On March 5, Fox News will host a town hall with President Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, led by prime-time anchors Martha MacCallum and Bret Baier. Fox touts of MacCallum and Baier as two of the network's top “straight news” anchors -- as opposed to its bombastically bigoted opinion hosts -- but both have repeatedly pushed misinformation and shilled for Trump.

When faced with controversy set off by the network's opinion hosts, Fox tends to point to the “hard news” side of the operation, arguing that while the opinion hosts can be more over the top, the anchors take fact-based journalism very seriously. This is untrue, as news-side shows and anchors regularly push disinformation and fawning, pro-Trump propaganda.

A 2019 Media Matters study found that Fox’s “news” side pushed misinformation every day for four months straight, and another study found that on the topic of abortion and reproductive rights, the news side was indistuingishable from the opinion side in spreading right-wing myths and propaganda. In fact, Baier and MacCallum are just another cog in Fox’s broader GOP propaganda machine.

Ahead of Fox’s Trump town hall tonight, here is a sampling of the extensive ways that Baier and MacCallum have spread misinformation, right-wing talking points, and general pro-Trump propaganda over the past few years.

The Mueller investigation and concluding report

After Attorney General Bill Barr gave a press conference for which he was widely criticized because he tried to spin special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian election interference before it came out, Baier claimed Barr was “laying it out straight, cut and dry, here is what his conclusion is.”

After the Mueller report’s conclusions were released, MacCallum grilled a Democratic congressperson on whether he would support retaliatory investigations into “the origins of this investigation” against Obama administration officials.

MacCallum also falsely claimed that rules prevented Barr from releasing the unredacted version of Mueller’s report to Congress.

MacCallum erroneously argued that Trump couldn’t have obstructed justice if there was “no underlying crime.” Trump later cited her argument as a defense on Twitter.

MacCallum claimed Trump was “so forthcoming” in participating in the Mueller probe, but in reality Trump refused to be interviewed for the investigation.

MacCallum argued that Mueller’s job “was to determine whether or not there was a criminal charge that should be made” against the president. In reality, Mueller explained that “Justice Department regulations do not permit the indictment of a sitting president,” so “charging the president with a crime was therefore not an option we could consider.”

The 2016 election, Hillary Clinton, and “deep state” conspiracy theories

Trump’s Ukraine scandal and impeachment

During the impeachment inquiry into Trump’s efforts to tie congressionally approved military aid for Ukraine to a Ukrainian investigation into presidential candidate Joe Biden, Baier echoed White House talking points to downplay the impact of the released transcript of the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky.

MacCallum joined her network colleagues in pushing for the identity of the Ukrainian military aid whistleblower to be released, arguing that the whistleblower’s identity “might reveal motivations, might reveal relationships, might reveal bias” against the president, echoing a line of attack from the network’s opinion side.

When indicted Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas turned over a trove of documents making it clear that Trump sought political investigations into the Bidens, MacCallum agreed with her guest that the documents sound “very much like evidence that we’ve already heard … that Trump wanted an investigation undertaken of the Bidens in connection with the Burisma matter.”

During the impeachment inquiry, MacCallum revived a debunked conspiracy theory that former Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch had a “do not prosecute” list.

MacCallum tried to exonerate Giuliani and his cohorts from their efforts to oust Yovanovitch so they could better carry out their corrupt agenda, arguing that it “appears” as though their goal was to “find someone who was a stronger proponent for the policies of the Trump administration.”

Baier hosted Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) on his show to push the conspiracy theory that Ukraine was interfering in the 2016 election on behalf of Clinton, and Baier did not challenge the claim.

MacCallum characterized Trump’s entire Ukraine bribery scandal as just “Trump being Trump.”

Domestic policy and events

Foreign policy and events