Mr. Trump made clear that he felt the White House had nothing to retract or apologize for. He said his spokesman was simply repeating an assertion made by a Fox News commentator.
.. “We said nothing,” Mr. Trump told a German reporter who asked about the matter at a joint White House news conference with Chancellor Angela Merkel. “All we did was quote a certain very talented legal mind who was the one responsible for saying that on television. I didn’t make an opinion on it.” He added: “You shouldn’t be talking to me. You should be talking to Fox.”
.. Shortly afterward, Fox backed off the claim made by its commentator, Andrew Napolitano. “Fox News cannot confirm Judge Napolitano’s commentary,” the anchor Shepard Smith said on air. “Fox News knows of no evidence of any kind that the now president of the United States was surveilled at any time, any way. Full stop.”
.. “Frankly, unless you can produce some pretty compelling truth, I think President Obama is owed an apology,” Mr. Cole told reporters. “If he didn’t do it, we shouldn’t be reckless in accusations that he did.”
.. “The cost of falsely blaming our closest ally for something this consequential cannot be overstated,” Susan E. Rice, who was Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, wrote on Twitter. “And from the PODIUM.”
.. Mr. Spicer tried to turn the tables on those statements during his briefing on Thursday by reading from a sheaf of news accounts that he suggested backed up the president. Most of the news accounts, however, did not verify the president’s assertion
.. But it has never reported that Mr. Obama authorized the surveillance, nor that Mr. Trump himself was monitored.
.. Mr. Spicer read from comments made by Mr. Napolitano on Fox this week. “Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command,” Mr. Spicer read. “He didn’t use the N.S.A., he didn’t use the C.I.A., he didn’t use the F.B.I., and he didn’t use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ.”
.. GCHQ was the first agency to warn the United States government, including the National Security Agency, that Russia was hacking Democratic Party emails during the presidential campaign.
Fox News Lineup Begins to Take Shape
Tucker Carlson, a former co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” and a prominent conservative writer, is set to take over the Fox anchor chair at 7 p.m., filling the slot formerly held by Greta van Susteren, who left the network in September.
.. Mr. Carlson, 47, is in some ways a throwback to a more genteel era of conservatism. Preppy and jovial, Mr. Carlson founded The Daily Caller, a provocative, if relatively moderate, right-leaning website, and he has often evinced a mischievous streak; in 2006, he agreed to be a contestant on “Dancing With the Stars,” although he was eliminated in the first round.
Megyn Kelly’s Pivotal Moment in a Post-Ailes Era at Fox News
Early last year, in an article in The New York Times Magazine, I defined what I called a “Megyn moment,” in a profile of the Fox News host Megyn Kelly:
“When you, a Fox guest — maybe a regular guest or even an official contributor — are pursuing a line of argument that seems perfectly congruent with the Fox worldview, only to have Kelly seize on some part of it and call it out as nonsense, maybe even turn it back on you.”
.. Ms. Kelly, clearly mindful of four years ago, when so many Fox News hosts doubted polls showing an Obama re-election, challenged him. “He’s been behind in virtually every one of the last 40 polls that we’ve seen over the past month, that’s the reality,” she said of Mr. Trump.
But what really set Mr. Gingrich off was when Ms. Kelly said the sexual assault accusations against Mr. Trump were clearly taking a toll, raising questions about whether the candidate was “a sexual predator.” Mr. Gingrich asked why Bill Clinton’s accusers weren’t getting covered, and Ms. Kelly replied by saying that on her show they were.
.. By all accounts, in the absence of Mr. Ailes, Ms. Kelly has been freer to pursue her show on her own terms, which are certainly not in line with those of either Mrs. Clinton or Mr. Trump and therefore not in line with many in the Fox News core audience (let alone those of her old boss Mr. Ailes, who informally advised Mr. Trump before the debates).
.. The same has held true for the Fox contributors who have not embraced Mr. Trump’s candidacy — like Dana Perino, the Republican co-host of “The Five,” and the Weekly Standard writer Stephen F. Hayes. They have been given ample time and freedom to call it as they see it in ways that were not as obviously apparent earlier this year.
.. But there’s a flip side. In this “Free(er) to Be You and Me” environment at Fox, pro-Trump network personalities have become even pro-Trumpier, none more than Sean Hannity, the host whose show follows Ms. Kelly’s. An informal adviser to Mr. Trump, his rhetoric has grown as incendiary as that of his candidate.
.. Mr. Hannity announced on his radio show that if Trump won, he would personally pay to fly President Obama to Canada or, for that matter, Kenya or Indonesia. It was a nod to the fake, old “birther” conspiracy that even Mr. Trump has eschewed after promoting it for years.
.. But if the Murdochs persuade Ms. Kelly to stay, will there be room for her, Mr. Hannity and Mr. O’Reilly?
.. if Mr. Trump will pursue some sort of television news-style venture (he says he has no interest). But if he does, he could conceivably hire Mr. O’Reilly and Mr. Hannity
Donald Trump broke the conservative media
“If in 96 days Trump loses this election, I am pointing the finger directly at people like [House Speaker] Paul Ryan and [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham and John McCain and John Kasich and Ted Cruz — if he won’t endorse — and Jeb Bush and everybody else that made promises they’re not keeping,” Hannity exclaimed, later threatening to endorse Ryan’s far-right primary challenger.
.. In fact, throughout the election season, it has appeared that Republicans have fielded more attacks from their supposed friends on the right than their political opponents on the left.
.. “The analogy that I think of is somebody who has a baby alligator in their bathtub and they keep feeding it and taking care of it,” said Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative talk show host in Wisconsin. “And it’s really cute when it’s a baby alligator — until it becomes a grown-up alligator and comes out and starts biting you.”
.. three key forces: Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and Matt Drudge.
.. Simultaneously, the conservative news media sought to lock in its audience by characterizing the mainstream press as an industry comprising dishonest liberals — something with which the GOP was more than happy to go along.
.. “What it became, essentially, was they were preaching this is the only place you can get news. This is the only place you can trust. All other media outlets are lying to you. So you need to come to us,”
.. To avoid being called a RINO (Republican in name only), a Republican would have to take a hardline conservative position on nearly every issue. If, say, they were to hold conservative positions on 90% of the issues, the conservative press would focus on the 10% where there was disagreement.
.. only one candidate could be conservative enough to support for president: Cruz.
.. But something went awry. The most aggressive right-wing members of the conservative press — the members who constantly lambasted certain Republicans for not toeing the hard-right line on every issue — got behind perhaps the most unlikely candidate of all: Donald Trump.
.. “We have reached the bizarro-world point where, for all intents and purposes, conservatives are RINOs,” said John Ziegler, a nationally syndicated conservative talk show host who called Andrew Breitbart a friend. “There is no place now for real conservatives. We’ve also reached the point, I say, we’ve left the gravitational pull of the rational Earth, where we are now in a situation where facts don’t matter, truth doesn’t matter, logic doesn’t matter.”
.. “You look at someone who a few cycles might have been derided as a right-wing lunatic, now they aren’t conservative enough,”
.. he believed some conservative pundits were “just drawn to Trump’s style more than policies.”
.. “I think that some of them just like Trump and were willing to cut him some slack on his shifting of positions because he’s a fighter and they like that,”
.. Ratings may have also played a role, according to conservative talkers who refused to jump aboard the Trump train.
.. Hannity in particular has faced criticism from some colleagues in the conservative-media sphere who allege he has been too cozy with Trump. Ziegler, the conservative radio host, said there’s “there’s no question” a “monetary element” drove coverage overall.
.. “Hannity is desperate for every ratings crumb on the Fox News Channel. … It’s all about ratings,” he said. “Hannity is not particularly talented, he’s not a smart guy — he used to just be a Republican talking points talk show host who happened to be in the right place at the right time. So he’s very vulnerable at any time.
.. while there are other outlets that belong to the conservative media apparatus, they lack the influence of the hard right. The National Review or Weekly Standard might earn the eyeballs of elites in Washington, but those in the heartland seem to prefer the style of the more aggressive pro-Trump outlets.
.. That has left conservatives who oppose Trump in a tricky position when trying to get their message to supporters. No longer can Ryan or Cruz turn to Hannity for a softball interview. They can’t work with Breitbart or rely on Drudge to help with their legislative agenda.
These Republicans have effectively been exiled from the conservative news media
.. “We have taught conservatives for many years to trust nothing other than what they hear in conservative media. Yet the conservative media has now proven to be untrustworthy.”