Fox News went all in for Donald Trump. In its eyes, the president can do no wrong. Did you think Tuesday was a bad day for President Donald Trump? Not if you're a Fox News viewer.

Bill Goodykoontz | The Republic | azcentral.com

Show Caption Hide Caption Trump says hush money 'not a campaign violation' President Donald Trump is defending the hush money payments made by his former attorney Michael Cohen to a pair of women, insisting, contrary to Cohen's guilty plea, that the effort wasn't "even a campaign violation." (Aug. 22)

You might think that Tuesday was a bad day for President Donald Trump.

Then again, if you watch Fox News, you might not.

On Tuesday, a jury found Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, guilty on eight counts of bank and tax fraud.

Ever the optimist, Trump tweeted, "A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!" That's certainly taking the glass-half-full approach.

Meanwhile, almost simultaneously, Trump's former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, pleaded guilty to eight counts, two of which involved Cohen saying he illegally tried to influence the 2016 election — at, he says, Trump's behest.

Now, it's true investigators haven't accused Trump of any crimes (yet). But it's not a good look, as they say, and social media went wild, as ever, with the court of public opinion — and what is Twitter, if not that — roughing up the president and his cronies.

The view from Fox News

And then there's Fox News. Trump held one of his fire-and-brimstone (or is it scorched-earth?) rallies in West Virginia on Tuesday night. Despite the day's news, it was pretty standard stuff for him: boasting about the 2016 election, what a great job he's doing, what a horrible job everyone else is doing and laying out a future for West Virginia coal miners as if it were 1984 and they just invented the personal computer.

He didn't change the narrative, in other words. On Fox News, of course, he never has to. During the immediate post-game show, Tammy Bruce, the radio host and Fox News contributor, said Trump was "on his game" and that he is "unflappable."

It gets better.

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Wednesday morning on "Fox & Friends," Trump's morning show of choice, the hosts prepared their usual soft landing spot for their favorite viewer, defending the president against pretty much everything. Trump's reimbursement of Cohen for payments made to a pornography actress and a Playboy model to keep them quiet — something Cohen said he did at Trump's request — would be a campaign violation.

But the hosts wondered whether the money was taken from campaign funds. "I don't think there's any indication that there was," co-host Brian Kilmeade said. Fox News political analyst Greg Jarrett went further, saying, "This really isn’t a campaign violation, and it’s certainly not criminal."

Let's not even bother with the surreal notion of the nature of the claims. Sadly, they're not even surprising anymore. Instead, let's talk about Fox News' ceaseless promotion of the president, the network's justifying his every move, its downplaying — if not flatly ignoring — news that doesn't put Trump in a positive light.

How Fox News' coverage is different

Fox News has really found its groove. Oh, since the minute disgraced founder Roger Ailes put the network on the air, it's taken a conservative stance. But this is different.

Remember when George W. Bush became president and the conventional wisdom was that the network would struggle without Bill Clinton to kick around anymore? And, in fact, it did, in part because, in the world of loudmouth political-TV punditry, it's easier to criticize the side you're against than to defend the side you're on.

Eight years of Barack Obama gave Ailes and company a target again and pumped new life into the network. It was ugly, yes, but effective, if you were willing to buy into the Fox News worldview.

And then, Trump.

Now this should have been tough, right? Even the most loyal conservative would struggle to defend Trump and his casual relationship with the truth, right? How to put the best party-first spin on this guy?

Simple: by going all-in. By blindly defending the president, no matter what he says or does. Crimes aren't crimes. Racism isn't racism. And, as former Fox News contributor Rudy Giuliani put it so memorably on Sunday, truth isn't truth.

Except that it is. The problem is, so many people get their information only from Fox News. Why do the liberal elite hate Trump, a Fox News viewer might reasonably ask, when he's never done anything wrong?

A suggestion: You've probably got a remote for your TV. Use it every now and then and see what else is going on in the world. You might be surprised.

Billy Goodykoontz is a film critic and columnist at The Arizona Republic, where this column first appeared. You can follow him on Twitter: @goodyk.