The Fox Frame

How The GOP Message Machine Reframes Reality

There’s one thing that terrifies Republicans beyond words and reason; a strong Democratic Commander In Chief leading the country in times of crisis. They fear that a positive image in foreign and military affairs is starting (rightly) to solidify around Biden, and they’re framing the argument with their base to stop it.

So that’s why you’ll hear increasingly lurid pronouncements about America's dire fate.

A world on fire.

Two wars.

American hostages in the hands of extremists.

All-powerful Iranian, Russian, and Chinese juggernauts sweeping all before them.

A woke American military, helplessly mired in political correctness, critical race theory, and trans rights.

The White House, handing billions to terrorist states.

Global chaos, all on Joe Biden’s watch.

It sounds grim, doesn’t it?

It sounds downright disqualifying for a President, a damning indictment of Joe Biden and this administration. It’s meant to be. What you’re seeing from Watters and the rest of the Fox Extended Universe is their 2024 election playbook, a funhouse of lies, exaggerations, agitporn, amygdala-poking fear tropes, and baroque fiction masquerading as news.

I realize I’m asking for a lot for you to watch the 6 minutes of this scenery-chewing performance from Fox News’s latest golden troll, Jesse Watters, but I hope you will take it in as both a preview of the darkly magnificent power of the Mighty Wurlitzer of Fox’s propaganda machine and as crisp outline of the GOP’s emerging attacks on the President.

The Twisted Mirror Fox Builds For Its Audience

Of course, it’s a fantasy like so much in the tightly sealed media bubble of the American Right. Watching Jessee Watters rant on this is amusing to most higher mammals, but Watters is part of Fox’s powerful normative shaping machine, and it’s important to understand why he’s swinging so wildly right now.

The wannabe Tucker flatly accuses President Biden of “sponsoring a proxy war” against the Iranians and Russians, neatly eliding that Russia and Iran are the aggressor parties in Ukraine and Israel.

He gets all aflutter when mentioning China is eyeing Taiwan — a state so perpetual as to have vexed our grandfathers — and that North Korean weapons were found in Gaza. (You know, North Korea, the garden paradise largely known for exporting love letters to a certain credulous boob of a former President.) Somehow he forgets to mention Joe Biden’s rebuilding of American relations in the Pacific with our allies like Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea after Trump’s Pro-Kim Jong Un disasters.

You can see how ludicrous it all is, and that’s the problem. A guy with good hair and an expensive suit on the Word of God network is telling them what to believe, and the GOP, from Trump to the lowest MAGA prole screaming his guts out at a rally, will internalize these simple, fake messages faster than you can finish this piece.

How to Punch Back

Assert Biden’s Foreign Policy Strength, Then Do It Over and Over Again.

The truth is good for the country, the President politically, and our standing in the world. Joe Biden is a President willing to lead and work with other nations' leaders. It’s not Trump’s fake tough-guy bluster or his obsequious fawning over the Dictator of the Week Club. It’s a methodical, systematic approach where the President listens to experts, intelligence professionals, and senior military leaders, and decides what approach best matches his values, experience, and knowledge.

Trump’s approach to foreign policy was an evident, unmitigated disaster where he either burned the bridge or bent the knee. Trump’s foreign policy circle included clown show rejects like Steve Bannon, Jared “Saudi Payday” Kushner, and Seb “The Dragon of Budapest” Gorka. In the words of the political philosopher Logan Roy, these were not serious people.

Own the superiority and strength.

Own Both Toughness and Heart

The campaign and White House should own his place in American’s strong foreign policy Presidents of both parties.

Biden’s willingness to imbue our foreign policy with America’s best values is striking. A commitment to freedom and democracy, a willingness to speak in the spare and plain moral language of good guys and bad guys, and displaying both the iron fist and open hand of America’s spectrum of power is a refreshing change for friends worldwide.

Trump was a transactional bully on his best days; Joe Biden showed in the space of 24 hours in Israel last week he could be strong, compassionate, and protect American interests in a complex world. Biden’s empathy for the victims of the Hamas terror attack in Israel, while counseling Israel to bind its campaign in Gaza to Hamas showed a man with both toughness and heart.

Good Pictures

We live in a shallow world, and good pictures make good politics. Keep showing Bie as a man willing to put himself in a war zone to show support for our allies, and a Commander in Chief who actually likes the troops he commands. Being President means you have access to the ultimate photo ops, and those moments drive coverage, image, and perception. Don’t be shy.

Fox and Jesse Watters will desperately try to shape a narrative that Joe Biden isn’t a wartime President, or if he is, he’s somehow hapless. It’s desperate, it’s pathetic, and for the MAGA base, it might well work.

It’s up to the White House, the campaign, and all of us to see to it that it doesn’t.