Opinion Jim Jordan’s new stunt reveals the folly of ‘governing by Fox News’
Now, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) is set to chair a Judiciary Committee hearing in New York City on Monday that will target Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s indictment of former president Donald Trump. But the emerging details are already shining a harsh light on what you might call the “governing by Fox News” problem, in which Republicans use committee hearings to create right-wing media boomlets but ultimately run into the buzz saw of outside scrutiny.
Jordan’s hearing will purportedly highlight “victims of violent crime in Manhattan.” This is meant to serve as the next chapter in Jordan’s attempt to weaponize his committee against Bragg’s prosecution of Trump by dramatizing the GOP talking point that the district attorney is illegitimately prosecuting Trump while letting countless “real” criminals walk free.
But this will likely create an opening for committee Democrats. They plan to use the proceedings to amplify the message that Republicans have no business griping about crime when they refuse action on gun safety in the wake of one horrific mass shooting after another.
“We are eager to use this as an opportunity to highlight what is the real pressing issue in terms of public safety around the country,” Rep. Daniel S. Goldman (D-N.Y.) told me. “And that’s the prevalence of assault weapons.”
Committee Democrats, led by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), also plan to push back against lurid and widely debunked GOP claims about Bragg, New York City and crime. Among these claims: Bragg didn’t prosecute an alleged murder on the subway (he did); crime in Manhattan is at record highs (that’s nonsense); Bragg is a wholly owned puppet of George Soros (that’s pure fantasy talk); and the judge hearing Trump’s case is a Trump-hater (even Trump’s own lawyer won’t say this).
And Democrats plan to highlight potential coordination between Trump’s defense team and Republicans. CNN reports that Trump has been in direct contact with Republicans on committees that are trying to investigate Bragg’s office to “shore up support,” and this will figure in Monday’s hearing.
“It’s an opportunity for the public to learn exactly the degree of coordination and collusion between House Republican leadership and Donald Trump,” Goldman told me. He said Democrats will spotlight how “Jordan and House Republicans are serving as Trump’s taxpayer-funded legal defense team.”
What is creating these openings for Democrats? Governance by Fox News. The network already treats it as an article of faith that the prosecution of Trump is irredeemably corrupt to its core, as Matt Gertz of Media Matters shows. Fox has relentlessly amplified the phantom Soros-Bragg link. And Fox personalities and MAGA media superstars such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) regularly hype crime in New York to discredit the Trump prosecution.
In other words, the right-wing media storylines on these topics have already been firmly established. Republicans will have powerful incentives to use the hearing to manufacture more of this same content for that audience. That telegraphs the GOP’s punches in advance, allowing Democrats to prepare to debunk these claims outside the right-wing media bubble.
Republicans likely don’t see this as a problem. It was a cause for celebration on the right when Tennessee Republicans expelled two young Black lawmakers over protests that erupted in the wake of the horrifying Nashville mass shooting. The idea that mainstream Americans might see those expulsions as a reminder of quasi-pathological GOP inaction on gun violence is unthinkable.
But if Democrats can shine a spotlight on that inaction, it could be politically potent, especially given the nation’s attention to the events in Tennessee. In fact, other Republicans are now privately admitting the party is freshly vulnerable on gun issues, particularly among young voters.
This dynamic has been on display again and again and again: In House GOP hearings, narratives widely echoed inside the right-wing bubble have imploded once they collide with real scrutiny.
None of this is meant to claim that Bragg’s case against Trump is strong. It’s too early to say one way or the other, and ultimately that will be for a jury to decide. Republicans could reasonably focus hearings on the substance of the case, especially since some legal observers have sharply criticized it. Yet Republicans surely know that wouldn’t satisfy an audience that has been fed a steady diet of Soros-bashing, tales of allegedly soaring urban crime and wild fantasies about Trump’s historically unjust persecution.
So at Monday’s hearing, that audience will be treated to more of the same. But if Democrats handle it correctly, everyone outside that audience will see a very different kind of show.
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