CNN's Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy on Monday penned an OpEd blaming "right-wing media" for being "election dead-enders." According to the pair, conservative media is "peddling their audiences false hope that Trump could emerge victorious."
What's interesting is Stelter and Darcy cite various conservative personalities, like Rush Limbaugh, referring to Joe Biden as the "so-called President-elect" as their reason for believing that those of us on the right are peddling "disinformation." No, we're simply pointing out that there are a number of lawsuits and legal battles that need to play out before Joe Biden or Donald Trump are declared the winner. It's not as cut and dry as these two would like us all to believe.
Amazingly, they're going to school us about how "networks don't choose the president." Last I checked it was major networks "projecting" winners, not merely relying on final voting totals to call states for the candidates.
The networks don't choose the president, of course, they just report on the results of the voting in each state. And the court battle over the 2000 election involved a single state with only hundreds of votes separating the two candidates and a legitimate court battle, not multiple states that Biden is winning by tens of thousands of votes and no legal case experts think will be successful.
But media-bashing is a throughline among Trump dead-enders. On Fox, Greg Gutfeld mocked the media and the Democrats for converging "on one message." On Breitbart, which was once headed by Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon, the top headline on Monday described the news media as "desperate to close the books" on the "contested election." The headline featured an opinion column that said, "'President-elect'? Not so fast."
Even though Fox News has come under fire from conservatives for being the first network to call Arizona for Biden, calling the overall race for Biden, and even moving away from Kayleigh McEnany's press conference, the CNN duo isn't happy that Fox is still covering the Trump campaign.
But, despite some brief isolated moments across the network's 24 hours of programming, Fox's newscasts have still heavily covered Trump's efforts to challenge the results of the election, giving his far-fetched effort a sense of legitimacy.
Bret Baier, the network's chief political anchor, vowed over the weekend that the channel will not "stop digging and following up on leads and following up on indicators" of voter fraud, even though he acknowledged there is no such evidence to date.
That trend continued on Monday as the legal challenges ate up much of the network's air time.
Darcy explained more on his Twitter feed:
President-elect Joe Biden? Not if you are getting your news from right-wing media. Here's what is going on in Trump's media universe. w/@brianstelter https://t.co/ctupQ0Rvd0
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 9, 2020
I do not think most people fully appreciate the disinformation campaign taking place right now in right-wing media to de-legitimize Biden as President-elect. It has totally saturated coverage. It's everywhere.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 10, 2020
This matters. Right-wing media has a firm grip on the Republican Party. GOP senators will be encouraged to play along with this nonsense. And the ones who don't will probably be less likely to speak out over fear of facing the wrath of propagandists like Hannity, Limbaugh, etc.
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) November 10, 2020
The American people have a right to know what's really going on. They have a right to know that whistleblowers from the USPS have stepped forward saying ballots have allegedly been backdated, that poll watchers couldn't observe ballot counting, that "glitches" and "human error" have impacted voting totals. The American people have a right to know that the President of the United States and his re-election campaign are challenging decisions state and local officials made.
If there were one or two instances of "voting irregularities" or allegations of voter fraud, that would be one thing. But we've heard about them repeatedly from multiple sources. Witnesses have filed affidavit – under penalty of perjury – that they witnessed, heard or experienced something that was illegal.
The reason so many of us on the right are pointing to things that don't sit right is because we want to make sure our election process if safe, fair, and protected. We want every person's vote – who followed the rules and guidelines – to count. If these allegations are looked into, found to be false and it turned out Biden actually won this election, the majority of us would accept that. What we don't accept is pushing aside merit-based allegations that deserve an investigation simply because it's easier to say everything is hunky dory.