Fox And Señor Trumpanzee

Tragic-- I was going to write "funny"-- stories circulating the internet for the last couple of days about how Fox News serves as the Trumpanzee Kitchen Cabinet.

Trump is getting his immigration policy from people on Fox News who are telling him ideas that are impractical, illegal, or unconstitutional.

Axios reported that Trump had made DHS Sec. Kirstjen Nielsen his immigration scapegoat, “Since then, she’s taken on an unforgiving role: having to shoot down the president’s frequently unvetted immigration enforcement ideas (including a recent suggestion to send active duty military-- not simply National Guard-- to the border.) A senior administration source said some of Trump’s unvetted ideas are coming from people outside the White House, including Fox News personalities. The source added that Nielsen fully supports the president on the wall and on closing loopholes, but often had to be “Ms. No.” Trump was being fed legally unvetted ideas that would look flashy on TV but are of dubious operational value.”

The idea that Trump was getting his ideas from watching Fox News was bad enough, but it turns out that it was even worse than many Americans suspected. People who talk on Fox News for a living who mostly have no government experience at all are acting as a shadow cabinet for Trump. Presidents often turn to outside advisers when they want a different point of view, but Trump is ignoring the people that he chose to serve in his cabinet and has made people with no qualifications his de facto cabinet.

If Trump was just listening to Fox News as his source of information, there are ways around that problem, but if Trump is turning to let’s say Sean Hannity for immigration advice that is a much more difficult problem.

Trump is not only governing as seen on TV. He is allowing people who play politics on television to advise him on running the country.

See what I mean by tragic/not funny? Our poor country! But the story in The Guardian this morning about Fox was funny: Fox News accidentally displays graphic showing it is least trusted cable network. Everyone already knew Rachel Maddow is more watched than Hannity-- the #1 most watched cable news host, with an average total audience of 3.058 million viewers compared to Hannity's 3.000 million viewers. Forbes reported that "Maddow also won among viewers 25-54, the demographic most valued by advertisers, finishing March with an average audience of 671,000 compared to Hannity's 616,000. CNN finished a distant third in the hour, with 382,000 viewers 25-54."

But it came as a shock when Howard Kurtz flashed the image in the video up on his show on Sunday.

Fox News has inadvertently posted a graphic showing it trails other cable news networks in trustworthiness.

During a segment on Sunday on Media Buzz, host Howard Kurtz was discussing with the Republican pollster Frank Luntz a Monmouth University poll which asked respondents if the media regularly or occasionally reports fake news.

The graphic that came up on screen showed results from another question, about what cable news outlets respondents trusted more. Fox News was last at 30%, behind CNN and MSNBC, both regular targets of attacks by President Donald Trump.

Kurtz, the author of a recent, admiring book about the Trump White House, realized the mistake.

“That is not the graphic we are looking for,” he said. “Hold off. Take that down, please.”