This article has been updated since its original publication.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is continuing to solidify herself as the radical candidate whose ideas are just too good for the deplorables watching Fox News.
Earlier this month, Sen. Warren attempted to differentiate herself from the 2020 herd by rejecting an invitation for a Fox News town hall, denouncing the network as a “hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracy theorists.”
“Fox News is a hate-for-profit racket that gives a megaphone to racists and conspiracy theorists,” she wrote on her website at the time. “I won’t ask Democratic primary voters to tune in to an outlet that profits from racism and hate in order to see our candidates. Hate-for-profit works only if there’s profit, so Fox News balances a mix of bigotry, racism and outright lies with enough legit journalism to make the claim to advertisers that it’s a reputable news outlet. It’s all about dragging in ad money — big ad money.”
While hardcore progressives certainly appreciated the move, others in the Democratic Party believed it showed Warren’s inability to face all of the United States and persuade people whose views differ from her own. As Whoopi Goldberg put it on “The View”: “If you can’t face the Fox audience, you can’t face the U.S. It’s that simple.”
On Thursday, Elizabeth Warren appeared on “The View” to defend her rejection of Fox News — and she doubled-down on her assertions that the network runs a “hate-for-profit scam.”
“Here’s how I see this, I want to go everywhere,” Warren began. “Look at it this way. I have three brothers, older brothers I grew up with back in Oklahoma. One is a Democrat, do the math on this. I want to reach out to everybody. I’ve been to 18 states. I was just in Kermit, West Virginia. They describe it as the reddest of the red. We did a town hall where there were folks who quite openly said I voted for Donald Trump, may vote for him again, but wanted to hear what I had to say and wanted selfies by the time we got to the end.”
She continued: “That’s a good thing. I’ve been to a lot of different places, not just our early battleground states but to Utah, into Mississippi, into Alabama, and Tennessee and I want to keep doing that. Here’s the deal about Fox News executives and that is they’re running a hate-for-profit scam.”
The senator from Massachusetts went on to also say that Fox News gives platforms to those with hardline anti-immigration stances. She said her move against Fox News is simply to boycott their business, not the Americans who watch it.
“Here’s the deal about those town halls, they make a lot of money off those town halls,” Warren continued. “Right now, advertisers are getting really antsy about being with Fox on a regular basis because they don’t want their brands associated with them. We do town halls and bring in a big Democratic audience to watch that night and then the sales reps for Fox come out and say, ‘oh, look at our high numbers and look how even-handed we are.’ I’m just not going to give them a full hour to help raise money and help get credibility because they were willing to talk to me for an hour.”
Warren did receive some pushback for her harsh characterization of Fox News as a “hate-for-profit” organization. Both co-hosts Meghan McCain and Sunny Hostin pointed out that Warren will alienate a potential audience by taking such a strong stance.
“I was really proud to work at Fox News. I don’t consider them a racist organization I will say that,” said Meghan McCain. “There’s so many people that watch that are really good people and I just think you’re alienating an audience. And for me it just sounds like you don’t care about the people who watch Fox.”
“There are journalist like Shep Smith and Chris Wallace that are doing very balanced journalism there,” said Sunny Hostin.