Trump's firewall holds solid on Fox News' prime time
NEW YORK (AP) — Critics of President Donald Trump who wonder about the tenacity of his supporters need only to spend three hours with Fox News Channel's headliners to get an idea why.
On his most influential venue, Trump's firewall remains secure.
Tuesday night in prime time, Tucker Carlson referenced "impeachment insanity." Sean Hannity said the president's opponents are involved in "insane, obsessive, compulsive, psychotic witch hunts." A guest on Laura Ingraham's show called the whistleblower who reported on Trump's conversation with the Ukrainian leader a suicide bomber.
Those three hosts reach an estimated 3 million to 4 million people each weeknight — the most-watched lineup on cable television — with a full-throated defense of the president as Democrats in the House pursue an impeachment inquiry.
The closest thing to doubt expressed by one of Fox's prime-time hosts came last week when Carlson wrote a column for the web site Daily Caller with his co-founder Neil Patel. They wrote that Trump should not have asked Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and that "there's no way to spin this as a good idea."
Carlson has yet to repeat that criticism on his Fox show. Like he did in the column, he has opposed impeachment. The big story at rival news networks Tuesday was the administration's letter to the House saying it would not cooperate with the inquiry, but Carlson played it in the last half of his show, when he interviewed Republican U.S. Rep. Devin Nunes.
Ingraham was the only one of the three anchors to lead her broadcast with the story and said the White House counsel had made a strong argument.
"This non-impeachment impeachment is not a constitutional undertaking," Ingraham said. "It's a political hit job, exactly what our founders did...