State media
By 
From 2017-2021, Fox News’s primetime and morning hosts were among the most powerful people in the country:
Stephanie Grisham, former press secretary to President Donald Trump, remembers the challenges that came from so many Fox News hosts having the direct number to reach Trump in the White House residence.
“There were times the president would come down the next morning and say, ‘Well, Sean thinks we should do this,’ or, ‘Judge Jeanine thinks we should do this,’ ” said Grisham, referring to Sean Hannity and Jeanine Pirro, both of whom host prime-time Fox News shows.
Grisham — who resigned from the White House amid the Jan. 6 attacks and has since written a book critical of Trump — said West Wing staffers would simply roll their eyes in frustration as they scrambled to respond to the influence of the network’s hosts, who weighed in on everything from personnel to messaging strategy.
Trump’s staff, allies and even adversaries were long accustomed to playing to an “Audience of One” — a commander in chief with a twitchy TiVo finger and obsessed with cable news.
But text messages — newly released by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection — between Fox News hosts and former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, crystallize with new specificity just how tightly Fox News and the White House were entwined during the Trump years, with many of the network’s top hosts serving as a cable cabinet of unofficial advisers.
As the Jan. 6 attacks on the U.S. Capitol unfolded, Meadows received texts from Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade, as well as Hannity, according to the newly released communications.
And while another president might not spend as much time watching Fox or interacting with its hosts directly, every Republican presidential nominee for the forseeable future is going to be a Fox grievance merchant with close ties to the network.
Look who’s still alive and doing bad faith Both Sidesism:
Don’t have to wonder because Russian military intelligence, with Trump’s encouragement and support, stole and released all of these emails and they don’t look anything like the Fox/Trump White House correspondence. (Professional liars like Ari know this.) pic.twitter.com/wjhW3HFwQl— Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) January 10, 2022
Eat shit, pal.