INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
An NPR Best Book of the Year
"A thorough and damning exploration of the incestuous relationship
between Trump and his favorite channel." --The New York Times
"A Rosetta Stone for stuff about this presidency that doesn't
otherwise make sense to normal humans." --Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
"Stelter's critique goes beyond salacious tidbits about extramarital
affairs (though there are plenty of those) to expose a collusion that
threatens the pillars of our democracy." --The Washington Post
The urgent and untold story of the collusion between Fox News and
Donald Trump from the New York Times bestselling author of Top of the
Morning.
While other leaders were marshaling resources to combat the greatest
pandemic in modern history, President Donald Trump was watching TV.
Trump watches over six hours of Fox News a day, a habit his staff refers
to as "executive time." In January 2020, when Fox News began to downplay
COVID-19, the President was quick to agree. In March, as the deadly
virus spiraled out of control, Sean Hannity mocked "coronavirus
hysteria" as a "new hoax" from the left. Millions of Americans took
Hannity and Trump's words as truth--until some of them started to get
sick.
In Hoax, CNN anchor and chief media correspondent Brian Stelter tells
the twisted story of the relationship between Donald Trump and Fox News.
From the moment Trump glided down the golden escalator to announce his
candidacy in the 2016 presidential election to his acquittal on two
articles of impeachment in early 2020, Fox hosts spread his lies and
smeared his enemies. Over the course of two years, Stelter spoke with
over 250 current and former Fox insiders in an effort to understand the
inner workings of Rupert Murdoch's multibillion-dollar media empire.
Some of the confessions are alarming. "We don't really believe all this
stuff," a producer says. "We just tell other people to believe it."
At the center of the story lies Sean Hannity, a college dropout who,
following the death of Fox News mastermind Roger Ailes, reigns supreme
at the network that pays him $30 million a year. Stelter describes the
raging tensions inside Fox between the Trump loyalists and the few
remaining journalists. He reveals why former chief news anchor Shep
Smith resigned in disgust in 2019; why a former anchor said "if I stay
here I'll get cancer;" and how Trump has exploited the leadership vacuum
at the top to effectively seize control of the network.
Including never before reported details, Hoax exposes the media
personalities who, though morally bankrupt, profit outrageously by
promoting the President's propaganda and radicalizing the American
right. It is a book for anyone who reads the news and wonders: How did
this happen?
