Quote of the day… 

The White House described Hersh’s story as “utterly false and complete fiction.” The article certainly included some dubious claims, not least that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has “cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.” Stoltenberg, born in 1959, was 16 years old when the war ended.

The washington post

Most read…

God, oh God! Who detonated NORD STREAM?

Not me… Who then was it?

There are four potential explanations….

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, EDITING BY GERMÁN & Co,  MARCH 8, 2023 .

Georgian opposition calls for more protests against government

Tbilisi dropped a bill on 'foreign agents' that triggered massive protests earlier this week but opposition parties are calling for a new rally on Thursday evening.

Le Monde with AFP, on March 9, 202311h00, updated at 11h01 on March 9, 2023.

CERAWEEK-Big Oil on hydrogen: forget the rainbow, just make it profitable

Hydrogen as a potential alternative to natural gas, coal or oil burned in heavy industry or shipping is seen as key to reducing emissions in industries in which electrification is not practical. Hydrogen is often described by color and many in the industry call it a "rainbow renewable" but the most important color for executives at the conference was green -- as in cash.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly editing by Germán & Co

Inside the simmering feud between Donald Trump and Fox News

Donald Trump got a tip-off on Saturday that the Fox News Channel would be taking his Conservative Political Action Conference speech live, a switch from the network’s largely indifferent posture toward the former president since he helped send it into crisis after the 2020 election.

Story by Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Sarah Ellison/ The Washington Post

God, oh God! Who detonated NORD STREAM?

Not me… Who then was it?

There are four potential explanations….

POLITICO EU BY CHARLIE COOPER, EDITING BY GERMÁN & Co,  MARCH 8, 2023 .

Nearly six months on from the subsea gas pipeline explosions, which sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world in September, there is still no conclusive answer to the question of who blew up Nord Stream.

Some were quick to place the blame squarely at Russia’s door — citing its record of hybrid warfare and a possible motive of intimidation, in the midst of a bitter economic war with Europe over gas supply.

But half a year has passed without any firm evidence for this — or any other explanation — being produced by the ongoing investigations of authorities in three European countries.

Since the day of the attack, four states — Russia, the U.S., Ukraine and the U.K. — have been publicly blamed for the explosions, with varying degrees of evidence.

Still, some things are known for sure…

As was widely assumed within hours of the blast, the explosions were an act of deliberate sabotage. One of the three investigations, led by Sweden’s Prosecution Authority, confirmed in November that residues of explosives and several “foreign objects” were found at the “crime scene” on the seabed, around 100 meters below the surface of the Baltic Sea, close to the Danish Island of Bornholm.

Now two new media reports — one from the New York Times, the other a joint investigation by German public broadcasters ARD and SWR, plus newspaper Die Zeit — raised the possibility that a pro-Ukrainian group — though not necessarily state-backed — may have been responsible. On Wednesday, the German Prosecutor’s Office confirmed it had searched a ship in January suspected of transporting explosives used in the sabotage, but was still investigating the seized objects, the identities of the perpetrators and their possible motives.

In the information vacuum since September, various theories have surfaced as to the culprit and their motive:

Theory 1: Putin, the energy bully

In the days immediately after the attack, the working assumption of many analysts in the West was that this was a brazen act of intimidation on the part of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spelt out the hypothesis via his Twitter feed on September 27 — the day after the explosions were first detected. He branded the incident “nothing more [than] a terrorist attack planned by Russia and act of aggression towards the EU” linked to Moscow's determination to provoke “pre-winter panic” over gas supplies to Europe.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also hinted at Russian involvement. Russia denied responsibility.

The Nord Stream pipes are part-owned by Russia’s Gazprom. The company had by the time of the explosions announced an “indefinite” shutdown of the Nord Stream 1 pipes, citing technical issues which the EU branded “fallacious pretences.” The new Nord Stream 2 pipes, meanwhile, had never been brought into the service. Within days of Gazprom announcing the shutdown in early September, Putin issued a veiled threat that Europe would “freeze” if it stuck to its plan of energy sanctions against Russia.

But why blow up the pipeline, if gas blackmail via shutdowns had already proved effective? Why end the possibility of gas ever flowing again?

Simone Tagliapietra, energy specialist and senior fellow at the Bruegel think tank, said it was possible that — if it was Russia — there may have been internal divisions about any such decision. “At that point, when Putin had basically decided to stop supplying [gas to] Germany, many in Russia may have been against that. This was a source of revenues.” It is possible, Tagliapietra said, that “hardliners” took the decision to end the debate by ending the pipelines.

Blowing up Nord Stream, in this reading of the situation, was a final declaration of Russia’s willingness to cut off Europe’s gas supply indefinitely, while also demonstrating its hybrid warfare capabilities. In October, Putin said that the attack had shown that “any critical infrastructure in transport, energy or communication infrastructure is under threat — regardless of what part of the world it is located" — words viewed by many in the West as a veiled threat of more to come.

Theory 2: The Brits did it

From the beginning, Russian leaders have insinuated that either Ukraine or its Western allies were behind the attack. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said two days after the explosions that accusations of Russian culpability were “quite predictable and predictably stupid.” He added that Moscow had no interest in blowing up Nord Stream. “We have lost a route for gas supplies to Europe.”

Then a month on from the blasts, the Russian defense ministry made the very specific allegation that “representatives of the U.K. Navy participated in planning, supporting and executing” the attack. No evidence was given. The same supposed British specialists were also involved in helping Ukraine coordinate a drone attack on Sevastopol in Crimea, Moscow said.  

The U.K.’s Ministry of Defence said the “invented” allegations were intended to distract attention from Russia’s recent defeats on the battlefield. In any case, Moscow soon changed its tune.

Theory 3: U.S. black ops

In February, with formal investigations in Germany, Sweden and Denmark still yet to report, an article by the U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh triggered a new wave of speculation. Hersh’s allegation: U.S. forces blew up Nord Stream on direct orders from Joe Biden.

The account — based on a single source said to have “direct knowledge of the operational planning” — alleged that an “obscure deep-diving group in Panama City” was secretly assigned to lay remotely-detonated mines on the pipelines. It suggested Biden’s rationale was to sever once and for all Russia’s gas link to Germany, ensuring that no amount of Kremlin blackmail could deter Berlin from steadfastly supporting Ukraine.

Hersh's article also drew on Biden’s public remarks when, in February 2022, shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion, he told reporters that should Russia invade “there will be no longer Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

The White House described Hersh’s story as “utterly false and complete fiction.” The article certainly included some dubious claims, not least that NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has “cooperated with the American intelligence community since the Vietnam War.” Stoltenberg, born in 1959, was 16 years old when the war ended.

Russian leaders, however, seized on the report, citing it as evidence at the U.N. Security Council later in February and calling for an U.N.-led inquiry into the attacks, prompting Germany, Denmark and Sweden to issue a joint statement saying their investigations were ongoing.

Theory 4: The mystery boatmen

The latest clues — following reports on Tuesday from the New York Times and German media — center on a boat, six people with forged passports and the tiny Danish island of Christiansø.

According to these reports, a boat that set sail from the German port of Rostock, later stopping at Christiansø, is at the center of the Nord Stream investigations.

Germany’s federal prosecutor confirmed on Wednesday that a ship suspected of transporting explosives had been searched in January — and some of the 100 or so residents of tiny Christiansø told Denmark’s TV2 that police had visited the island and made inquiries. Residents were invited to come forward with information via a post on the island’s Facebook page.

Both the New York Times and the German media reports suggested that intelligence is pointing to a link to a pro-Ukrainian group, although there is no evidence that any orders came from the Ukrainian government and the identities of the alleged perpetrators are also still unknown.

Podolyak, Zelenskyy's adviser, tweeted he was enjoying “collecting amusing conspiracy theories” about what happened to Nord Stream, but that Ukraine had “nothing to do” with it and had “no information about pro-Ukraine sabotage groups.”

Meanwhile, Germany’s Defense Minister Boris Pistorius warned against “jumping to conclusions” about the latest reports, adding that it was possible that there may have been a “false flag” operation to blame Ukraine.

The Danish Security and Intelligence Service said only that their investigation was ongoing, while a spokesperson for Sweden’s Prosecution Authority said information would be shared when available — but there was “no timeline” for when the inquiries would be completed.

The mystery continues…

Georgian opposition calls for more protests against government

Tbilisi dropped a bill on 'foreign agents' that triggered massive protests earlier this week but opposition parties are calling for a new rally on Thursday evening.

Le Monde with AFP, on March 9, 202311h00, updated at 11h01 on March 9, 2023.

A man waves a Georgian flag in front of a burning barricade as other protesters stand behind, not far from the Georgian parliament building in Tbilisi, Georgia, Thursday, March 9, 2023. ZURAB TSERTSVADZE / AP

Georgian opposition parties vowed on Thursday, March 9, to continue protesting despite the ruling party's promise to revoke a controversial new law on "foreign agents" that sparked large rallies and international outcry.

The ruling Georgian Dream party said it was halting plans to introduce the bill seen as reminiscent of Russian legislation used to silence critics.

"For as long as there are no guarantees that Georgia is firmly on a pro-Western course, these processes will not stop," a group of opposition parties said in a joint statement, adding a fresh rally was scheduled for Thursday evening in Tbilisi.

"We demand that dozens of protesters that were arrested be immediately released," Tsotne Koberidze of the opposition Girchi party said, reading out the statement to reporters.

Georgia's Parliament gave its initial backing to the legislation earlier this week in a move that triggered mass protests on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Police fired water and tear gas at thousands of demonstrators and issued a dispersal order. The demonstrations later grew into wider protests against the Georgian government's perceived pro-Kremlin drift.

The European Union and the United States criticized the legislation as a blow to Georgian democracy and the Black Sea nation's bid to join the EU and NATO with concern growing that the former Soviet republic is taking an authoritarian turn and moving ever more closer to the Kremlin.

Seaboard: pioneers in power generation in the country

…Armando Rodríguez, vice-president and executive director of the company, talks to us about their projects in the DR, where they have been operating for 32 years.

More than 32 years ago, back in January 1990, Seaboard began operations as the first independent power producer (IPP) in the Dominican Republic. They became pioneers in the electricity market by way of the commercial operations of Estrella del Norte, a 40MW floating power generation plant and the first of three built for Seaboard by Wärtsilä.

CERAWEEK-Big Oil on hydrogen: forget the rainbow, just make it profitable

HOUSTON, March 8 (Reuters) - Governments worldwide need to simplify rules around hydrogen supply to attract investment and scale it up to become competitive enough to substitute fossil fuel use in heavy industry, energy executives said this week.

Hydrogen as a potential alternative to natural gas, coal or oil burned in heavy industry or shipping is seen as key to reducing emissions in industries in which electrification is not practical. Hydrogen is often described by color and many in the industry call it a "rainbow renewable" but the most important color for executives at the conference was green -- as in cash.

REUTERS By Stephanie Kelly editing by Germán & Co

Hydrogen can be made in many ways, some cleaner than others. Among methods that produce what is known as green hydrogen are electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen using power from renewables. Hydrogen can also be made from natural gas. When carbon emissions from the process are captured and stored, it is known as blue hydrogen.

The industry is still in a nascent stage and the fuel is relatively expensive to produce, so governments worldwide are seeking ways to facilitate rapid development to make it an economic alternative to fossil fuels in industry.

Provisions in U.S. President Joe Biden's signature Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and legislation in the European Union have incentivized the development of hydrogen but need further clarification, and government mandates may be required to encourage industries such as steel and shipping to embrace hydrogen, energy industry executives said at the CERAWeek energy conference this week in Houston.

"The market for hydrogen and people's willingness to pay a premium for low-emissions fuels I think hasn't quite taken off yet," Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) Chief Executive Darren Woods said.

Though the IRA is incentivizing production of green and blue hydrogen, Woods said the associated costs are making it difficult for Exxon's partners to sell either into Europe and Asia.

Discussions and rules around classifying hydrogen made from renewable fuels or natural gas should be secondary to making the fuel affordable for consumers, said Colin Parfitt, vice president of Midstream for Chevron Corp.

"There is way too much conversation about if it is blue or green," Parfitt said. "The challenge is how do you create hydrogen as a business."

Transporting hydrogen is currently not commercially viable nor affordable for consumers, Parfitt said.

The technology for shipping hydrogen is still in early stages of development, said Chevron's vice president of hydrogen Austin Knight.

DEMAND FOR HYDROGEN

The most obvious and near-term demand for hydrogen is in industries that currently use so-called grey hydrogen that is produced from fossil fuels, Spanish energy producer Cepsa SA (CPF.GQ) Chief Executive Maarten Wetselaar told Reuters. Grey hydrogen is currently consumed by fertilizer, refining, and iron and steel units.

About 30-35% of the total energy system will need hydrogen to decarbonize, he said.

For industries such as shipping, government mandates are needed to make hydrogen cost competitive with cheaper petroleum-based fuel oil, Wetselaar said.

By 2030, Cepsa plans to produce 600,000 tons of green ammonia per year, produced using hydrogen made from renewable energy, for green marine fuel and begin green ammonia exports by 2027. Cepsa could begin selling green ammonia to ships by 2026, Wetselaar told Reuters.

Meanwhile, low-carbon hydrogen fuels used for transportation need more infrastructure, such as refueling stations, to support and scale the market, said Plug Power Chief Executive Andy Marsh.

ADDED COMPLEXITIES

Green hydrogen could quickly be brought to market with the right rules around production, said CEO John Ketchum of the world's top renewable power generator NextEra.

NextEra is working with the U.S. Treasury on rules that govern what can be considered green hydrogen, he said. The process is complicated by the variability of renewable power supply from wind and solar, he said.

If power from those sources dropped, then an electrolyzer producing hydrogen would need to switch to power from the grid, which may or may not be renewable, he added. If hydrogen producers could no longer classify hydrogen as green and had to switch off electrolyzers, the cost of producing the fuel would go up and make it uneconomical. The solution would be to offset the use of non-renewable power with carbon credits, he said.

Otherwise, "we will have an out-of-the-money product," he said.

More regulation, certifications and standards are needed for handling hydrogen, along with supply contracts to access infrastructure and new ideas on transporting hydrogen, company officials said Wednesday.

"The IRA has not been fully implemented yet in the U.S., so after that contract terms and clear standards will have to be tackled," said Juancho Eekhout, vice president of business development at Sempra Infrastructure.

Further, the trade of hydrogen also has complexities that will need to be addressed, said Margaux Moore, head of the Energy Transition Research Group at Trafigura.

Depending on how hydrogen is produced, the fuel has different carbon intensity scores in different countries, she said.

Inside the simmering feud between Donald Trump and Fox News

Donald Trump got a tip-off on Saturday that the Fox News Channel would be taking his Conservative Political Action Conference speech live, a switch from the network’s largely indifferent posture toward the former president since he helped send it into crisis after the 2020 election.

Story by Michael Scherer, Josh Dawsey, Sarah Ellison/ The Washington Post

Trump decided he could not pass up the opportunity to send a message.

“I hope Fox doesn’t turn off, but we did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016,” he said in an apparent reference to the false election claims that were at the center of many of the network’s controversies, including a $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News that has led to a massive release of internal company documents.

It was just another volley in a low-grade war — some of it public, much of it hidden — that has emerged as one of the defining dynamics in the Republican Party as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway. Trump’s advisers see in Fox News leadership a clear adversary in their march back to the White House and have sought to foster a divide between executives and “the brave and patriotic” opinion hosts with whom he continues to have relationships.

Trump attacked Fox Chairman Rupert Murdoch by name this month, calling him and his executives a “group of MAGA hating Globalist RINOS” who are “aiding & abetting the destruction of America.” Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. — noting that he had not been invited on the network in six months — accused Fox News leaders last week of harboring an “America Last, war forever, garbage, fold-to-the-Democrats agenda.” Other allies, such as Stephen K. Bannon, have shredded the network in public.

Documents uncovered by ongoing litigation have also revealed the extent of the ongoing hostility toward Trump from Murdoch and other top executives, both before and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The Fox News boss emailed a former company executive in early 2021 that the goal was “to make Trump a non person.” Fox News board member Paul D. Ryan, a former Republican House speaker, told another Fox executive around the same time that he had communicated to both Rupert Murdoch and Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch that there was a “huge inflection point to keep Trump down and move on.”

“Both Rupert and Lachlan agree fully,” Ryan wrote.

Since then, the network has dismissed Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as a contributor because of the network’s supposed ban on political activity. But the policy applies typically to people who themselves are declaring a candidacy, as happened with Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) and former presidential candidate Ben Carson when they ran for political office.

Fox now also frowns upon letting Trump appear on the network by phone, once a standard way for hosting him on the network until he left office, according two people familiar with the situation who, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal details. His events and rallies are rarely covered live — and often not at all.

At the same time, Murdoch’s media outlets have lavished attention and praise on Trump’s principal rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who publicly credits the network in his new book — which is published by another company controlled by Murdoch — with aiding his rise in politics. The DeSantis book was heavily promoted last week when the governor made at least five live appearances on the network, according to a tally by Media Matters for America, a liberal group that monitors Fox News programming.

Four takeaways from the new Fox-Dominion lawsuit documents

Exclusive excerpts from the DeSantis book ran in the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, and on FoxNews.com, all of which are controlled by Murdoch. DeSantis has separately given recent interviews to the New York Post and the Times of London, which is also controlled by Murdoch, while spurning requests from other print outlets.

It’s a standoff with billions of dollars in revenue at stake for the nation’s most successful cable news broadcaster, not to mention the outcome of the Republican primary battle.

“Whether it’s the New York Post or the Wall Street Journal or Fox, you can clearly see the company is eager not to repeat the mistakes of 2016,” said Chris Stirewalt, a longtime Fox political editor who was ousted after the election. “But it will test the resolve of the network to maintain that posture if there are ratings consequences, if they become too much a target from his folks, that they will stick with it.”

Some in both camps have been seeking a truce before more damage is done. Several of Fox News’s most high-profile figures continue to speak to the former president and work with his team. Trump acknowledged his existing relationships during his CPAC speech, praising Fox hosts Mark Levin, Gregg Jarrett, Sean Hannity, Jesse Watters and Tucker Carlson.

Well, the 2024 presidential election may be more than 19…

Among those most invested in securing better coverage on Fox for Trump is Jason Miller, his longtime on-again, off-again spokesman. Miller called Fox allies ahead of CPAC, asking for them to show the speech, and has worked individual producers at the network to try to convince the shows to carry Trump more, according to people familiar with the situation.

“You can’t ignore the party front-runner, and the Fox base wants to see President Trump. Many involved in the network would like to see President Trump covered more by the network. He’s ratings gold, and he’s the dominant front-runner for the Republican nomination,” Miller said.

At times, Trump gets livid watching all the positive DeSantis coverage, particularly on topics that he says he took on first, according to advisers.

“It’s not ideal, but we have to remember in 2016, it wasn’t glowing at first, either. You have to get through it. They’ll come around when he’s the nominee,” one adviser said. “What are they going to do? Not show the Republican nominee on their channel?”

Advisers have tried to temper his frustration by telling him that many supporters are watching other channels. The former president still watches Fox all the time, according to the advisers. He eats dinner with Chris Ruddy, who runs rival network Newsmax, at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, but Fox News often still plays on the televisions and Sean Hannity talks to Trump and his team often, they said.

Trump’s team and Carlson’s show discussed arranging an interview late last month, but discussions broke down over logistics, according to two people familiar with the matter. Trump “did not want to appear in a box because former presidents don’t appear in boxes,” one of these people said, and Carlson did not want a phone interview. Hannity later showed an interview of Trump, but it was taped earlier for his radio show.

Internal Fox messages revealed in court filings Tuesday as part of a defamation lawsuit against Fox by Dominion Voting Systems showed Carlson vacillating on his support for Trump after the 2020 election. After initially calling for a Fox News reporter to be fired for accurately reporting that Trump’s election fraud claims were false, Carlson texted with a colleague in early 2021 that his show was “very very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” Carlson added of the then-president, “I hate him passionately.”

Republicans who have spoken to Carlson say he agrees with Trump on many topics, particularly foreign policy — but has grown frustrated at times with his behavior, rhetoric and approach. Trump has told others that Carlson is not as reliable as Hannity and other hosts at defending him but that he respects his influence in the Republican Party and ability to secure high television ratings.

As the documents were released Tuesday night, Trump signaled that he was happy with Carlson’s recent arguments that the Jan. 6 attack was not a “deadly insurrection.” A Capitol Police officer, Brian D. Sicknick, died after suffering multiple strokes a day after fighting with protesters, a death that the Capitol Police chief has attributed to the violence. Multiple people have been convicted in federal court of seditious conspiracy in connection with the attack.

“GREAT JOB BY TUCKER CARLSON TONIGHT,” Trump wrote after the Carlson text message about passionately hating him was released.

Former president Donald Trump speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Fort Washington, Md., on Saturday night. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

Preston Padden, a former Fox News executive whose emails with Murdoch were quoted in the Dominion filing, said the differences in the private musings released about Trump and the public posturing is jarring. He said that for nine months, he’d emailed with Murdoch in 2020 and 2021, and Murdoch made clear he believed the election was not stolen.

“It makes you wonder: Who’s in charge?” he said.

A former Fox executive said producers closely watched the cover of the New York Post and the writings of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board to understand what Murdoch was thinking. The New York Post covered Trump’s campaign announcement with the diminutive cover line, “Florida man makes announcement,” and an article identified the former president as a “retiree” and “avid golfer.” A separate cover of the tabloid, after the midterm elections last year, described him as “Trumpty Dumpty” who “couldn’t build a wall” and “had a great fall.”

“The Trumpty Dumpty thing was the declaration of war. Once producers saw that, they did not wonder: How are we playing that?” a former Fox executive said.

Some of Trump’s advisers have studied DeSantis’s appearances on Fox to see how many interviews and how many minutes of positive coverage he has received, a person familiar with the work said.

In his new book, DeSantis describes Fox News’s production of his 2018 Republican primary debate as a decisive moment that helped him win his party’s gubernatorial nomination in Florida. On screen, Fox producers ran a chyron during the debate highlighting DeSantis’s Trump endorsement, Ivy League degrees and military service, while suggesting that his opponent was a career politician who had been endorsed by former Florida governor Jeb Bush (R).

“This is exactly the contrast we were looking to draw!” DeSantis wrote.

Stirewalt said that in 2016, Fox had a decision to make about Trump after he publicly attacked star host Megyn Kelly. Traditionally, he said, if you’re attacking Fox and the Fox personalities, you aren’t going to get “juicy segments and high visibility stuff.”

“He publicly attacked one of our lead anchors and dropped out of our debate, and the consequence was basically nothing. That’s when I knew the dynamic was out of whack because the shows and the producers knew what a ratings bonanza Trump was,” he said.

Fox and the Trump White House long had a symbiotic and intertwined relationship. Several Trump aides went to become executives at Fox Corp. after leaving the White House, including former spokesman Raj Shah and Hope Hicks, a longtime Trump confidante. Trump often had Fox News hosts call into his White House meetings or visit the Oval Office — frustrating some of his aides — and the network’s coverage would frequently influence his positions on topics, former advisers said. Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive, served as a senior communications adviser to Trump in the White House.

Fox is pitching to secure Republican debates, a person familiar with the matter said. In their pitch to Republican National Committee officials, Fox executives did not mention Trump or DeSantis by name, people with knowledge of the presentation said. One Republican official said Fox is likely to get at least one debate, if not multiple ones.

Another employee said that Fox would often mobilize defenders of the network and scramble when under criticism from conservative media — and that pressure from Trump to air him more would matter more if it was echoed by conservative media.

“Fox is a company” acting rationally to cater to its viewers and “pander” to their desires, the former employee said. “If he doesn’t go away in polling, Fox is going to have to cover him more.”

Cooperate with objective and ethical thinking…