Duplicity of Fox Opinion Hosts on Full Display

The text messages sent to then Chief of Staff Mark Meadows by Fox News opinion hosts are revealing:   

“Hey Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home…this is hurting all of us…he is destroying his legacy,” Laura Ingraham wrote.

“Please get him on TV. Destroying everything you have accomplished,” Brian Kilmeade wrote. 

“Can he make a statement?…Ask people to leave the Capitol,” Sean Hannity urged.

Laura Ingraham

While Ingraham, Kilmeade and Hannity are opinion and not news hosts, they don't have carte blanche to disregard journalistic principles.  While their opinions are subjective in nature, they're not supposed to distort the facts upon which those opinions are based. This includes encouraging politicians to take certain actions.

At any other network, a host getting caught advising a prominent politician would get them fired, or at least suspended (ask Chris Cuomo).  At Fox, Ingraham, Kilmeade and Hannity are unlikely to even be reprimanded, though I could see their bosses telling them next time to use the phone to convey advice, not put it in writing.

The Fox hosts later went out and tried to spin the Insurrection as being done by Antifa, the FBI, or that it was mostly a peaceful protest.  However, the text messages reveal the Fox hosts knew the insurrectionists were Trump supporters and that Trump had the power to end the violent melee.  Trump, of course, chose not to do that.

OOP's short takes:

• The coverup continues. This time the insurrection coverup participant is John Eastman, the attorney who tried to aid Trump in stealing the 2020 election by offering the asinine legal theory that VP Mike Pence had the unilateral authority to prohibit certain slates of electoral votes from being counted. 
• Eastman has sued Verizon to prevent the carrier from turning over cell phone data to the January 6th Commission.  Eastman cites numerous reasons, including attorney-client privilege.  Of course, as all attorneys know, attorney-client privilege does not cover all communications an attorney has.  Further, the privilege belongs to the client, not to the attorney.  It is not clear how Eastman continues to have a law license (or a job at Claremont Institute) given his extra-judicial, unethical conduct.