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The folks at Fox News could sure use a hug right now.



A Politico/Morning Consult poll on Monday found 76 percent of voters believe the wealthiest Americans should have to pay more in taxes. Then, a poll conducted by Fox News found 70 percent of respondents favor raising taxes on citizens with incomes over $10 million and 65 percent wanted higher taxes on those making more than $1 million. The polls were conducted days after Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s wealth tax plan reveal and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s call for a marginal tax on the very wealthy.


Based on the nervous smiles and half-hearted inflections of shock on the air this morning, these results were not what America’s Newsroom hosts Sandra Smith and Bill Hemmer had in mind.

The polling results didn’t sit well with Making Money host Charles Payne, either.


“The idea of fairness has been promoted in our schools for a long time and we’re starting to see kids who grow up in this notion that fairness above all,” Payne told the hosts. “And now they’re becoming voting age and they’re bringing this ideology with them.”



Payne, who went on to cite Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently pushing back on higher income taxes for the wealthy as proof of how things work in the “real world,” has long been on the socialism fear-mongering beat for Fox. Last year, Fox & Friends trotted him out to decry a high school that wondered about the moral connotation of nicknaming themselves the “millionaires,” with Payne warning viewers how this was an example of socialism wrapping its “tentacles” around the youth. In 2016, when President Barack Obama was trying to reform the corporate tax structure, Payne hopped on Fox Business to defend tax-dodging millionaires and billionaires and whine about the costs of paying workers a fair wage.

It’s probably worth pointing out now that Payne, Smith, and Hemmler are all rumored to boast net worths in the millions and so have a vested interest in not being soaked, hence their incredulous reactions. As Howard Schultz proved time and time again over the past week, the wealthy are incredibly brittle creatures when exposed to the truth that the majority of Americans see them for the blatant tax-dodgers they are. Lucky for the rest of us, Fox’s only play so far is shrieking “socialism!” and frantically looking around as they slide their gold bars just off-screen.