We analyzed 17 months of Fox & Friends transcripts. Its far weirder than state-run media. (Vox)

[eppur_se_muova]

How the Fox morning show evolved into Donald Trump’s posse.
By Alvin Chang@[e-mail] Updated Feb 9, 2018, 11:39am EST

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Since Trump was elected, Fox & Friends has taken a special place in the media landscape. It’s clear that the program is in something of a feedback loop with the president. But contrary to what CNN president Jeff Zucker says, this isn't state-run television "extolling the line out of the White House." Scholars tend to say state-run media usually aims to keep the rank and file in line, while demobilizing the populace and deflating political opposition. Most of it is very boring. Watch some live Chinese state-run media and you'll immediately understand.

We analyzed 17 months of Fox & Friends transcripts, which captures nearly a year before Trump was elected president and about six months after. (More on the methodology at the bottom of this piece.)

What we found is that Fox & Friends has a symbiotic relationship with Trump that is far weirder and more interesting than state media. Instead of talking for Trump, they are talking to him.

The regular hosts — Steve Doocy, Brian Kilmeade, and Ainsley Earhardt — and their rotating cast of guests increasingly view their role as giving advice to the president. They prognosticate on what the president, his staff, or his party should do. And it’s all couched in language that makes it seem they are on his side — that the damning news reports from mainstream media were unfair obstacles to his presidency.

That is in contrast to what Fox & Friends was before Trump. In 2013, media scholar Jeffrey P. Jones argued that Fox & Friends creates an ideologically homogenous community and reinforces it by creating a high school-like atmosphere. "The show is designed to thrust the viewer into a common-sense groupthink, complete with all the rumours, smears, innuendo, fear-mongering, thinly veiled ad hominem attacks, and lack of rational discourse they can muster — you know, just like high school," he writes.
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more: https://www.vox.com/2017/8/7/16083122/breakfast-club-fox-and-friends

[Cary]

1. Kilmeade creeps me out.

Can't look at him. Can't listen to his voice.

[Nitram]

2. Scary. Tell me this is all a bad dream and I'm going to wake up at any monent and laugh my ass off.

The President of the United States taking advice from 3 morons on a couch. While the Republican Congress says, "Yeah, we know he's an idiot, but he's OUR idiot!"

[dalton99a]

3. Kick.