Trump supporters' siege on the U.S. Capitol Wednesday "was a jarring scene. But no one should have been terribly surprised — particularly not anyone working at Fox," says CNN's Oliver Darcy. "The disturbing scenes that played out on national television Wednesday were a natural consequence of the lies and conspiracy theories about the presidential election that have for weeks now been fed to Trump's supporters. Experts had warned that disinformation about the election results could lead to real-world violence — but many in right-wing media did not heed those warnings." Fox News, he says, was chief among them. "Since the November election, Fox News hosts — many of whom use their platforms to work as propagandists for Trump — have promoted disinformation about the election results and helped spread conspiracy theories aimed at casting doubt on Joe Biden's victory," says Darcy. "These Fox News hosts, along with a cohort of propagandists on smaller right-wing cable networks, talk-radio, and online platforms have shamelessly lied to their supporters and undermined the American electoral system. Which is to say that while Trump may have been the one who lit the match under what happened on Wednesday, dishonest media personalities allied with the President had been laying down gasoline-soaked wood for the bonfire for weeks beforehand." Darcy says the right-wing media has "enormous power over the Republican Party and the direction in which it is heading. But instead of wielding such enormous power responsibly and telling their audiences the truth about what happened on Election Day, they've done the very opposite and provoked anger by promoting the notion that the vote had been rigged and the presidency stolen. Then, to compound what they had done, they lied more and acted as if a free and fair election could be overturned and Trump inaugurated again, giving those audiences who depend on them false hope. Those lies and conspiracy theories have real-world effect, as demonstrated Wednesday by the throngs of Trump's supporters who genuinely believed the election was corrupt and that they were acting patriotically by fighting on the President's behalf."
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TOPICS: Fox News Channel, Great American Country, Newsmax, Brian Kilmeade, Brit Hume, Joe Scarborough, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, 2020 Presidential Election, Cable News, Trump Presidency, U.S. Capitol Takeover