‘Propaganda’: MSNBC’s Heilemann Says Fox News Is ‘Soviet,’ ‘State’ Television

On Friday, MSNBC’s John Heilemann called Fox News “propaganda” and claimed the news outlet would not criticize Republican presidents.

The bombastic Heilemann made his remarks on MSNBC’s “Deadline.”

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Heilemann: ‘That’s what they’ve created, this hegemony on the right, in that echo system where… they attack, makeup conspiracy theories, they lie, they poison the soil and soul’

Noting some recently reported text messages reportedly sent by Fox News hosts to Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows during the January 6 Capitol riot, Heilemann said, “We saw this week … Liz Cheney reading the text messages and I know you covered this yesterday, it’s an incredible thing that you have these anchors who tried to lie their way out of their lies this week.”

“One of the biggest differences is that people who watch this network will remember quite clearly that in August, in the middle of the Afghanistan situation, there was lots of critical coverage of Joe Biden on MSNBC,” Heilemann said.

He continued, “Liberal voters, liberal viewers, Democratic viewers, yelled at all of us for being too tough on Joe Biden.”

Then he accused conservatives’ supposed “echo system” in which he believes they won’t criticize Republican presidents.

“It is the case that you would never see that when there is a Republican president,” Heilemann said. “That’s what they’ve created, this hegemony on the right, in that echo system where they, Democrats in office, they attack, makeup conspiracy theories, they lie, they poison the soil and soul … but when a Republican is in office, they tow the party line.”

A quick Google search reveals Fox published multiple articles heavily criticizing President Trump for his announcement to withdraw from Syria, as just one example.

Heilemann added, “That is one of the great differences is that you might claim that there’s some ideological tilt, at CNN or MSNBC, but it doesn’t prevent MSNBC or CNN from criticizing Democratic presidents whether it’s Joe Biden, whether it was Barack Obama, whether it was Bill Clinton we have seen it over and over again.”

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Heilemann: Fox News is ‘state television’

Heilemann went on, “That’s one of the great asymmetries and why the Fox News and all of its spawn, have so much power in the Republican world and conservative world is that they are not just a conservative network, they are a propaganda network.”

“They are state television,” Heilemann accused. “They are nothing different than what the old Soviet, what Pravda and state television was in the Soviet Union.”

It’s not the first time Heilemann has gone on such a rant. Just last week, Heilemann claimed there were “30 million people who are ready to take up arms” against Joe Biden:

“The strength of that Gellman piece is it lays out this extraordinary reality that there is this research that shows something like 8% and maybe as many as 12% that say Joe Biden was illegitimate and violence is an appropriate tool to removing him and restoring Donald Trump.”

“That’s between 20 and 30 million people,” Heilemann said. “That’s a mass movement in America in favor of political violence, which is a new thing. We’ve been political violence before, lynching many things over the course of time that African-Americans have suffered, but this is 30 million people right now who are ready to take up arms.”