OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
President Joe Biden has taken aim at conservative-leaning Fox News on Monday, proclaiming it to be dangerous to the country.
According to a new book by a pair of New York Times reporters, Biden called the network “one of the most destructive forces in the United States.
Biden made the remark according to Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns, authors of “This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America’s Future,” who also double as political analysts on CNN. The book is set for release in May.
In it, Martin and Burns claim that the president is hypercritical of Fox News and Fox Corporation founder Rupert Murdoch, CNN reported.
And Murdoch, Biden confided to an associate last year, is “the most dangerous man in the world,” according to the book.
CNN added that Biden has not publicly divulged his feelings about Fox News or Murdoch.
NEW: President Biden called Fox News “one of the most destructive forces in the United States” and called Fox’s owner Rupert Murdoch “the most dangerous man in the world,” per @nytimes.
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) April 4, 2022
The network continued:
The book describes Fox as a “torrent of anti-Biden programming, stoking skepticism about vaccines and disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack.”
Many Biden allies have denounced Fox for those reasons and have blamed Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the company’s CEO, for enabling hosts like Tucker Carlson.
But Biden has never spoken about either Murdoch in public, according to the Factba.se database of the president’s speeches, interviews, tweets and other public statements. So the comment in “This Will Not Pass” may make waves.
In March, Politico reported on additional elements of the book, including some rocky moments involving Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Early on in the administration, the authors claim that Harris complained about her assignments — specifically, that she was being put in impossible positions and situations, such as ‘cleaning up’ the worsening situation with migrants illegally crossing the U.S-Mexico border.
As Politico reported:
Harris allies complained throughout the first year of the administration that she was handed an impossible portfolio. According to the book, KATE BEDINGFIELD, Biden’s comms director, not only grew tired of the criticism that the White House was mismanaging Harris — she blamed the VP.
“In private, Bedingfield had taken to noting that the vice presidency was not the first time in Harris’s political career that she had fallen short of sky-high expectations: Her Senate office had been messy and her presidential campaign had been a fiasco. Perhaps, she suggested, the problem was not the vice president’s staff,” Martin and Burns write.
“The fact that no one working on this book bothered to call to fact check this unattributed claim tells you what you need to know,” Bedingfield responded in an email Monday night. “Vice President Harris is a force in this administration and I have the utmost respect for the work she does every day to move the country forward.”
In another segment, the authors claimed that first lady Jill Biden lobbied against her husband picking Harris to be VP in the first place.
“Speaking in confidence with a close adviser to her husband’s campaign, the future First lady posed a pointed question,” the book says. “There are millions of people in the United States, she began. Why, she asked, do we have to choose the one who attacked Joe?”
Michael Larosa, the first lady’s spokesman, responded to the report by saying that there would be no official response from Jill Biden.
“Many books will be written on the 2020 campaign, with countless retellings of events — some accurate, some inaccurate. The First Lady and her team do not plan to comment on any of them,” Larosa told Politico.
Former President Donald Trump was routinely critical of the legacy media as well, collectively calling the press the “enemy of the American people.”
His statements routinely drew negative reactions from members of the press:
I would hope that our leaders would never believe that any American desires to make another American an enemy. Let's dial it back.
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) February 17, 2017
"Enemy of the people"
Boy, that's definitely in no way fascist-sounding! https://t.co/y1niD7c4Wd
— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) February 17, 2017
On December 1972 tape, Nixon told Kissinger, “The press is the enemy, the establishment is the enemy, the professors are the enemy."
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) February 17, 2017
It’s not clear if any mainstream media pundits and journalists have condemned Biden for his remarks.
