Paul Ryan is doing at Fox what he did in Congress: Serving the rich

What the most recently released Dominion filing showed — which is perhaps not surprising at all — is the extent to which Fox was acting as the campaign arm of the Republican Party. 

Beyond the continuous boosting of the election lies, you had the man at the very top, Fox Corporation Chairman Rupert Murdoch, directly coordinating with the Trump campaign.

The filing states that “during Trump’s campaign, Rupert provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy … providing Kushner a preview of Biden’s ads before they were public.”

Think about that: The head of a supposed “news” network sharing confidential campaign data with officials from the opposing campaign. That doesn’t seem very “fair and balanced” now does it?

[Fox News has denied all wrongdoing and is vigorously contesting the Dominion lawsuit.]

Meanwhile, we are seeing a split in the Republican Party put on full display with two competing events. You have the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, that has become the island of misfit toys made up of the MAGA fanatics, which Donald Trump and Kari Lake will be headlining.

And then you have the Jeb Bush-allied Republicans down in Florida at the Club for Growth’s annual retreat which will include Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former Vice President Mike Pence.

Play

Several GOP stars won’t be attending CPAC this year February 28, 2023 / 06:49

But let me be clear: Whatever schism exists between these two factions, the end goal is the same — going after tax cuts for the super- wealthy and deregulation of their industries.

As the president of anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist put it in 2012, nearly anyone would do as long as you “pick a Republican with enough working digits to handle a pen” and “sign the legislation that has already been prepared.”

Which brings me back to this melding of Fox News and the Republican Party. Perhaps the perfect example is former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who, if you didn’t know, sits on the board of directors at the parent company of Fox News. In fact, he has done so almost since the time he left Congress, where his one accomplishment as speaker of the House was passing the massive tax cut that benefited almost solely the super-rich and big corporations. For this, he squinted his eyes, gritted his teeth and tolerated the growing MAGA movement.

The latest public Dominion filing appears to show Ryan repeatedly pleading with top Fox executives to “move on from Donald Trump” and “stop spouting election lies.” But Ryan has remained on that board as Fox continues to this day to push some of the same lies that he was supposedly fighting against.

Last week, he was asked about that very decision by The Bulwark’s Charlie Sykes:

Charlie Sykes: Is there a red line for you at any point where you say, “I cannot be associated with a company that does this”?

Paul Ryan: I want to see the conservative movement get through this moment. And I think Fox is a big part of the constellation of the conservative movement. And I want to see —

Sykes: Is it the solution or the problem?

Ryan: Oh no, I think it’s gonna have to be a part of the solution if we’re going to solve the problem in the conservative movement because there isn’t a bigger platform than this in America. So I think the conservative movement is going through a lot of churn and a lot of turmoil and I don’t like where it is right now.

But it does appear that Paul Ryan is doing at Fox what he did in Congress: focusing not on what’s right, but on securing the proverbial bag. Because as Rupert Murdoch said in his deposition, it’s not about the red or the blue — it’s about the green.

This is an excerpt from Thursday’s episode of the “The ReidOut.” It has been slightly edited for length and clarity.