Who are black Americans going to believe, Donald Trump or Juan Williams?
This morning:
This is currently the tweet he pinned to the top of his Twitter page:
(Subscription)
They shouldn’t lose hope. They are at the heart of the fight to take back America.
by Juan Williams, Fox News analyst
“The biggest story of 2020 politics is hard to ignore. But somehow it is being ignored.
The black vote now defines American politics.”
About Juan Williams
Juan Williams was fired from NPR in 2010.
Juan Williams, the venerable NPR news analyst and civil rights era expert, joined a growing list of journalists fired for making bold statements on the air or online – in his case, telling Fox News's Bill O'Reilly that people in Muslim garb on airplanes make him "nervous."
In NPR's view, Mr. Williams stepped over a boundary by needlessly offending American Muslims. Juan Williams was fired Wednesday. But a quick dismissal for stating a fear that many Americans share, media experts say, also sends a puzzling message to reporters, who are laboring under increasing demands to share their personality and opinion while at the same time abiding by ethics rules. Those rules don't always jibe with the "insta-opinion" atmosphere of new media like Twitter and Facebook.
Christian Science Monitor
He was then hired by Fox News:
As National Public Radio weathered a storm of criticism Thursday for its decision to fire news analyst Juan Williams for his comments about Muslims, Fox News moved to turn the controversy to its advantage by signing Williams to an expanded role at the cable news network.
Fox News chief executive Roger Ailes handed Williams a new three-year contract Thursday, in a deal that amounts to nearly $2 million, a considerable bump up from his previous salary. The Fox News contributor will now appear exclusively and more frequently on the cable news network and have a regular column on FoxNews.com.
“Juan has been a staunch defender of liberal viewpoints since his tenure began at Fox News in 1997,” Ailes said in a statement, adding a jab at NPR: “He’s an honest man whose freedom of speech is protected by Fox News on a daily basis.” Denver Post
I never watch Fox News so I don’t know much about him. I won’t let that fact stop me from writing this about him today because of his OpEd in the New York Times because it will not endear him to Donald Trump. Consider these excerpts from an August, 2019 Newsweek article:
Democratic pundit and strategist Joel Payne called President Donald Trump out this weekend for attacking black Fox News personalities during an encounter with journalists in New Jersey.
Trump lashed out at his favorite cable news channel, Fox News, on Sunday over the network's recent polls and a couple of their political pundits.
"Fox is a lot different than it used to be. I can tell you that," the president told reporters on Sunday, before then criticizing Fox News analyst Juan Williams and former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile. "They have the wonderful woman that gave Hillary Clinton the questions," Trump said. "That was a terrible thing. And all of a sudden, she's working for Fox. What's she doing working for Fox?"
Trump listed some Fox News personalities that he still likes during his exchange with reporters on Sunday. "Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs, Tucker Carlson and Laura [Ingraham]. Jesse Waters and Jeanine [Pirro]," the president said.
The president also attacked Williams on Twitter earlier on Sunday after the Fox News analyst criticized him during a re-aired segment on Fox News Sunday. "Juan Williams at @FoxNews is so pathetic, and yet when he met me in the Fox Building lobby, he couldn't have been nicer as he asked me to take a picture of him and me for his family," Trump tweeted. "Yet he is always nasty and wrong!"
Following Trump's remarks, Payne tweeted: "Odd. I wonder why he would single out Juan Williams of all those at Fox who have been critical of him??? Hmmm."
How the powers that control Fox News react to this most recent anti-Trump position coming from one of their analysts remains to be seen. If they fire one of their few black personalities, and one of the few hosts and analysts not fearing to be critical of Trump, it would be duly noted in the rest of the media. Then again, why should they care? After all, as far as I can tell the typical Fox viewer would be happy if they rid themselves of anyone who dared speak out against Trump. Such a purge would be lauded by the president and it would put Fox News back into his good graces.
Excerpts from the 2,043 word Juan Williams OpEd:
Contrary to the image created by news coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests, 43 percent of black voters are moderates. A quarter identify as conservatives. These are the black people in church on Sunday. They are proud members of a sorority or fraternity.
In 2016, while white turnout went up, “the black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election,” according to the Pew Research Center.
President Trump, too, recognizes the power of the black vote. After his upset win in 2016, he said: Blacks “didn’t come out to vote for Hillary. They didn’t come out. And that was big — so thank you to the African-American community.”
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Black Americans have had enough. They have an explosive, personal investment in defeating Mr. Trump in 2020. More than 80 percent of them say Mr. Trump is a racist. For them, defeating him is the civil rights movement of 2020.
And it is not an empty threat.
If black voters returned to the polls at their 2012 levels, the Democratic presidential candidate “would win the Electoral College by 294-244,” according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress.
His conclusion:
Stoking racial divisions may work for his base, but not for voters in the middle. Polls show most independents have already decided they can’t support Mr. Trump. Now they have seen the tape of Mr. Floyd dying. Violent protests may make them anxious, but they have had their eyes opened to injustice.
These are dark days, but black voters’ profile and power have never been this high. They have the chance to lead the nation to recovery. Civil rights leaders, who pushed for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and had their blood spilled to register black voters, dreamed of this moment.
Consider how intolerant the president has been whenever anyone on Fox strays from absolute sycophancy, most recently by way of example “Trump says he's 'looking for a new outlet' after a Fox News anchor expressed shock at the president's announcement that he takes hydroxychloroquine”.
Of course like most of Trump’s threats, this one to abandon Fox News is an empty one. The often snarky Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank lists many of these delusional threats in yesterday’s OpEd: “A spiraling nation cries out for steady leadership. Trump offers empty threats” (subscription).
President Trump says he’d send in the troops to fight American citizens on U.S. soil over the objections of governors.
He says he will bring the unrest to an immediate end.
He says he’ll withdraw the United States from the World Health Organization.
When the sun rises in the west.
He says he’ll label antifa a terrorist organization.
When fish climb poplar trees.
He says he’ll force states to reopen, or to close.
When the hen grows teeth, the frog grows hair and the crawfish whistles on the mountain.
There’s no way Trump can concoct out of a magic potion of Diet Coke, MacDonalds fries, and KFC nuggets a pure Trumpian “news outlet” with the reach of Fox News.
Is there a point where Trump's egregious flouting of good taste and decency will prompt the Murdochs to inhale the stench of November defeat for their golden boy and fire the likes of Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity and assure that news about Trump and Trump related incidents such as the protests are covered objectively? Take the poll.