What I learned from watching Fox News after the New Orleans attack

I usually kick off every Jan. 1 with the Rose Parade broadcast on Channel 5, then college football in the afternoon and evening. It’s one of the few days I honestly, truly try to relax and do something that’s next to impossible for me: not work.

Sadly, that’s not how I began my 2025.

I woke up to the news that an ISIS sympathizer had driven a truck onto Bourbon Street in New Orleans earlier that morning, killing 14 people and injuring dozens more. Shortly after, a family member texted that they were safe after a Tesla Cybertruck blew up in front of the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

Whenever national tragedies like these happen, I immediately switch my television to CNN. The cable channel’s team of on-the-ground correspondents is without peer, and its anchors and commentators leave the opining and speculation to a minimum as they stick to the facts with a tone that tries to be authoritative. That’s what I watched for hours on Wednesday, instead of flower-festooned floats and read-option offenses, as I tried to make sense of the horrible start to the new year.

Maybe I was groggy from the previous night’s festivities. Maybe I was too full on breakfast tamales. But at some point, I decided to ditch CNN and tune into a channel I rarely watch:

Fox News.

I don’t live in a liberal bubble. I listen to Ben Shapiro’s and Rep. Dan Crenshaw’s podcasts when I can, receive dozens of conservative newsletters ranging from libertarian to white nationalist and subscribe to orthodox Catholic newspapers like the Wanderer and New Oxford Review. Right-leaning friends love to debate me, because they know I’m not a knee-jerk ideologue. I have tracked the rise of Trump-loving Latinos in this columna for years, and have long warned liberals they ignore and ridicule Republicans at their own peril.

A well-informed American listens to all views and makes up their mind while always following the newspaper adage that if your mom tells you she loves you, go check it out. That’s why Fox News has always been a bridge too far for me.

A parade of demagogic hosts through the years — Lou Dobbs, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Bill O’Reilly being among the most notorious — has corroded public discourse like rust eating through a sink. When it comes to breaking news on serious matters, I don’t care for rants and slants — that’s why I rarely watch MSNBC, either. Besides, my viewing habits have always been resolutely local — Channel 5 in the morning, KCAL-TV Channel 9’s nightly three-hour news block, then the 11 p.m. half-hour newscast on KNBC-TV Channel 4.

I’m always willing to give things I oppose a chance. I don’t regret my decision to turn on Fox News on New Year’s Day, because it was a sobering, necessary reminder of the fetid information ecosystem that put Donald Trump in the White House, created a majority in both chambers of Congress and paints critics like me as the enemy.

Former White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany appears on “Hannity” at Fox News’ studio in Manhattan in 2023.

(Roy Rochlin / Getty Images)

I watched Fox News for four straight hours, with anchors Kayleigh McEnany (a former White House secretary under Donald Trump), Tammy Bruce and Trace Gallagher following each other. Their broadcasts led with segments from the scenes of the deadly attacks that told viewers what was known at the time and included footage of press conferences by the law enforcement agencies investigating the crimes. Those short bits at least offered the pretense of objectivity — the “fair and balanced” mantra Fox News has long insisted is its modus operandi.

But once the anchors brought in Fox News contributors, their shows reflected the unhinged worldview that now holds power in this country.

Guest after guest blamed the attacks on the FBI for supposedly preferring diversity initiatives and investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and conservatives over stopping terrorist attacks. Buzzwords flew around like confetti that had nothing to do with the crimes at hand: Antifa. Open borders. Police haters. The far left.

McEnany, Bruce and Gallagher didn’t imply that the perpetrator had recently entered the country, as Trump and their own network initially did. But they kept referring to the attacker as a “U.S. citizen,” as if they couldn’t believe that a man with a name like Shamsud-Din Jabbar could possibly be an American. The same term was not used on Fox News to describe the Las Vegas Cybertruck exploder, Matthew Livelsberger, according to a review of transcripts.

Ex-Green Beret Jim Hanson called President Biden a “dementia-addled, barely animated carcass.” California Republican Party chair Jessica Milan Patterson demanded that all of Trump’s nominees “be confirmed immediately” so the incoming president could more easily accomplish his agenda. Counterterrorism commentator Aaron Cohen mentioned a pro-Palestinian rally in Times Square that day and tied it to the New Orleans attack, claiming, “You don’t shut this stuff down. This is what happens.”

The Fox News I remembered was in full force: Frothing. Paranoid. Vengeful. Seeking not to inform viewers but to inflame.

But the most wacko commentary came from former San Bernardino County sheriff’s Deputy Meagan McCarthy. Earlier in the day, Fox News published — and then walked back — a report that the truck Jabbar used to kill so many had crossed into the U.S. from Mexico a few days earlier. Following that erroneous piece, an avalanche of politicians demanded that the southern border be shut down, and Trump claimed on social media that “the criminals coming in are far worse than the criminals we have in our country.”

Gallagher aired an interview with New Orleans-area Republican Rep. Steve Scalise in which Scalise referenced Fox News’ original border crossing claim.

“We don’t know why,” Gallagher told McCarthy. “We don’t know what the link is. We’re not pointing fingers. We’re just saying that it’s interesting that we are at this point.”

“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” she replied. “And two things can be true at the same time. You can have an individual who was infiltrated while he was an American citizen, and you can have a problem at the southern border that maybe influenced this attack.”

That’s why McCarthy suggested that the FBI allow the American public “to be a part of the investigation” — something I doubt she would have advocated for back when she was a sheriff’s deputy.

“I understand as a law enforcement officer, you’re privy to certain things you want to keep close to the chest,” she said. “But I think we have seen the destruction at our southern border for four years. We know that there’s some correlation.”

Later, Gallagher mentioned a police officer who had remarked earlier that day that not going after shoplifters made it “tougher to go after the big fish, the bigger criminals.”

McCarthy agreed.

“Back when I was a cop, you would do those traffic stops to get those moving violations because it would lead to a bigger crime,” she said before adding, “We need to start getting back to defending people and not being afraid of offending people, and that starts with having some hard conversations and saying some hard truths.”

From ripping off a Walgreens to a terrorist attack in New Orleans? Fox News used to have another slogan: We report, you decide. Given that its ratings are the highest in a decade and that it was the highest-rated cable network for the ninth consecutive year, too many Americans have decided that Fox News’ whine-world is reality and have voted into office fellow true believers.

Buckle up your seat belts, everyone else: It’s going to be a hell of a next four years.