Fox contributor Patrick Murphy rightfully explained to his cohost Rachel Campos-Duffy this Thursday that advertisers leaving X have nothing to do with free speech. It's all about the free market. Don't expect it to make a dent in that rock-hard noggin of hers though.
On this Thursday's Outnumbered, everyone on the panel other than Murphy came to the defense of Musk after they showed a small portion of his expletive-laced interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, where he told sponsors who were leaving the platform to go fuck themselves, and Campos-Duffy also used the discussion about Musk as an excuse to go after Media Matters and get on the pity-pot because heaven forbid they monitor her and Fox "news" as well.
MACCALLUM: Rachel, what did you think about that? Because it did remind me actually of Musk's comments when he bought Twitter, then called Twitter. He said, well, it's not about the money, I don't really care if it makes money or not. And right now it's in deep financial trouble and they're losing subscribers to X, as well.
So, is the model working? Is he truly creating that town square open area for free speech he envisioned?
CAMPOS-DUFFY: Yeah. I mean, I go on Twitter, now X, and I can see things I know I wouldn't have seen before Elon Musk was in. Elon Musk's frustration in that video, to me Martha is, he knows that they don't, Bob Iger doesn't really care about what Elon, he's not, you know, outraged by Nazism, or whatever he sees on Twitter.
What he hates is free speech. What he hates is Elon Musk in charge of that site, or that platform because it enables free speech.
Media Matters is a big part of this. Media Matters is the sort of like the beginning of cancel culture, and we have to understand how it works, because it actually affects our company, too. They follow, they have people they are assigned to, so they'll follow you, or you, probably not you, and probably me, and will find things I say that are a little bit racy, and try to get you fired.
This is a model that has been very effective because they get advertisers, you know, to leave, you know, these companies. And so, this is what he's fighting against. I didn't see this kind of outrage by the way when the Wall Street Journal did the story on Instagram and pedophilia. These advertisers weren't upset. This is totally ideological and they want control of the censorship industrial complex and Elon Musk is a threat to that.
MURPHY: Rachel, I disagree. This is question for you --
CAMPOS-DUFFY: That's why we're here.
MURPHY: I know, but this is not freedom of speech. This is about free markets, and that's why we're seeing besides Disney and Apple and other ones, they're saying, listen, the safeguards that when Elon took over, he took away those safeguards, so there is a lot more hateful speech out there.
There's a lot more antisemitism out there. And again, we can't cheer when he gets rid of those things and there's negativity on there, and people are saying, it is not a safe space anymore. There's not, and even Elon, and he apologized for it, but he, you know, he profiled an antisemitic tweet. Again, he apologized after the fact, that shouldn't be happening in America. It really shouldn't, and if it does, then you can vote with your wallet.
CAMPOS-DUFFY: There's a lot of ESG involved in this as well. Yeah, you know.
Murphy is exactly right and Duffy's only comeback was to make some snide remark about ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance). Fox just loves Musk's frivolous lawsuit against Media Matters. They hate them for doing the same thing to them, which is simply monitoring them and posting the lies and propaganda that comes out of their mouths on a daily basis. We've been doing the same thing as well for years and probably have just as large of an archive on Duffy.
And the goal is not to get her "fired." It's to hold her and her network accountable for the lies they spread daily. She's not the root of the problem. Her employers are. She's not going anywhere until her entire propaganda network is out of business, and sadly, there's probably always someone just as bad or worse waiting to hire all of these liars if they were fired or if Fox ceased to exist tomorrow.
