I like to watch the Fox News programs Outnumbered and The Five, partly to see what the other side is thinking and partly because there is usually a liberal on the shows to provide a little bit of rebuttal to the conservatives on the network. Both show have a similar format of four conservative and one liberal commentator; I guess the conservatives can’t handle the liberals with a simple majority. For those of you unfamiliar with the program, the title Outnumbered doesn’t refer to the liberal being outnumbered 4-1. It refers to having four women hosts and one male one (who initially was referred to as “one lucky guy”). The liberal was usually one of the women.
I say was because since December 10, not one liberal has appeared on the program. That’s seven straight shows. The closest to a non-conservative who has appeared is Gillian Turner, who previously worked for the National Security Council under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama. What happened on December 10? That’s when the conservatives got their asses handed to them by former State Department Marie Harf. She correctly pointed out that they went 43 minutes into the program without mentioning that more than 3,000 Americans died of COVID-19 the previous day. Instead, they talked about Hunter Biden, the Texas lawsuit against the election, and complaints by restaurant owners about coronavirus restrictions. That cause host Harris Faulkner to go ballistic, accusing Harf of making a personal attack. You can see the whole exchange here. As mentioned above, ever since that day, not a single liberal has appeared on the program. It’s true that it is the holidays and Harf might have requested vacation time, but they have other liberal women commentators such as Leslie Marshall and Dr. Jessica Tarlov (who is probably persona non grata for repeatedly calling Trump a liar when she appeared previously). Hell, sometimes the liberal is even the male guest. Instead, they have replaced the liberal women with people like Tomi Lahren and Rachel Campos-Duffy, the latter of which was rebuked even by the conservatives on the program previously for saying that the efficacy of masks was still in question. As a result, you get a one-sided program like today’s, which covered:
- AG Barr’s statement that he wouldn’t appoint a special prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case
- The stimulus package, but focusing on blaming Democrats and specifically Nancy Pelosi for playing politics with it
- Whether Eric Swalwell should be kicked off the Intelligence Committee
- China trying to influence coverage of COVID-19
- The recall campaign against Gavin Newsom
- Accusing the cast of SNL of hypocrisy for hugging without masks during their program
I’ll point out that Turner did a little countering during parts of the discussion, but not to the extent that one of the liberals would have. But no mention of the Russian computer hacking in the two programs since that news broke.
Harf and Faulkner have had some run-ins in the past, so it will be interesting to see of Harf ever returns. Since Faulkner is one Fox News’ “stars,” I’m not putting any money on that.