Fox News Airs Half a Dozen Segments on That Farcical WSJ Op-Ed Pushing a Hillary Clinton 2024 Comeback
The U.S. media was inundated on Wednesday with wild speculation about who will, or worse, should run for president in 2024.
The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman argued for Israeli-style centrism in the form of a bipartisan Biden-Cheney ticket, while in the Wall Street Journal, Doug Schoen and Andrew Stein declared 2024 is poised for a Hillary Clinton comeback.
While Friedman was roundly mocked for his op-ed and Twitter delighted in the idea of “term limits” for columnists, the Wall Street Journal op-ed found a happy home at Fox News.
According to a search of SnapStream’s feed of all Fox News shows on Wednesday, the network had mentioned Hillary running in 2024 in at least seven segments before 8pm ET.
Fox & Friends, The Faulkner Focus, Outnumbered, America Reports, The Story with Martha MacCallum, The Five, and Fox News Prime Time had all mentioned the article – and that was before the network’s prime time stars came on the air.
On rival networks, only MSNBC’s Way Too Early with Jonathan Lemire covered the article, while CNN did not mention it, according to a SnapStream search.
As for the article itself, CNN’s Chris Cillizza made the point that there is reason to be skeptical of the authors’ motives. Stein, a former New York City Council president, endorsed Donald Trump in 2016. Meanwhile, Schoen had worked for former Republican and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“Several circumstances—President Biden’s low approval rating, doubts over his capacity to run for re-election at 82, Vice President Kamala Harris’s unpopularity, and the absence of another strong Democrat to lead the ticket in 2024—have created a leadership vacuum in the party, which Mrs. Clinton viably could fill,” the article states. “She is already in an advantageous position to become the 2024 Democratic nominee.”
Of the authors, Cillizza argues, “Their backgrounds should give you pause about a) their intentions and b) their analysis of the state of the Democratic Party and the 2024 field.”
Benjamin Hart in New York Magazine notes that this isn’t the Wall Street Journal’s first time pushing this narrative. In 2018, Stein co-authored another piece, published around the same time in the midterm election cycle as his current one, declaring, “Hillary Will Run Again.” Hillary obviously did not run again in 2020.
So, why is the story getting so much traction? Fox’s John Roberts may have given away the game earlier in the day when ending a segment on the article.
“A lot of people say the reason that Donald Trump became president, he would not say it, but it was a vote against Hillary Clinton,” he said.
A possible Clinton-Trump rematch in 2024 is a sure-fire way to stir up the GOP base and as of Wednesday evening, the Republican National Committee was already fundraising off a possible Hillary run. “So, she comes back in 2024, I think it’s a wildcard as to what happened,” Roberts concluded.