MSNBC’s host of The 11th Hour Stephanie Ruhle was not happy that Fox News reacted to President Biden’s State of the Union by calling him a liar and to help her in her quest against this narrative, she welcomed professional Fox News watcher Juliet Jeske to claim Fox viewers are in a “cult” who need “deprogramming”
Those creepy remarks came after Ruhle wondered why Jeske does what she does, “So, the work that you’re doing is, obviously, interesting to someone like me and my audience, but that Fox News audience. That right-wing audience, is that who you’re trying to get to?”
For Jeske, it is not Fox viewers, but:
Friends, families, coworkers, and colleagues of people who are already deeply entrenched in Fox. Number one, to prevent them from getting sucked in. To help them navigate dealing with someone who’s in that cult mentality because I would call it a cult and to help them figure out why their relatives and loved ones are saying these things and deprogramming someone or deradicalizing them is a very difficult and long situation to go through.
Earlier in the segment, after going through the White House-Fox Super Bowl interview drama, Ruhle kicked off the segment by portraying her show as the epitome of truthfulness, “Either way, it will not be on Fox News, which has spent the majority of its air time this week calling the president a liar. We like to say on the show that the truth matters, but only if you hear it. So, let’s set the record straight, despite what Fox viewers have heard all week long on that network, President Biden did not lie about some elected Republicans wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security.”
Ruhle, who previously had no problem calling presidents liars, then welcomed Jeske, who runs the podcast Decoding Fox News, and asked “Juliet, a lot happened in politics, specifically in the Fox world, State of the Union, what was your biggest take away this week?“
Jeske began by proving much of contemporary fact-checking is really just opinion-checking, “Well, they completely rewrote history with the State of the Union. They said that Biden was a bumbling idiot and couldn’t get through his speech.”
Ignoring “frisizhnjubs” and all of Biden’s yelling, Jeske added “and he was, like you said, lying about more than one Republican lawmaker wanting to cut or alter Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare.”
Ruhle wanted to focus in on that claim, “I mean for fact’s sake, yesterday, the president himself went down to Florida and word for word, read from Rick Scott’s plan. So, explain to me how they keep pushing these lies to their audience? A, did they not have a legal and standards department? And B, like, what gives? Their audience is just going to believe this?”
Jeske then claimed Fox has “absolutely no shame. They’ll say whatever they need to say to promote their agenda and mostly through lying by omission, like leaving out stories completely.”
Lying by omission is exactly what Biden, Ruhle, and Jeske did when they ignored that Republicans leaders have said that cuts to those programs are not on the table.
This segment was sponsored by Volkswagen.
MSNBC The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle
2/10/2023
11:20 PM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: Either way, it will not be on Fox News, which has spent the majority of its air time this week calling the president a liar. We like to say on the show that the truth matters, but only if you hear it. So, let’s set the record straight, despite what Fox viewers have heard all week long on that network, President Biden did not lie about some elected Republicans wanting to cut Medicare and Social Security. I want to get right into it with Juliet Jeske, she’s founder and creator of Decoding Fox News podcast and newsletter. She watches talks, so we do not have to. Juliet, a lot happened in politics, specifically in the Fox world, State of the Union, what was your biggest take away this week?
JULIET JESKE: Well, they completely rewrote history with the State of the Union. They said that Biden was a bumbling idiot and couldn’t get through his speech and he was, like you said, lying about more than one Republican lawmaker wanting to cut or alter Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare.
RUHLE: Like, let’s just stay on that because Fox continues to say that Biden’s comments about these Republicans wanting to cut Social Security, that’s been debunked. But it hasn’t been debunked. I mean for fact’s sake, yesterday, the president himself went down to Florida and word for word, read from Rick Scott’s plan.
So, explain to me how they keep pushing these lies to their audience? A, did they not have a legal and standards department? And B, like, what gives? Their audience is just going to believe this?
JESKE: Yeah, they have absolutely no shame. They’ll say whatever they need to say to promote their agenda and mostly through lying by omission, like leaving out stories completely, the best I got this week was, I believe it was Judge Jeanine said, one senator and she said it like that, like, one senator said he wanted to cut that, but he didn’t mean it. Basically, you know, I’m paraphrasing.
…
RUHLE: So, the work that you’re doing is, obviously, interesting to someone like me and my audience, but that Fox News audience. That right-wing audience, is that who you’re trying to get to?
JESKE: I’m trying to get to the friends, families, coworkers, and colleagues of people who are already deeply entrenched in Fox. Number one, to prevent them from getting sucked in. To help them navigate dealing with someone who’s in that cult mentality because I would call it a cult and to help them figure out why their relatives and loved ones are saying these things and deprogramming someone or deradicalizing them is a very difficult and long situation to go through. It’s slow. It’s very, very hard, but one way that you can do it is if you know that your friend is being completely manipulated and lied to, that is one step to breaking through to them.