Fox News takes legal action against Donald Trump after going silent on Twitter
Now that Donald Trump and his White House have banned CNN’s Jim Acosta from attending press briefings, while using a doctored video to falsely accuse Acosta of assaulting a woman, CNN is suing Trump to get Acosta’s access reinstated. Even as the matter heads into its initial court hearings today, CNN and Acosta have found the unlikeliest of allies: Fox News. Yep, you read that right.
It’s remarkable enough that Fox News is publicly taking CNN’s side. But this isn’t a mere shout-out of support. Fox has filed an amicus brief with the court, in support of CNN’s lawsuit against Donald Trump. By default, this means that Fox is now participating in legal action against Trump. Fox also released a lengthy statement, saying in part that “passes for working White House journalists should never be weaponized.” So what’s really going on here?
It’s entirely possible that this is simply about self preservation. Now that Donald Trump is destroying the fabric of the presidency and we don’t know what American democracy will look like once he’s ousted, Fox News has to worry – at least a little bit – that the next “President” could decide to ban Fox reporters from the room. But is there something more to this?
Plenty of observers are pointing to the fact that Fox News hasn’t tweeted anything in five days. For that matter neither have a number of other Donald Trump media allies, such as the National Enquirer. This is, officially, a protest over Twitter’s inadequate response to the doxing of Tucker Carlson. Some have floated the theory that they’re all trying to avoid getting indicted by Robert Mueller, but that theory falls apart the minute you scrutinize it from a legal angle. That said, throw in the fact that Fox is now taking legal action against Trump, and… well, it all keeps getting weirder.
