Bill Barr’s deal with Rupert Murdoch
If you’re wondering what happened to Judge Andrew Napolitano of late, so is he. Napolitano himself thought he was being kept off the air mostly by “25-year-old producers” who didn’t think the average Fox News viewer could stomach his probing analysis. British newspaper “The Guardian” may have found the real answer.
”The Guardian” received an advance copy of CNN reporter Brian Stelter’s new book, “Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.” According to the book, Attorney General William Barr visited media mogul and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch last October. In the widely reported meeting at the time, what wasn’t reported was Barr told Murdoch to “muzzle” Judge Napolitano. Apparently Napolitano was saying things that were upsetting Barr’s thin-skinned boss Donald Trump. Murdoch was happy to oblige, apparently.
Napolitano still appears on Fox, of course, but his reporting is more often about things other than Trump. Since the meeting the judge has found that many of his digital resources have been allocated elsewhere, a slot on a daytime show disappeared. Napolitano was not included in the coverage of Donald Trump’s impeachment.
This is nothing new, of course. The principal function of American government these days is to protect Donald Trump’s brittle ego. Far more time is being spent by executive branch political operatives running cover for, carrying water for and justifying Donald Trump than is being spent on the COVID-19 pandemic, or global warming, or racial strife, or runaway unemployment, or any of a dozen other emergency situations impacting the American people today.
Meanwhile, as I write this, 180,174 Americans have died due to COVID-19. Just for scale, that’s more than 60 times as many people who died in the attacks of September 11th, 2001. (Imagine what Fox News would make of that had there been a Democrat in office.)
Also, children at the border are still in cages, Putin’s contract on American soldiers in Afghanistan is still in force, the United States Postal Service is being deliberately dismantled so Americans can’t vote and a double hurricane is on its way. But at least the ego of the Cretin-in-Chief has been preserved. It’s time for America to return to normality. You and I can make that happen. Vote for Biden and Harris this November. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.