at Central Arizona College.
He has visited all the available presidential birthplaces and homes and has interned at the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio. He met the Carters in 2017 after the former president taught Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains.
There is no guarantee that the appeal will last forever, though. More than 100 presidential sites in big cities and backcountry towns attract thousands of visitors each year, but interest can fade as a president drifts further into history. In recent years, the reappraisal of historical figures and the sins of the past that has toppled monuments and renamed schools has also affected the appeal of historic sites.
Charlottesville, Va., has seen a decline in visitors to Monticello, the plantation that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Tourism officials there have adapted, broadening what had once been a largely generous interpretation of Jefferson’s history to a more complex portrayal, including his role in upholding slavery as an institution. They have also tried to market Charlottesville as an emerging wine region — an identity Jefferson had also worked to establish around 250 years ago.
“Leisure trips have focused in the past on kind of historical discovery, and now people — because of their relationship with history, because of the politicizing of history — have a different relationship with the past,” said Courtney Cacatian, the executive director of the Charlottesville Albemarle Convention and Visitors Bureau. “A lot of people don’t seek it out as part of their vacation experience anymore.”
Plains isn’t so worried about the judgment of history. Many in the community believe that people’s perceptions of Mr. Carter’s legacy will continue to be favorable. Americans remain divided about his performance as president. But the week of funeral events highlighted a widespread admiration for his character and the extensive work he did after leaving office to protect democracy, fight ailments like Guinea worm disease and provide support to impoverished people worldwide.
Plains has become somewhat stuck in time — a capsule capturing the lives that Mr. Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, had lived there, even while they were still alive.
There are no drive-throughs or supermarkets. The Dollar General downtown has a brick facade that makes it look like it has been there forever. Plains High School no longer has students — it is a site maintained by the National Park Service, just like the Carter family farm outside town and even the Carters’s home off Main Street.
It is a transformation the Carters have been deeply involved in. They created an exhibition at the high school about segregation. Visitors walking around the president’s boyhood home and farm can hear recordings of Mr. Carter sharing memories of his childhood, such as visiting his Black neighbors who lived in a ramshackle home nearby and the absolute joy he felt when he received a pony for Christmas.
“There’s just so many things that President Carter had his hands in,” said AB Jackson, a councilwoman in Plains.
Sarah Wollenweber and her 17-year-old son, London, said that the amount of documentation of Mr. Carter’s life and where he grew up set Plains apart from other presidential sites they had visited across the country.
“He’s one of the last great presidents we’ve seen who is genuine and actually kind, so it’s been really great to experience this,” London said. He and his mother drove 12 hours from Bloomington, Ill., to see Mr. Carter’s coffin being carried through Plains last week.
“They dedicated the whole town to him and his wife,” he added.
Many residents believe the Carters were keenly aware of how much their presence attracted tourists and positively impacted the town’s economy.
From 2014 to 2019, when Mr. Carter was still routinely teaching Sunday school at Maranatha Baptist Church, at least 50,000 tourists a year came to Plains. Beginning in 2020, the number of sightseers dropped significantly, as the pandemic stymied tourism and the Carters’ health declined. But visitorship picked up again last year, with approximately 45,000 people coming through the town. That does not include the hundreds of people per day who descended on Plains after Mr. Carter died on Dec. 29.
Over many years, Mr. Carter encouraged improvements to increase the appeal for tourists. He founded the Friends of Jimmy Carter, a nonprofit that owns the Plains Historic Inn, with its seven suites, as well as the antique mall below it. He was also instrumental in opening one of the town’s two restaurants: the Buffalo Café, which serves cheeseburgers, salads and pimento cheese sandwiches. And he convinced legislators to fund a train that would drop visitors off at his former campaign headquarters.
“He wanted to make sure that the town stays viable,” said Kim Carter Fuller, the president’s niece. “Whatever he could do within reason, he did.”
But Plains could only accommodate so much. The town is less than one square mile in size and has little public land to sell for development. There is also tension between wanting to attract more tourists and not wanting to disturb the town’s traditional way of life.
“We don’t really want to change Plains,” said Ellen Harris, a councilwoman. “That’s what makes us unique.”
Locals were grateful that the Carters chose to be buried at their home instead of at their presidential library in Atlanta, a decision they hope will help to maintain a steady stream of visitors. In the coming months, the gravesites of the Carters will be opened to the public. The modest ranch home the president and the first lady built in 1961 — where they raised their children and returned to after leaving the White House — will be made accessible to the public for the first time shortly after.
Events with historical ties — like the city’s yearly peanut festival in September that pays homage to Mr. Carter’s roots as a farmer — will continue to be a draw, some say. There are also newer attractions. The latest, Apt. 9A, which opened for private tours in October, is the government-subsidized home Mr. Carter moved his wife and three sons into after his father’s death in 1953.
After a 2001 walk-through with Ms. Carter in the apartment, Annette Wise, who led the project, received donations and searched through thrift stores to find items to recreate the family’s modest furnishings at a time when they had almost no income. Paint chips in a closet helped her to track down the precise shade of dark green the Carters had painted their living room and later used in campaign signs.
Ms. Wise said she believes all the time and effort will ultimately be worthwhile.
“Plains is headed in the right direction,” said Ms. Wise, who is a member of the Plains Historical Preservation Trust and a founder and the president of the Rosalynn Carter Butterfly Trail. “They’ve left us big shoes to fill. But they’ve given us plenty of time to learn what to do.”
Rick Rojas contributed reporting. Kirsten Noyes contributed research.
Politics
Trump says Jack Smith is a 'disgrace' after special counsel resigned from DOJ: 'He left town empty handed!'
President-elect Trump blasted special counsel Jack Smith as a “disgrace” to himself and the country following Smith’s resignation from the Justice Department.
Smith’s resignation was announced in a court filing Saturday.
“The Special Counsel completed his work and submitted his final confidential report on January 7, 2025, and separated from the Department on January 10,” a footnote in the filing said.
Trump took to his social media platform Truth Social on Sunday to criticize Smith for his investigations into the incoming president.
SPECIAL COUNSEL JACK SMITH RESIGNS AFTER 2-YEAR STINT AT DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak at a news conference at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
“Deranged Jack Smith was fired today by the DOJ. He is a disgrace to himself, his family, and his Country. After spending over $100,000,000 on the Witch Hunt against TRUMP, he left town empty handed!” Trump wrote.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland in November 2022 to investigate Trump’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot and his mishandling of classified documents.
Smith previously served as acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2017 during Trump’s first administration.
The resignation comes ahead of the release of Smith’s report on the case related to Trump’s role in the attack on the Capitol. A recent court filing revealed that Garland plans to release the report soon, possibly before Trump takes office next week.
Jack Smith, US special counsel, speaks during a news conference in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“As I have made clear regarding every Special Counsel who has served since I took office, I am committed to making as much of the Special Counsel’s report public as possible, consistent with legal requirements and Department policy,” Garland wrote in a recent letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and ranking member Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
A judge from a federal appeals court ruled on Friday against blocking the release of Smith’s report.
After Trump’s presidential election victory in November, Smith filed motions to bring his cases against the president-elect to a close.
Smith asked a judge in late November to drop the charges against Trump in the case related to the Capitol riot. Prior to that request, Smith filed a motion to vacate all deadlines in that case, which was anticipated after Trump’s electoral win.
TRUMP PRESSES GOP TO SWIFTLY SEND ‘ONE POWERFUL BILL’ FOR HIS SIGNATURE ASAP
Special Counsel Jack Smith announces an indictment of former President Donald Trump during a press conference on August 1, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Getty Images)
Trump said after the cases were dropped that they “should never have been brought.”
“These cases, like all of the other cases I have been forced to go through, are empty and lawless, and should never have been brought,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social. “It was a political hijacking, and a low point in the History of our Country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
Fox News’ Andrea Margolis contributed to this report.
In 2016, the American Bar Assn. couldn’t say enough good things about Merrick Garland, then the chief judge of the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and President Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, when it sent the Senate a report giving him its highest rating. So at Garland’s confirmation hearing, a bar official gave senators samples of the unanimous praise from hundreds of lawyers, judges and law professors who were contacted by the group’s evaluators.
“He may be the perfect human being,” effused one anonymous fan. Another: “Judge Garland has no weaknesses.”
Opinion Columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
Therein lies the tragedy of Merrick Garland. A man who could have been a truly supreme justice — but for then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s unprecedented Republican blockade — instead became a seemingly ineffectual attorney general, at least regarding the defining challenge of his tenure: holding Donald Trump accountable for trying to steal the 2020 presidential election.
The traits that the bar experts saw as Garland’s strengths — deliberative caution, modesty, judicial temperament, indifference to politics — turned out to be weaknesses for the head of the Justice Department in these times.
So intent was Garland on restoring the department’s independence and integrity — after Trump, in his first term, openly sought to weaponize it against his enemies — that the attorney general initially shied from investigating and prosecuting Trump for his role in the postelection subversions culminating on Jan. 6, 2021. By all accounts, Garland feared the optics of the Justice Department turning its legal powers against the man President Biden had just beaten at the polls.
Of course Trump, the master of projection, was going to, and did, accuse the attorney general of the very thing that Trump himself was guilty of: weaponizing the Justice Department. Yet in a nation based on the rule of law, the case against Trump needed to be pursued.
Garland succeeded in reviving the department’s post-Watergate norms, which restrict contacts between law enforcement officials and the White House, norms that Garland, as a young Justice lawyer in the Carter administration, helped develop in response to Nixon-era abuses. But so much for Garland’s achievement: Trump, saved by his election from having to answer for Jan. 6 or for a separate federal indictment for filching classified documents, will be back in power next week, more emboldened than before and backed by appointees willing to do his vengeful bidding at the Justice Department and the FBI.
Last week, there were small victories for accountability, if not for Trump’s alleged federal crimes. On Friday he was sentenced for his one conviction, in New York state court in May, for falsifying business records to cover up hush-money payments to a porn star ahead of the 2016 election. Judge Juan M. Merchan gave the president-elect no penalty, but at least the sentencing underscored Trump’s distinction as the only felon-president. Separately, Garland indicated he would make public the final report from special counsel Jack Smith detailing the evidence for Trump’s culpability for Jan. 6.
The 72-year-old attorney general soon leaves office having angered all sides — Republicans for going after Trump at all, Democrats for not going after him fast and hard enough. California Sen. Adam B. Schiff, formerly a member of the House Jan. 6 committee, was among the first Democrats to publicly blame the Justice Department, at least partially, for letting Trump avoid trial before the 2024 election, complaining on CNN that the department had focused too long on “the foot soldiers” who attacked the Capitol “and refrained from looking at … the inciters.”
A recent CNN retrospective on the Trump prosecution called 2021 “the lost year.” At a time when the former president was still on the defensive about Jan. 6, the Justice Department followed a bottom-up strategy targeting more than 1,500 rioters in its largest criminal investigation ever. Prosecutors insisted they were chasing leads involving Trump and close allies, while sorting out the legal complexities of trying a former occupant of the Oval Office.
By 2022, questions about Garland’s deliberative dillydallying became unavoidable. In March, U.S. District Judge David O. Carter ruled in a civil case that “the illegality of the [fake electors] plan was obvious.” The next month FBI Director Christopher Wray authorized a criminal investigation into the scheme. Then in June the House Jan. 6 committee held its televised hearings, essentially a daytime drama about Trump’s multipronged efforts to keep power, starring Republican eyewitnesses.
That development, finally, prodded Garland to get serious about the man at the top. In November 2022, Garland named Smith as special counsel. As fast as Smith seemed to work, it wasn’t until August 2023 — two and a half years after the insurrection — that Trump was criminally indicted. Months of legal challenges from the Trump team followed, delaying everything and putting forward what seemed like a crazy claim, that Trump should have presidential immunity.
Yet to point fingers solely at Garland for letting Trump off the hook shifts blame from those even more deserving of it. McConnell, for instance, who engineered Trump’s Senate acquittal in February 2021 after his impeachment for inciting the insurrection; conviction could have been paired with a vote banning Trump from seeking federal office. And the Supreme Court’s right-wing supermajority, which took seven months before mostly siding with Trump’s claim that he and future presidents are immune from criminal charges for supposedly official acts.
Even if Garland had moved aggressively, there’s a good argument that all the delays available to Trump would’ve made a trial and verdict before the election unlikely. And this fact remains: The ultimate jury — voters — had more than enough incriminating facts available to decide Trump was unfit to be president again. A plurality decided otherwise.
Still, Garland’s performance makes me doubly sad that he ended up at Justice instead of becoming a justice.
@jackiekcalmes
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