Conservative Alternative Media Generally Unmoved by Trump’s Election Plight
Unconcerned by Trump’s demise, or just focussed on the UK?
By Richard Thomas
Our previous blog post covered the more immediate commentary on US election night from the UK’s alternative media sites, but of course, the result and the aftermath have become a very movable feast. Top Republican in Congress, Senator Mitch McConnell, might feel that Donald Trump is “100 percent within his rights” to not concede defeat, but liberal commentators have consistently expressed outrage ever since the 7th November, when most TV stations felt sufficiently confident to officially usher in a new President.
As media watchers, we understand the ideological polarisation within media and politics -in the US and increasingly in the UK too - where right will favour right and left will favour left. But our ongoing analysis indicates that such simple binary assumptions cannot be taken for granted.
Despite an obvious opportunity to delight in what might be viewed as a general crisis for right-wing politics, left-wing outlets such as Evolve Politics, and Another Angry Voice did not rise to the bait, and largely left commentary on the US elections to US media. Novara Media did announce that “Trump has been dumped” , but this was an exception to a general rule of non-involvement, unsurprising given their fairly consistent and dedicated focus on UK politics. When they did venture stateside, the UK’s left-wing alternative media sites also viewed US election events through a local prism. The Skwawkbox, for example, reported that, “a senior Survation pollster has compared Keir Starmer’s allies and the rest of the Labour right to Donald Trump for their determination to deny that their push for a new Brexit referendum caused Labour’s general election defeat in 2019”.
Perhaps what is altogether more interesting is how the UK’s conservative alternative-media responded to the ousting of a politician who, at first ideological glance at least, might be thinking the same things and promoting the same sorts of policies. Did they rally to his aid post-election, or did they rather break ideological ranks and join in the frenzied schadenfreude displayed by the left sided mainstream media? The answer, with one notable exception, is that they did neither, really.
Westmonster for example, remain firmly committed to a news agenda that stays close to their core issue Brexit, and the various events and discussion surrounding it. On November 11th, site editor Michael Heaver produced a video round up of Trump’s statements of denial, and generally adopts a neutral news reporting style. He makes the point that the senior members of the GOP are supporting Trump’s protests and includes some video clips of people like Mitch McConnell repeating their concerns about the voting process. But while Heaver’s style is breathless and urgent, there appears to be no real editorialising to suggest that Westmonster are either supporting the beleaguered President or criticising him.
Given their global brand and a website that offers different regional options, despite the events in the US, Breitbart’s London section maintains its regular focus on news with particular emphases on Brexit and issues associated with immigration. When it does draw attention to the US election, it is through the prism of Brexit as it suggests an inauspicious start to life at the top for Joe Biden in the story “Bad Start: Anti-Brexit Biden Declines Comment to British Media – ‘The BBC? I’m Irish’”. But while the president elect might prove an obstacle for “leavers”, the current president is only mentioned in passing.
Breitbart’s US section of course, does provide the wall-to-wall coverage of the election and its aftermath that one might expect. But that too, in general, is not as obviously partisan as one might have anticipated, given Breitbart’s clear right-sided policy agenda. For example, in a short piece entitled “Obama: Trump’s Claims of Widespread Fraud Another Step in ‘Delegitimizing’ Democracy”, the reporting is characteristically factual, and avoids editorialising, as it instead simply reproduces the former president’s words in the form of some extended direct quotes without adding any evaluative comments.
Similarly, in another story entitled “Maxine Waters: Biden Win Is the‘Dawn of a New Progressive America’”, once again Breitbart stick to the facts, and essentially allow the words of the House Financial Services chairwoman – and Democrat politician - Rep. Maxine Waters drive the story rather any of their own supplementary commentary. If there are any supportive messages for Donald Trump, it seems they might be subliminal, if, indeed, they are present at all.
Another election story elicited a much more passionate response, but even then, the strong feeling was not necessarily evoked by the president and his reluctance to leave the White House, but rather one journalist’s reporting of it. In his story “CNN’s Christiane Amanpour Likens Trump’s Tenure to Nazi Germany”, Joshua Klein adopts a furious tone and strongly castigates news anchor Amanpour’s controversial comparing of Trump’s regime with the Nazis. Her comments, suggests Klein, “not only grossly misinform but drastically belittle the horrors of the past”. For many of course, such tasteless and crass commentary is fully deserving of stinging rebuke. But once again, and in contrast to the vast majority of his tenure as president, Donald Trump is largely tangential to the main story.
Guido Fawkes is generally understood to be right-leaning, but generally aims its criticism across party/ideological lines. In a post “Boris calls Biden Relationship ‘refreshing’”, ‘Guido’ manages to implicitly skewer both UK prime minister Boris Johnson and President Trump as it notes that at PMQs on the 11th November, Johnson “took the opportunity to make a less-than-subtle dig at President Trump” when he spoke about the need to “stick up” for – among other things - free trade, NATO and the “fight against climate change”. The fact that this discussion was “refreshing” suggests that some of the conversations with President Trump might not have been.
Indeed, in general, Guido’s coverage is flavoured more by the Biden victory rather than the Trump defeat. They feature a video of David Cameron who suggests that Boris and Biden will get on very well, and that the former PM was “undermining any punditry that claimed a Biden residence would weaken the special relationship”. Furthermore, in “Boris speaks to Biden”, Guido reports that “Boris received the honour of President-Elect Biden’s first phone call” and that “they nattered for 20-25 minutes… during which the PM “warmly congratulated” the winning candidate.
Indeed, even the wider political point as it relates to UK politics is made using a Biden example rather than a Trump one. In the story “Voters see Biden as Disagreeing with Left”, Guido suggests that in his bid to take the Labour Party to the next level, Kier Starmer should “ignore the noisy TrotsApp faction’s calls for reconciliation”, and note that “Biden won by rejecting the socialists…”.
Up to this point then, the lack of coverage for President Trump and his post-ballot protestations might indicate that he is already becoming yesterday’s news. The king is dead and all that.
But not so fast. Conservative Women seem singular in their close following of the election aftermath, and their willingness to make journalistic interventions into the debates as to whether claims of foul play in the election process might have some substance or not. Their piece “US election: Maybe it was completely fair – and pigs might fly” makes their position clear enough. Indeed, they reflect that an election “fix” is inevitable, given “how all and sundry have spent the last four years endlessly slandering the American president, desperately devising ways to cut short his first term in office and insulting all his supporters as moronic rednecks”. Further articles entitled “You voted yes, Trump is right to fight on!”, “They’re censoring Trump. You’ll be next”, “Pollsters produce the results their paymasters want” and “Mark Steyn on electoral grand larceny” further underpin their strong belief that the President was indeed robbed after all. It’s all perhaps unsurprising given Conservative Woman’s “unashamedly social conservative” approach to fight “Left-liberal thinking”.
More widely, we conclude that as with many of the other strands within our research, findings suggest a lack of homogeneity within the sites we are examining. Conservative Woman aside, they have been unconcerned, or fairly ambivalent about the US election and the ongoing contesting of the result. This reinforces the view that the UK’s alternative media really are all about UK politics.
