President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race on Sunday came as a relief to many Democrats but sent Fox News into a frenzy of rage and anxiety. Almost immediately after Biden's announcement, the network's anchors and commentators lined up to call the president's withdrawal from his re-election campaign a threat to democracy — and Vice President Kamala Harris, his likely replacement, a radical out-of-touch liberal with a strange laugh.
"The entire Biden presidency has been a lie," Fox News personality Jesse Watters said, claiming it was now "ending in disgrace."
Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner, argued that the Democratic National Committee was handpicking Harris over the wishes of voters, claiming that "if anybody was afraid that democracy would be upended, we are watching it today."
"Before we preach to anybody else about how democracy in a republic should go, we got to get our straight and the timber crossed," she continued. "All they wanted to talk about leading up from the Biden campaign. Was the threat from Trump for democracy? No, they’re the threat. Look at today. This takes the power out of the hands of the voters."
The reaction is not entirely surprising, since former President Donald Trump's campaign had reportedly seen Biden as a weaker candidate and hoped that he would stay in the race, threatening legal action if he gave way to Harris or another Democratic nominee.
The 2020 Democratic primaries, like most other nominating processes for an incumbent president throughout U.S. history (including that of Donald Trump in 2020), were largely seen as a fait accompli for Biden, with no serious challenges daring to enter the fray. After a disastrous debate performance against Trump and a series of leaks about his mental and physical fitness that turned into a downpour, polls showed Biden losing support among both Democratic voters and the American electorate as a whole, not just party elites.
This didn't stop other Fox News contributors, like former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. from comparing Biden's withdrawal to the Watergate scandal. “For the Democrats to say democracy is on the ballot, that’s hypocrisy now,” he said.
Meanwhile, former Trump senior advisor Stephen Miller's voice cracked as he railed against the Democratic Party for acting like on "oligarchy" and wasting the GOP's money.
"The Republican Party spent tens of millions of dollars running against Joe Biden. Now they've just woke up one morning and said never mind, we're cancelling the entire primary, we're getting rid of our candidate and we're pretending the election has never even happened," he complained, echoing Trump's demands that his campaign be reimbursed for the money it spent running ads against a candidate who will not be on the ballot in November.
Some Fox talking heads pivoted to attacking Harris, who Biden endorsed to succeed him. Sean Hannity, after declaring that "democracy is dead in the Democratic Party" and calling on Biden to resign and "take his family of grifters back to Delaware," inveighed against Harris as a "radical" on issues such as healthcare, the environment and plastic straws.
"I love my plastic straws, I hate those paper straws," Hannity protested. He then played a video compilation of Harris having fun, suggesting that her laugh was off-putting to voters.
Former Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway agreed. "She does not speak well. She does not work hard. She should not be the standard-bearer for the party," she told him.
George Conway, her husband and frequent Trump critic, responded that same evening. "Not everyone can express themselves as eloquently and with such exquisite turns of phrase as Donald J. Trump," he said in a post, presumably with a tone of sarcasm.
