Public Health Policy Reviews 40:
VALKYRIES – White Women, Public Health, and Political Policy in the TRUMP Era 1 – “I LOVE this So Much!”
Former lead Fox News Anchor and current right-wing propagandist Megyn Kelly. Image courtesy: Wikipedia Commons.
During the height of the inflation crisis inflicted upon American workers amid the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, Fox News host Emily Compagno cheered for the callous mass firing of nine hundred employees over social media.
Ms. Compagno made the shocking remarks on Fox News’ Outnumbered show on Wednesday, December 8th, 2021. Compagno’s enthusiasm for the reptilian move by controversial Better.com CEO Vishal Garg on December 1st even left the other stridently pro-business hosts on Fox News in disbelief, underlining the severity of the situation. Better.com is an online mortgage lending company.
On the surface, it might seem odd that Compagno would celebrate Vishal Garg. He is of East-Indian descent and has a reputation for erratic behavior. Mr. Garg once threatened to staple a former business partner to a wall and burn him alive.
In addition, Vishal Garg fired close to one thousand people four (4) weeks before Christmas when they should have been celebrating with their families.
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Emily Compagno. Image courtesy of Twitter.
As a result, hundreds of former Better.com employees had to look for employment during the holiday season.
The volatile economic ravages inflicted upon US workers by the Omicron version of the COVID-19 virus made the situation more difficult, underscoring the human cost of such callous actions. As Brian Kilmeade, Lisa “Kennedy” Montgomery, and Kayleigh McEnany – Ms. Compagno’s shocked co-hosts on Outnumbered – noted Mr. Garg’s sketchy history, she doubled down on her praise for the firings of those she called “a bunch of ‘snowflakes.’”
“I loved this! I love this so much,” Compagno proudly declared. She added that the employees deserved to be fired because of low productivity, citing her experience as a federal attorney tasked with “terminating individuals.”
“Sorry guys, bye! For all of them, they are snowflakes. They’re probably millennials and [Generation Z]. They need to learn a work ethic!”
Emily Compagno’s naked display of media devotion to a “slash and burn” international capitalist who dumped nine hundred American workers during the holiday season even upset faithful Fox News viewers.
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“Stock-Exchange.” Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay.
The people shocked at Emily Compagno’s “survival of the fittest” capitalist fervor did not pay close attention to the opinion pundits on Fox News during the past quarter of a century.
Before the COVID-19 public health emergency and inflationary crisis caused so much economic devastation to the lives of average Americans in 2020 and 2021, Ms. Compagno’s bluster on Fox News would not have been noteworthy. Fox News commentators like Compagno are typically keen to direct verbal venom at businessmen and politicians who dare to disparage White American workers – especially if the officials are ethnic minorities.
The news reporters, video anchors, opinion guests, and corporate executives at Fox News are usually the trailblazing grandmasters of xenophobic race-baiting directed at “swarthy” individuals of foreign descent like Vishal Garg. Fox News has used the social “divide and conquer” rhetorical strategy to dominate the basic cable news ratings for over twenty-five years.
But the coronavirus pandemic caused so much economic devastation to the lives of average Americans that Emily Compagno’s bluster on Fox News became national news.
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Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson
Megyn Kelly on her Sirius XM media show, “The Megyn Kelly Show.” Image courtesy: YouTube @MegynKelly.
Whether the issues are race relations, multiculturalism, female modernity, or modern business, the women at Fox News are dependable for upholding the “company line” and the traditions of the established social order.
Megyn Kelly, the most popular female news anchor on television before she left Fox News for NBC in 2017, was a prototype of the type of female news anchors and reporters that the cable news station used to gain influence over America in the early 2000s. Mrs. Kelly is an emeritus of a long procession of young and often blonde female commentators Fox News places upon the proverbial pedestal at the news network. The strategy was designed and implemented by former Fox News CEO and Chairman Roger Ailes (1940–1917).
Mr. Ailes, a loyal supporter of the Trump campaign in 2015 & 2016, was forced out of Fox News in July 2016. His departure came after a scandal involving allegations of sexual harassment from former Fox News anchorwoman Gretchen Carlson.
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Naomi Watts (left) and Gretchen Carlson (right) in 2019. Image: Wikipedia Commons.
Gretchen Carlson left Fox News in June of 2016.
Mrs. Carlson subsequently filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes and the Fox News network. Mrs. Carlson settled the lawsuit with 21st Century Fox Corporation (Fox News’s parent corporation) for $20 million in September 2016.
Megyn Kelly has since confirmed that she was also a victim of sexual harassment from Mr. Ailes during her tenure at Fox News. Despite the success of the neo-feminist crusades that Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson engaged in, they have both continued their promotion of Donald Trump’s political policies and right-wing political conspiracies in the media.
The corporate US national media is one of the major institutions that help American citizens determine the primary social rules, cultural belief systems, and historical traditions of the United States.
Christian nuclear family units help teach morals, establish individual habits, and cultivate personal identities. However, formal institutions like the federal courts and informal organizations like multi-national media companies impose official laws and unofficial rules in American society and Western culture.
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Lionsgate Pictures’ official theatrical release poster for “Bombshell,” a 2019 movie about the fight of female news anchors against a culture of sexual harassment at cable news giant Fox News. Poster image courtesy of Lionsgate Pictures.
Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson are devoted Christians (Megyn Kelly is Catholic) and unwavering capitalists.
The most popular television news reporters, like Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, often belong to the wealthy upper class of US society. Along with former President Trump, Mrs. Kelly and Mrs. Carlson are also social elitists who are “true believers” in the existence of the American social order and dominance of US international imperialism.
Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson are part of the answers to the question of Why? Why do so many White women seem eager to vote for reactionary politicians like Donald Trump and support policies that restrict their freedoms and take away their civil rights?
When we first began Public Health Policy Reviews on April 17th, we said the percentage of White women voters supporting either former President Trump or current President Joseph R. Biden in November would decide the 2024 American presidential election between the two candidates.
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Justice Clarence Thomas administered the oath of office to Barrett on October 26, 2020, at the White House alongside President Donald Trump. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Public Health Policy Reviews number one also featured an overview of the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling that overturned fifty years of legal precedent with the federal repeal of Roe v. Wade [410 US 113 (1973)].
Former President Donald Trump’s wildly successful political tactic of appointing conservative White women to prominent political, bureaucratic, and judicial positions of power was the focus of Public Health Policy Reviews number two. Choosing Judge Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court vacancy left by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (1933-2020) heralded the death knell of Roe v. Wade.
The recent Supreme Court ruling in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, overturning forty years of administrative law precedent that allowed the federal government to regulate states and private businesses, will allow Trump and his federal judges to restrict American civil rights and personal liberties further if he is reelected in November.
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The official United States Supreme Court portrait of Amy Coney Barrett. Image courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
Today, the Supreme Court issued another historic decision in Donald Trump’s favor.
The Court justices decided that former presidents have absolute immunity from prosecution for their official acts but no immunity for unofficial acts. However, rather than make an official ruling, they sent the case back to the lower federal court to determine how to apply the decision to Mr. Trump’s case.
The Supreme Court's delaying tactic ensures that the former president will not face an official criminal proceeding on the gravely serious charges he plotted to overturn his 2020 presidential election loss. Add in President Joe Biden’s advancing physical disintegration and horrendous performance in the first 2024 Presidential debate, and it is clear America is at a dire point in its 246-year history.
Over the next two weeks, Public Health Policy Reviews will analyze in detail how the survival of American democracy is definitely in the hands of White female voters for the upcoming 2024 presidential election.
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So theoretically, Donald Trump could have staged an insurrection as an official act of his presidency because he believed the election was stolen and therefore was protecting the so-called "legitimacy" and integrity of the office of president.
We know Joe Biden won't take any official acts to stop Trump's threat to the office.
But we know who will institute radical changes to government if he gets in office.
This decision is a threat to our entire country. There's nothing to stop ANYONE - not just Trump - from committing mass criminality while in office of the president, and just remaining in office to avoid prosecution.
I just can't believe what this Court has done today.