Image this: a celeb anchor on a big news community turns to the camera and informs his tens of millions of viewers that elections don’t matter, democracy is over, and the one remedy is a violent civil conflict against his political opponents.

You could expect the information community to problem a commentary condemning the anchor, bench them, in all probability fire them. After all, the comments are as silly as they’re dangerous: elections do in truth nonetheless topic, American democracy remains intact, and violence just isn’t a smart approach to political differences.

But Fox News is not an ordinary information network. On Thursday, one in every of its hottest hosts, Greg Gutfeld, declared all of those things on The Five. His feedback will have been incoherent, but the message was once clear: Democracy is done, elections are pointless, the only closing solution is violent conflict towards liberals.

Yet when I reached out to Fox News for an explanation, the network didn’t respond.

Gutfeld’s screed would have been enough to verify some kind of end result at every other news outlet, but Fox proved long ago it doesn’t adhere to the same set of standards.

What media critics suspected for years to be genuine about probably the most-watched community in all of cable information was made clear as day within the proof spilled into public view over the course of the Dominion defamation suit towards Fox, which the community settled for a watch-watering $787 million. The proof proved that Fox Information hosts and executives knew that the 2020 election used to be now not stolen, but endured to advertise that lie for revenue. (Some of its hosts proceed to flirt with the stolen election lie, with impunity. All they look to have discovered from the Dominion fiasco is you shouldn’t immediately defame a company within the process.)

Fox News knows that Gutfeld’s feedback are reckless and ridiculous however will proceed to let him host The Five and his 10 p.m. program Gutfeld!, as a result of his displays rate. Profit over even an iota of theory.

A comic and the former editor of magazines together with Men’s Health and Maxim, Gutfeld joined Roger Ailes’s Fox as the irreverent funnyman. But his commentary has become darker in contemporary years, in tandem with his handy U-flip from harsh critic of Trump to unconditional booster of the previous president. Now, turning in extreme rhetoric night after night with the fervour of a convert, Gutfeld is likely one of the most-watched personalities in all of cable information.

Back in 2015, after Trump mocked John McCain for spending five years as a prisoner of struggle in Vietnam, Gutfeld condemned the media for defending Trump with phrases that apply neatly to the Gutfeld we see on air as of late.

“Whilst you see righties defending jokes about POWs, it says this game of ‘I’m extra conservative than you’ is set ego and not issues,” Gutfeld stated on The Five. “Trump is your identification, no longer your conscience. And so we embraced him, exposing TV’s actual purpose, which is rankings. An election is in 16 months, however scores come out for us every single day — and Trump promises.”

TV’s proper function is indeed ratings. Huge rankings — or to put it differently: influence — drove Gutfeld to include Trump as soon as he took over the Republican Celebration. And ratings — or to place it otherwise: money — are why Fox News won’t do anything else about its celebrity host’s more and more unhinged commentary.

The put up Fox News Silent on Top Host’s Screed Calling For Civil Battle first seemed on Mediaite.