Gotta say, someone at Newsmax is on the hustle, because ten seconds after the news broke that Fox News was giving Mother Tucker the catapult, someone at Newsmax appears to have had the presence of mind to grab Madge from accounting and Maurice from the mailroom and someone's Aunt Tilly and hustle them down to the Dark Tower to film this "spontaneous" man-on-the-street reactions of real Murricans such as yourself who just happened to be walking past Fox HQ and just happened to have formed very strong opinions about Fox and Tuckums and Newsmax, like...

...they'd stopped watching Fox long ago and now just watched Newsmax. All. Day. Long.

...why wouldja fire your number one money-maker? Dats juss stoopid. Is this gonna be "a new Bud Lite commercial"?

...Fox got too woke.

...Tucker would make a great addition to Newsmax.

...Fox went "too Left".

For 50 years, the Republican establishment worked hand-in-glove with Conservative media to build a voting base of reprogrammable, racist meatbags who would believe anything that Hate Radio and Fox News crapped into their skulls. And then, almost overnight, Donald Trump took all that away from them simply because he was willing to say loud and proud all the horrible shit that the GOP political and media elites were only willing to whisper sotto voce, or job out to mercenary scumbags like Rick Wilson and Matthew Dowd.

And then, with nary a backward glance, the reprogrammable, racist base abandoned the GOP political and media elite, because the GOP political and media elites had trained them to crave a certain brand of madness that the GOP political and media elites were only willing to deliver in stingy, carefully measured doses. Whereas Trump just threw open the doors of the Wingnut Wonka factory and said "Have at it, kids! Eat all you want and fck the Oompa Loompas if that's your kink!"

97% of the GOP and Conservative media adapted fast enough to survive, and in the process, the Fox News jungle suddenly found itself with a new, money-making apex fascist predator: Tucker Carlson.

Excerpted with permission from Driftglass.