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It was the year of the televised remake: reboots of "Charmed" and "Magnum PI", reminders of "Murphy Brown" and "Roseanne". So maybe it should not be surprising to see Fox News redo a 2014 hit: "Terror at the Border", with an important role for a certain Donald J. Trump.
For viewers who have forgotten the original, here is a brief recap. In the fall of 2014, in the run-up to the mid-term, Fox and other conservative media reacted excessively to the "border crisis" and ISIS – two issues Republicans used to suggest Obama administration failed to protect America from hordes.
In the run-up to the elections, the two stories were merged into one Frankenfear. According to Judicial Watch, a far-right company, terrorist organizations were ready to sneak into the United States on the Mexican border. California Republican Duncan Hunter told Greta Van Susteren of Fox Channel that 10 ISIS members were apprehended at the border crossing.
Scott Brown, Senate candidate for New Hampshire, was even part of the African Ebola a trio of fear: terrorists infected with the Ebola virus could cross the border to trigger an epidemic.
One story after another has been debunked. But they still spread to the base, including the host of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice," Donald Trump. "At least 10 ISIS were intercepted while crossing the Mexican border," he tweeted on October 8th, amplifying Mr. Hunter's false claim.
In November, the Republicans took control of the Senate and won 13 seats in the House. And then, for some strange reason, the sirens on the Mexican ISIS Ebola virus have subsided.
The experience seemed to leave an impression on Mr Trump, the future presidential candidate. In Joshua Green's book "Devil's Bargain", political advisor Sam Nunberg said that Mr. Trump had used Twitter in 2013 and 2014 as a "focus group". He tweeted about the controversies that excited Fox's audience. Since 2011, he was black commentator weekly for "Fox & Friends" – and discovered that he was getting the most retweets when he was talking about immigration. And his tweet of October is over with what would become a chorus of his campaign: "Build a Wall!"
Flash forward to 2018. A mid-term election is approaching. And surprise: immigration and fear are again in strong rotation.
In August, after an undocumented immigrant was charged with the murder of a young woman in Iowa, Newt Gingrich said, "If Mollie Tibbetts is a well-known name by October, Democrats will have big problems."
Fox seized in the Tibbetts case; President Trump too citing her in a video from the rose garden who called for a wall and blasted Democrats. But the story fades after Mrs. Tibbetts' father has excoriated politicians for taking advantage of his death to argue "views that she believed were deeply racist."
[[[[Read about caravan of migrants and why President Trump is concerned about it.]
In October, Mr. Gingrich was singing a new song. The elections, he told Sean Hannity, would focus on "Kavanaugh" – the recent and bitter confirmation of the Supreme Court – "and the caravan," a group of thousands of Honduran refugees traveling across Mexico, who have become the biggest stars of Fox.
Monday morning, "Fox & Friends" – the morning companion closest to the president – has heightened the fear of the caravan. Pete Hegseth, co-host of "Fox & Friends Weekend," said that "they surprised more than 100 ISIS fighters in Guatemala trying to use this caravan." The show broadcast it in split screen with a video of migrants flooding a highway. if you head straight to the Fox TV lounges.
(Mr. Hegseth seemed to be misinterpreting a different comment by the President of Guatemala about past terrorist apprehensions – a commentary also presented by Judicial Watch and other conservative media.)
President Trump, who was already tweeting excitedly about the caravan and was talking about it in his rallies, seemed to take this into account in his tweet live on morning television. "Criminals and strangers from the Middle East" are in the caravan, he added, adding in a follow-up tweet: "Blame the Democrats".
It was practically a one-off remake. Has anything changed between 2014 and 2018? You could argue that in 2014, Fox News was at least willing to push back more; Ms. Van Susteren insisted on Mr. Hunter for "any information or evidence" indicating that ISIS was crossing the border. (He said, "I asked the border patrol," the Department of Homeland Security quickly dismissed the complaint.)
This time – although Mr. Hegseth added that the ISIS story he had just released "was not verified" – he was a co-host of "Fox & Friends" speaking in another edition of "Fox & Friends ", whose programs have already been broadcast. is equivalent to a Republican announcement midway through three hours. (A caption on the Florida debate for the governor's campaign this morning identified Democratic candidate Andrew Gillum as a "socialist of the Sunshine State.")
The other difference: in 2018, Donald Trump is the president. And that means when he hops on Twitter and makes disturbing hints about malicious threats slipping into the border, the major news agencies that are not "Fox & Friends," including CNN and the New York Times feel compelled to report it.
They can responsibly note that their allegations are "without proof". And that can make the difference for an attentive audience. But there are also casual news consumers who simply hear "caravan", "border" and "terrorism" and dispel a vague sense of imminent danger. And if politicians are interested in moving the story forward and audiences like Fox are eager to hear it, nothing stops the caravan from fear of walking again and again.
There is a reason, after all, television is full of remakes. You rarely have the chance to fall back on a formula that worked before.
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