Fox News hosts who texted then-President Donald Trump's Chief of Staff Mark Meadows as rioters swarmed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are seeking to explain their actions, while lashing out at Rep. Liz Cheney for revealing the communications.
The texts read by Cheney, R-Wyo., on Monday night at a hearing of the congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 showed that Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Brian Kilmeade were alarmed by the former president's response at the time, even though they have never held him responsible when discussing the matter on their programs in the months since.
The texts revealed how the conservative Fox News hosts were careful not to offend Trump's base -- which makes up a large part of their audience -- even when they were personally disturbed by the former president's actions.
Hannity and Ingraham defended their actions and delivered their usual talking points on the events of Jan. 6 that largely ignored the former president's involvement in encouraging the insurrection.
Hannity denounced Cheney for reading the texts, and referred to her committee's investigation as "a sham" and a "witch hunt" intended to damage Trump and his chances of running for president again in 2024. Cheney is vice chairman of the committee, one of just two Republicans serving on it.
"Where is the outrage in the media over my private text messages being released again publicly?" Hannity told viewers. "Do we believe in privacy? Apparently not."
Hannity again asked why Congress has not formed a commission to investigate the unrest in cities across the country that flared in 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd.
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"These lawmakers, they don't really care about you," Hannity said. "If they did, they would have a committee, they would have a commission. They care about their house, not your house. They care about their neighborhood, not your neighborhood."
Hannity did not discuss Trump's actions that day even though his texts to Meadows indicated that he was disturbed that the former president didn't act quickly enough to stop the violence, which led to the deaths of five people.
"Can he make a statement? Ask people to leave the Capitol?" Hannity wrote to Meadows, according to the texts read by Cheney.
The tone of Hannity's program was indicated by a graphic at the bottom of the screen that said: "Dems Jan 6th Obsession Part of Larger Effort to Grab Permanent Power and Punish Critics."
'GET HIM ON TV'
The revelation of the text messages to the White House during the insurrection is an example of how the network's stars sought to influence Trump instead of simply reporting or commenting on him.
"Mark, the president needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home," texted Ingraham, host of "The Ingraham Angle." "This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."
"Please get him on TV," texted Kilmeade, a "Fox & Friends" host. "Destroying everything you have accomplished."
Hannity wondered whether Trump could give a statement and ask people to leave the Capitol.
The network had no immediate comment about the texts.
Fox has sought to distinguish between "news" and "opinion" programming, company officials have said. The network considers Hannity, Ingraham and Kilmeade hosts of opinion shows, and it has argued in court that its prime-time hosts can't be held to the same factual standards as actual journalists.
"I don't consider them in the traditional definition of a journalist," said Aly Colon, a professor of media ethics at Washington and Lee University. "But even so, they are representative of a news operation at Fox."
Their actions leave questions about whether their loyalty was to Trump or to viewers, who expect to learn about the news from them or at least get news analysis, Colon said.
While CNN and MSNBC provided live coverage of the Monday night hearing in which Cheney revealed the text messages, Fox did not. Hannity interviewed Meadows but did not ask about the advice he and his colleagues sent. At the outset of his show, he bashed the committee's work.
"We've been telling you that this is a waste of your time and money," Hannity said. "They have a predetermined outcome."
Not everyone thinks what the Fox hosts did was wrong, including a consultant who ran Fox's news operation for eight years during the 2000s.
"I do think it was helpful to have them, or anyone else who had influence or potential influence over the president, tell him what needed to be done," said Michael Clemente, a former executive vice president at Fox News.
At a point of national crisis, that's more important than the objectivity rules that most journalists are bound by, he argued.
"Texting the chief of staff to urge him to tell the president to call for an end to rioting is a good thing," said Tim Graham, director of media analysis at the conservative Media Research Center. "But, ideally, journalists shouldn't be texting political advice to the White House."
Information for this article was contributed by Stephen Battaglio of the Los Angeles Times (TNS) and David Bauder of The Associated Press.