Dan Friesen and Jordan Holmes dissect Brian Stelter’s Network of Lies interview, exposing Fox News’ role in amplifying Alex Jones’ blood libel claims—$787.5M settlements prove financial accountability but not ideological reform. Stelter’s flight experience reveals how Trump’s "fake news" redefinition fuels disinformation, while Holmes critiques Fox’s divisive humor (e.g., Greg Gutfeld’s repetitive jokes) as institutionalized racism. Legal pressure may force surface changes, like Carlson’s exit, but systemic shifts remain elusive, leaving conspiracy theorists unchecked and media complicity intact. [Automatically generated summary]
It is funny for me to hear somebody who was on TV for a decade being nervous about talking to a clown with a radio show that can only be found on the internet.
This is the first time I'm actually seeing your face live.
To give a little behind-the-scenes to people, we were taken to a very small room in downtown Chicago, and we looked at a camera hole, and that was our whole experience.
Okay, so I'm gonna have to admit, I don't follow Alex Jones's rants about me that closely.
So I hate to disappoint.
I rely on you to tell me what he has said.
There was one, though, the very famous one, the one where he accuses me of drinking children's blood and running the banks, which you all have dined out on in the past, which Tucker Carlson recently celebrated on his web show.
Yes, yeah.
I will tell you, that was actually the one night during the Trump administration that my wife was worried about my line of work and was fearful about our livelihood and our life.
We were living in the city.
We were about to have our first child.
And she watches this insane, unhinged rant with my smiley face plastered up on the screen.
And I found it rather amusing.
I was trying to laugh about it.
And she was freaked out.
And rightfully.
And I totally understand why.
Because little Pepe the Frog logos started getting sent to us in the mail.
And the interesting thing about that is, like, there was no message attached, right?
There was no, like, threat or anything.
It was just their way of saying, we know where you live.
And which I find to be a really interesting tactic.
So that was the one, like, all the other stuff that happened, the bomb at CNN, you know, the death threats, the time that Trump tweeted about me, like, none of that really spooked my family.
But it was Alex Jones and the drink children's blood.
Nine times out of ten, I think this is just online chaos.
Most of the time, almost all of the time, it is just this reality distortion field that only exists on people's computers and screens.
Every so often, as Oliver Darcy experienced, something else that you all have covered, you know, Alex will show up in person and confront you on camera in your face.
And so every so often the real world like breaks through.
It's like the Internet world breaks through into the real world.
And you never know when it's going to happen or if it's going to happen.
There's something really deep, and there's a deep despair to that, right?
He is a character who has to create other characters in order to mock, destroy, ridicule, whatever he does to them, right?
But I think what I learned in the Trump years as an anchor at CNN was that, Brian, they're not talking about you.
They're talking about a cartoon character villain they've created.
With your name and your face.
And I don't just mean that about Alex.
I mean, about Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, you know, these guys will come up with nicknames and fat jokes and stuff and ridicule.
And I had to kind of accept that layer of removal from it because...
There was one night, and I don't mean to sound like the victim here or whatever, but we're talking about this weird life of being in the public square and having these...
I was on a late night flight, and it was a coast-to-coast flight, and I wanted to get up to the bathroom, and I'm walking up to the bathroom, and I see on Fox News...
All the people in the rows in front of me are watching Fox, and there's a segment bashing me as I'm walking up the aisle.
That's insane.
It was Tucker's show, I'm pretty sure, but it might have been Sean's, because that night, Tucker, Sean, and Laura all did segments where they ridiculed or attacked or whatever.
I can't remember what I did wrong that day or what I did right that day.
Three hours in a row, Brian Seltzer was one of the villains.
And I remember, like, being nervous about walking back from the bathroom, right?
Like, I hope none of these passengers recognize me, right?
No, because when we describe it as the internet or their world catching up to us or breaking into the real world, I think that is an example of you getting sucked into a fantasy world.
You have suddenly walked into a LARP that you had no idea even existed.
I had to realize early, like, again, this is in the Trump years, and this was my education about this, and now we're kind of still in the Trump years, that...
The afternoon that Trump randomly tweeted about me, and I didn't hear from a single friend of mine.
I didn't have a single family member call me.
I'm not that much of a...
I have friends.
I'm a social person.
It's just that nobody in my world, in my reality, cared what Donald Trump was tweeting.
Right?
Like, it was so removed from their daily existence.
Why would they care that the president's calling this reporter a lapdog?
Sure, sure.
And then, so you go on Twitter and you look at the replies and there's thousands of trolls, you know, or whatever they are, just eating it up and having fun and going hog wild.
But out in my sphere, it was like it never happened.
And I'm really grateful for that perspective, to have that perspective.
And this is something that, you know, this was true about Trump also.
And what I think this was a no-win and is a no-win situation for mainstream media.
Fact-checking Trump only...
Fact-checking Trump does many things.
It's important to fact-check Trump.
It's not an option not to fact-check Trump.
But those fact-checks are sometimes fuel for him to say to his voters that the media doesn't like you, which is false.
But, you know.
That's the story he can tell.
And the same thing with Alex Jones.
The coverage from CNN, and this is where being a media reporter gets all sorts of wacky and convoluted because you're trying and you hope you're shining a light and exposing how the world works or doesn't work.
But in so doing, you might be raising more awareness of these individuals.
Paradox, or if that's what you want to call it, has kind of been around.
I mean, the thing about it is that it's less a paradox and more a Gordian not so much as like, oh, well, the mainstream media can't exist in the form it does.
Let's say it was close, but clear that he lost, and he starts lying about it again.
Let's say that he encourages his supporters to protest, to have a wild event the way he said January 6th would be.
What does Fox do in that scenario?
And I think the answer to that hypothetical is Fox does not...
Defame specific voting companies.
If you're booked on Fox in November of 2024, if Donald Trump loses again, if you start saying, Dominion did it, you're going to be cut off.
You're not going to be booked again.
So in that very narrow sense, something will have changed.
There will be specific companies that you're not allowed to defame on Fox in 2024.
I don't know.
It might not be very satisfying to your listeners.
Yeah.
Now, I do think around the edges also, there might be a little more news and maybe a little bit less propaganda because there's going to be this increased attention on how does Fox play it?
How does Fox handle it?
Right.
And so in the scenario I just described, if Trump loses again, Fox will be torn once again between Trump and the truth.
Same problem they had in 2020.
Same problem they had basically every day.
Trump or the truth.
Trump or the truth.
And they try to side with Trump, but it gets them into financial and legal trouble and costs them a lot of money.
So, you know, we're going to see a version of this play out again this year, I guess, is the answer.
I suppose the interesting question there is, you know, based upon the book, going through all of the internal communications and all of that stuff that you've put together, I'm wondering...
It's disturbing to me how he got up there before the Iowa caucus and said, this chance, you in Iowa, it's the ultimate chance for you to declare victory.
Over the perverts and the Democrats.
He starts naming all these groups that he considers not real Americans.
And it was a very explicit dehumanization call.
And everyone was like, yeah, it's Saturday.
And I'm thinking, no, this is not just Saturday.
This is a big deal still.
And I feel for the folks, and I'm sure many of your listeners feel this way, where you want the media collectively to somehow take Trump more seriously.
The thing I think about Fox as it relates to all this is that Lachlan Murdoch, his father, his father, Rupert, the shareholders, What they care about most is the profit and the bottom line of Fox and keeping Fox as a strong business going forward.
So to the extent that they can align with Trump, but not be accused of defamation, not be found liable, not be accused of helping set a riot.
They want their hands clean while profiting from Trump and Trumpism.
But Tara Carlson's firing was Lachlan Murdoch's way of trying to make his network seem a little more center-right.
Sure.
As opposed to far right.
Now, we can dismantle all of that and we can say that's all bullshit.
But in his head, at least, and in his boards, in the minds of his board members, they were taking Fox, which was with Tucker, even further out toward that Alex Jones conspiracy world and dragging it a little bit back closer to a shared reality.
Sure.
And, you know, that's not nothing, even though it's far from what...
And so much of what's broken relates to the Republican Party that acts more like a media operation than a law-making operation, than a legislative operation.
You know, we hear so little, other than around immigration, with Trump trying to torpedo this border deal, we hear so little about policy out of the far right, but really from the right.
It's become so much more of a television production arm than operation.
And so that's part of what makes it hard to hash this out and forecast what it would be.
I think there is a world in which, like, so to me, if you look at Fox Corporation, Lachlan Murdoch, Rupert, Paul Ryan, who's on the board, the other board members.
These are still, maybe not Lachlan, but these are still mostly country club Republicans.
These are still mostly tax cut Republicans.
And, you know, they make all sorts of compromises, you know, to try to appeal to a more populist crowd, to try to appeal to an anti-immigration crowd.
But, you know, that's who is at...
On top of Fox.
And I think that's important and relevant when we talk about how would they approach and how would they handle Trump.
I guess I hadn't thought a lot about what a second term of Trump means for Fox News yet.
Because, honestly, I don't think I've asked more than a few people what their gut says about what's going to happen in November.
It still feels hella far away.
We don't know what the environment's going to look like financially, economically, foreign policy, etc.
But we did see at Davos recently articles from the Times and Axios and others saying the conventional wisdom among the banker types was that Trump is coming back.
And I think there is a certain, there is within, I think, some elite groups that sense of Trump coming back.
With the caveat, of course, that those persons are almost always wrong out of places like Davos.
Sure.
Here's, so I guess I would frame it the following way.
I look at the country in 2024 and I see a disillusioned, dissatisfied, depressed electorate, right?
People who don't like these choices, who don't want to rematch, who don't want to rerun, but are sucking it up and accepting it.
I see a political class that thinks this is all really, really important, and then...
Virtually everybody else saying, no, thanks.
We don't care.
We're shrugging it off.
I see these groups that are dedicated to defending democracy that are doing all the right things because they're absolutely right.
There are real threats.
And yet, how do you get your mother to care?
How do you get your neighbors to care?
So in an environment where it just feels like the electorate is disillusioned, dissatisfied.
With that said, I think we can also say...
Trump doesn't have half the country.
He doesn't have that many fans.
He has, what, 60% of the Republican voter electorate?
He has maybe 70% on a good day?
He has definitely, for sure, tens of millions of MAGA loyalists, but not even close to half the country.
Now, it doesn't mean he can't win, right?
Because when faced with a red or blue choice, some people who don't like Trump are going to vote red.
I understand that.
But I think it's important to recognize that he's coming No, no, no, no.
That doesn't mean they won't vote for a wannabe autocrat, right?
But most Americans don't want that.
We know that about, what, one in four Americans would prefer a strongman-style leader.
We've seen that in polling for decades.
We know there's a strain of authoritarianism in America that dates back to the founding.
There's always been a minority, but it's a minority, right?
It's not even close to 50%.
So I look at the polls, I look at the rematch, and I think a lot of people are just going to stay home.
And that means it could be a close election, and that means anything could happen.
But most people don't want to...
I guess what I find interesting is that despite...
Trump having the mega media, having Fox, having all these sources, having all these outlets, having all this incendiary rhetoric, most people still aren't buying what he's selling.
Now, within that, there are some that are, you know, incredibly maniacal and, like, you know, author rockers and all that's true, but, like, I feel like when I sit across from an executive at Fox or an anchor or a host at Fox or a commentator on Fox, I can have a honest conversation, I guess, is the...
That very much, that does get to this disconnect that I feel.
I tried to say earlier, like, I'm just a reporter.
Like, he's the entertainer, right?
I feel very much as if one of the root of all of our problems, at least in our media society.
Are those disconnects?
You have lots and lots of reporters who are flawed but trying to tell people what's going on in the world, and they're up against this entertainment and propaganda thing that doesn't exist to compete with them editorially.
They're not trying to beat those writers to the news.
Jesse Waters is not trying to get the scoop before CNN.
No, Jesse Waters is on a mission.
His project is to...
Take out the CNNs.
To remove them from the playing field in order to advance a political agenda so that he has to pay lower taxes.
If he was a source, I would avoid the conversation.
Meaning I wouldn't admit it anyway.
I think in general...
I just look at these, the kind of the MAGA host people on Fox, the commentators, the right-wing commentators, as, you know, they're mostly interchangeable, right?
Jesse's more of like comic relief.
He was the Bill O 'Reilly sidekick, and then he grew into this job and all of that.
But he's putting on a very predictable show.
But when I say he's doing it in service of political agenda, I think that part's clear.
Based on what he decides to lead his show with every night, he very clearly wants Biden to be removed and all that.
Now, what confuses me, this is why I go back to this kind of blanket belief in the people that you're talking to at Fox News, is that in a way, you are essentially calling all of them fucking stupid.
Because they would have to be fucking stupid not to know what you know.
You know, they would have to be fucking stupid not to be able to look at what Jesse Waters does and make the same conclusion that you do.
So how is it that they can tell you, like, oh, well, you know, we have all of these things in place to kind of do all this stuff, and you not just go, you know exactly what the fuck you're doing.
Well, so I think Fox has evolved over time or devolved over time.
There was an era where they claimed to be fair and balanced for real.
That was not just a slogan, that was reality.
And there was a time when if you called the channel conservative, the PR people would object and would complain and would go to your editors and demand a correction.
Sure.
That era is over.
And there's not really the same kind of denial of what Fox does or is.
So I don't think, I don't know if there's really a dispute there in terms of like, what is Jesse Waters there for?
And this, I think, kind of crystallizes the difference between Alex and I. So I appreciate your point about the similarities, the certain kind of broadcasting world.
Here's the big difference, though.
One of the differences.
One of the big differences between you and I. Oh, no, no, no.
So if you are aware that you are specifically hiring this person to give you a veneer of legitimacy, that means you're aware you are illegitimate functionally.
You can't not understand that as a concept, right?
No, but this is where we get back to the conversations that you're having.
Like, I'm still going back.
I don't let shit go.
This is why I'm telling you that I find it so fascinating that when somebody, when a Fox News exec tells you something, you don't spit in their face.
Because if this person is aware that what they're doing with the five is what pays their bills, and what they're doing with the four is what makes them feel good, then they know what they're doing.
So they can't come to you and say, you know, we have this kind of thing.
So Alex Jones and others freaked out when I went to the World Economic Forum meeting in Davos last year.
There were these propaganda stories saying that I was being paid and that I was there to promote disinformation and all this stuff.
They're paying for Brian Stelter to go lie to us.
All these crazy stories.
And in fact, it was like they asked me to moderate a panel.
I paid for my own flight and hotel.
I actually left a day early because I wasn't enjoying the conference very much.
I missed my kids.
But it was cool to see what it was.
What I realized is it's just a giant networking event for rich people.
It's just a networking thing.
They're there to schmooze and see each other and go to their parties.
But I'm at Anthony Scaramucci's party.
And which was hard to get into this line out the door.
And, you know, former Trump official turned Trump opponent.
Right.
And who do I bump into?
But Maria Bartiromo, Maria Bartiromo, who more than any other person is responsible for the defamation case by Dominion, who started the Dominion lie on Fox, who had the first interview with Trump after Trump lost the election and who who indulged his delusions and encouraged his attack against the government.
You know, not physical attack, but you know.
Marie Bordoromo, who used to be this renowned CNBC anchor who now lives in a different reality on a different earth than I do.
And there she is, looking for a great glass of wine in this overly crowded party in Davos.
And, you know, we smiled at each other and, like, I feel like neither of us really actually wanted to have a conversation because it would be too awkward for both of us.
But that moment that Trump took the term fake news and redefined it to mean news he doesn't like, news you shouldn't believe, the moment that that happened, we got fucked as a country.
That really deeply wounded us.
And you might think I'm making too much of that moment, but that moment to me, that's...
Couple days, it's two weeks later, they lie about crowd size.
And we're off to the races in terms of this disinformation campaign.
It's before we were even using the word disinformation, you know?
But then we started using these terms to try to understand what was happening to our sense of shared reality.
To me, these were formative years, and I learned a lot about my belief system, my value system.
And there's a lot of stuff out there that's garbage, but it's not disinformation.
There's so much stuff out there that's nonsense, but I wouldn't call it fake.
I wouldn't call it a lie.
Where I reserve my most, you know, attention, I guess, is for the straight up likely provable lies.
Now, here's why I appreciate you.
You come at it totally differently from a comedy lens, like with a comedian's head on it.
And you are so much blunter, right?
I'm a clown, yeah.
I wouldn't use that word.
I would use that word.
But you're making me think that Fox promoting Greg Gutfeld was genius.
Generally speaking, it's a bad idea to insult people if you're using something that you could insult anybody else with.
It has to be specific.
And then it has to make them think about it later on.
Like, if you take a shower, the only good insult is one where if I have insulted you, you should take a shower the next day and go, oh, and feel bad about it.
So, but, well, I mean, even that, though, that aspect of a gut felt.
We're going to put gut felt on our network.
That is as much a business decision of like, well, we want to diversify our I mean, first to give him a talk show, then to move to primetime and then to promote Jesse waters.
Yeah, no, the joke is that you let them get away with it.
That's the joke.
Like, if you have somebody like Gutfeld say, you know, like, oh, we should put all black people in cages, you know, the joke is that you and I will go, well, clearly he doesn't mean that.
I'm not saying that he specifically said that, but like in any number, you know, in Anna Merlin's book, in Republic of Lies, whenever she's going to these groups of people, these youths.
Uh, with their, with their coats, you know, any number of things, you know, the far right youth, uh, there is like that element of like, ha ha ha, we'll rape somebody.
And the joke is that they mean it.
The joke is that they're going to say this to her face and she's going to watch them say it.
That's the, that's what makes them laugh.
And that's kind of why it's horrific to compare them to humor.
Well, there's also, isn't there also an element of, This is our politics now, right?
That we can't...
On MSNBC at 10 p.m. Eastern Time is Lawrence O'Donnell, who grew up in his formative adult experiences.
We're working for Moynihan, working in the Senate, working on Capitol Hill, learning how policy is crafted, learning how laws are made, and he'll book.
Senators as guests.
He'll book Andrew Weissman.
He'll book legal figures as guests.
And that's the show up against Greg Gutfeld's Insult Fest, right?
And the fact that on Fox...
Well, right, but it's a different audience, right?
Lawrence rates well.
But what does it say about the Fox brand and the Fox base that it's a comedy show they've decided is what works and not a serious conversation about policy?
My favorite analogy on the point about whites and power is Robert P. Jones, head of PRI, this institute that does a lot of surveys on this topic.
And he said, picture America as a dining room table where it used to be that white Christians controlled who sat at the table and where they got to sit, right?
Like the head of the family.
And now, in an increasingly multicultural country, there's no single demographic group controlling the table.
Everybody is invited to sit wherever they want.
And that's what's deeply threatening and deeply unsettling to the core Fox viewer, like to the typical 70-year-old white male Fox Christian conservative viewer.
That idea that anybody can pull up a chair is the entire story.
And if that is what motivates their viewers, that is what they are doing, that is what they are.
So if that is something that you know that we can talk about that is demonstrably provable, right?
How is it that they are still allowed to say, you know, like, whoa, no, we're defending what makes America great again without all of you going, no, fuck you, Fox is racist from now until the end of time.
You know what I mean?
Why hasn't every TV journalist said on TV right now, as we know, Fox News is a threat to the United States of America, these racist fucks.
It would never happen, but I think the answer is even more disillusionment, even more polarization, even more taking sides, nobody's opinion changed, nobody persuaded, right?
I think there have to be and there are areas of common ground that can be found.
And the media can help to do that.
Or the media can make the situation a whole lot worse.
And I think when we look at an hour of Sean Hannity's show, that is making the situation worse.
He is not looking for common ground.
He is not trying to find areas where we can make progress.
He is so in division.
But I think there's a lot of media that helps to show people they have in common.
That's the area that I'm more interested in.
What do I have in common with people that are perceived to be my opponent?
Maybe not all the way in Alex Jones' direction, but that's the difference, right?
It's good faith actors versus bad faith actors.
What you're getting at a lot with Fox is there's an assumption, and I'm not disagreeing with it, but there's an assumption in your comments that they are bad faith actors, right?
That they know that they are lying, that they know they are doing damage.
And I'm not claiming that's not entirely false or whatever, but there are also people at Fox, I know some of these sources at Fox, who are truly I agree.
Fox is doing the right thing, who believe Fox needs to fight harder for Trump's America, like who, like, and those are good.
But she would laugh at you and say, she would say she is a scholar, an author, a journalist, and a broadcaster.
And he is a monkey.
He's a performer.
He reads other people's scripts.
For example.
She writes her scripts.
He reads someone else's.
I'm just telling you that, yes, they are on channels close to each other on the cable dial.
That is basically the only thing they have in common.
I think you're getting something I think interesting about the media accountability and holding people accountable and how seriously you take this stuff.
And I think that's been a problem.
I think it's been a problem over the years that the national news media will focus intently on what Marjorie Teller Green is saying, for example, a freshman congresswoman with relatively little power.
I started to realize there's a power dynamic here.
They recognize that I'm the one with the Pulpit every week.
I was on for only an hour and all that, but like...
There is something really warped where Sean Hannity has more influence than the average GOP lawmaker.
But he's not covered that way.
It doesn't get that kind of news coverage.
So I would say there should be more news coverage of what these opinion people are saying, of what Jesse Waters is claiming, of the conspiracy theories they are promoting.
There needs to be more fact-checking and coverage of it.
You're coming at it from like, take him out.
I'm just coming at it from a, let's take it seriously.
That's the last question that I have for you, kind of the place that I want to end it, is those three, obviously where we began, because I'm a lit guy.
There are three C's, you know, that civil, criminal, and canceling kind of thing.
And I think of the Fox News verdict, I think of Alex, and I think of Tucker, and I think of all of these people, and I think, civilly, has anybody been held accountable?
Alex is spending $90,000 a month.
Now, will true accountability come?
Hopefully.
But as it stands, there's no accountability if you can still spend $90,000 a month.
That's my rule.
That's my rule in life.
Until you spend at least as little money as me per month, then you have not been held accountable.
There was once some random blogger who wrote, Brian Stelter talked about the death of democracy and quoted the same book on the same day as an MSNBC host.
You think we get together for these meetings to plan which books we're going to cite on the air?
It's happening now with Taylor Swift, Vivek Ramaswamy, and these people out there with these crazy conspiracy theories that Taylor Swift is a psyop that she's planted by the CIA to influence the 2024 election.
It is impossible to hold these people accountable criminally, even when they commit a crime like Ron DeSantis did.
So if we're talking about these three levels of accountability, I feel like your book has definitively proven there's no way to hold powerful people accountable.
So I look around and I say, uh, the Dominion settlement was a lot of money and yes, Fox can afford it, but it was painful for them.
And I look around and I say, Tucker being canceled suggests that maybe kooky conspiracy theories are not quite as welcome at Fox as they were the week before he was on the, like, you know, like a little bit, a little bit of hope, a little bit of hope here.