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Is Fox News not extreme enough for American conservatives?

The uproar over the network’s decision to pull Mike Lindell’s ad is a sign that the center of US politics is still lurching right

Justin Ward
3 min readJul 30, 2021
MyPillow CEO and prominent pro-Trump figure Mike Lindell (Gage Skidmore / CC-BY-SA)

Conservatives are mad as hell at Fox News and they’re not going to take it anymore. Republicans are blasting the traditional bastion of rightwing media after it refused to air a commercial by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell for an event promoting bogus claims of election fraud. In retaliation, Lindell pulled all of his company’s advertising on Fox, which will potentially cost them tens of millions in revenue. Despite Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, he’s still beloved within the Republican Party and Lindell is one of the most popular figures in the Trumpist movement — second only to the man himself.

If this little episode prompts Republicans to abandon the network en masse, it would be an amusing irony. Fox News pandered to the currents that would eventually coalesce into the Trump wing of the GOP with personalities like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.

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Justin Ward
Justin Ward

Written by Justin Ward

Journalist and activist. Founder and co-chair of DivestSPD. Bylines at SPLC, The Baffler, GEN, USA Today. Follow on Twitter: @justwardoctrine, @DivestSPD

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