Listen to Media Matters’ Andrew Lawrence explain how Fox News capitulated to Donald Trump in the first GOP debate

Citation From the August 24, 2023, edition of Sexy Liberal Podcast Network’s The John Fugelsang Podcast

JOE SUDBAY (HOST): The first kind of pre-debate coverage I saw was a tweet from you noting that Jesse Watters, previewing the — his own network’s debate, basically told viewers that none of the candidates on the stage really mattered anyways because it was Trump’s nomination. I thought that was really fascinating and it seemed to kind of, like, set the tone for the night. 

ANDREW LAWRENCE (GUEST): Oh, it did. Yeah, it was amazing. And I’ll tell you, you know, even earlier, just so your audience knows, I work at Media Matters and we monitor right-wing media and Fox News so you don’t have to watch it. And earlier in the day, we were listening to Hannity — he has a radio show as well — a little bit earlier, and he promised he was doing post-debate coverage. He promised that Chris Christie would not be invited on the post-debate coverage.

A little bit later, you have Jesse Watters saying that this is Trump’s nomination. And then Watters, before the debate, is telling the candidates that they need to respect Donald Trump during the debate. And it was just really interesting to see Fox News kind of bend the knee to Trump, even though he wasn’t there, and sort of doing exactly what Trump would’ve wanted them to do.