The following is a fictitious interview with a fictitious cable news network. Any resemblance to media entities, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
America-First News Host: “Okay, we’re back. Jeremy Alexander is not a professional writer or blogger. In fact, he works at an oil refinery in his home town of Casper, Wyoming. But an essay he penned about his switch from the Fox News Channel to America-First News after the election was published by popular conservative website The Red Zone, where it got over a million page-views and upwards of a thousand comments.
Jeremy, thanks for coming on.”
Jeremy Alexander: “Thanks for having me.”
AFNH: “They tell me you’re a bit nervous about your first appearance on a cable news program.”
JA: “Well, nobody told me I’d be following Diamond and Silk.”
AFNH: (Laughs) “I’m sure you’ll do just fine. For viewers who have not read your essay, tell us about your journey from Fox to America-First.”
JA: “I’d heard of you guys, but for me to leave Fox for America-First would have been like trading, I don’t know, a Dodge Challenger for a pre-owned Prius.”
AFNH: (Laughs) “Ouch!”
JA: “I mean, I was a huge Fox guy, from the beginning. Bill O’Reilly? I loved Bill O’ Reilly. I’ve got all his books. I went to his No Spin Tour shows when he came through town. I’ve actually got Bill O’Reilly’s autograph on the flyleaf of Who’s Looking Out for You?
Hannity too. I remember having to tell a girlfriend in the nineties that if it came down to Hannity or her, I’d drop Hannity.”
AFNH: “Wow. So what happened?”
JA: “You mean about Hannity and my girlfriend?”
AFNH: “No, about your departure from Fox.”
JA: “Election night happened. I should mention that my family is split down the middle in terms of politics—especially about President Trump. Half of us loathe Trump, the other half loves him. We stopped sharing Thanksgiving after 2016. Some of us joked that it was COVID’s silver lining.
Anyway, I was with some members of the conservative side of the family on election night, and we’re all watching FNC, and it was like, I don’t know, the vibe was strange. It seemed like the wheels were coming off even though it looked like Trump was winning. So unexplainable. And the hosts, Martha McCallum, Bret Bair, Chris Wallace, were like, giddy or something. Terrible things were happening, and it was like they were covering the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade.”
AFNH: “What was your feeling when Fox called Arizona for Biden?”
JA: “It felt like a kick in the gut. All of us, we just looked at each other. Then they didn’t call Ohio or Florida for President Trump, and it’s like, what the hell?
Then they brought that guy up from the basement, Mishkin, and I remember Martha asking why they weren’t calling Florida, and he pretty much just sat there grinning. Starting on the morning of November 4th, I’ve been watching America-First News ever since.”
AFNH: “We appreciate that. So, what are your feelings now about Arizona, and the other battleground states? Are you convinced they were stolen by the Democrats?”
JA: “I’m not supposed to talk about that.”
AFNH: “Okay. (Pause) Share with us your feelings about the time since the election, the events surrounding the electoral vote certification and the storming of the capital.”
JA: “My feeling is that it is bad. It’s a bad ending. I don’t care what anybody says, it ended badly.”
AFNH: “I assume by ‘it’ you’re talking about the Trump presidency.”
JA: “Yes, through absolutely no fault of his own.”
AFNH: “So, where do we go from here?”
JA: “I don’t know. I mean, I know what has to be done. We have to fight on. I may try my hand at more blogging. I think that Joe Biden and the Democrats are going to be terrible for this country. But for the past five years I’ve been defending Trump, supporting him, debunking his enemies, trying to get him reelected. It was like having a real warrior in the White House, you know, obliterating ISIS, getting rid of MS-13, getting our energy sector back, our jobs back. Putting the world on notice that America was back. He truly loves America.
With him gone, there’s going to be a void there.”
AFNH: “In your Red Zone essay, you talk about ‘fun.’ Tell us more about that.”
JA: “Yeah, well, (Smiles) the thing is, Trump was a fun president. Kind of like having a professional wrestler in the Oval Office, you know, like he’s gonna throw Adam Schiff against the turnbuckle, or take a folding chair to Jerry Nadler.
Not in the literal sense, of course.
You’ve seen him dance to Y.M.C.A.?”
AFNH: (Smiling) “Yes.”
JA: “He was a fun president. We’ve lost that.
And we’ve lost the best president we’ve had since Ronald Reagan.”
AFNH: “Let’s see, you’re fifty-one years old, born in 1970, so you would have been ten years old when Reagan was elected.”
JA: “Yeah, (Smiles) all I can say about that is that my parents raised me right. My first vote was for George Bush Sr.”
AFNH: “Probably a dumb question: Will you vote for Donald Trump if he runs in 2024?”
JA: “Yes, absolutely, no question. But it seems like a long time until then, like forever the way I’m feeling right now. I don’t know if he’ll run again. If I search my soul, I kind of doubt it.”
AFNH: “Any final thoughts? Anything you’d like to say to your Trump-supporting fellow Americans tonight?”
JA: (Pause) “I think we have to start looking for some new heroes. I think we have to find some new conservative warriors, who believe in America, and will fight for her.”
AFNH: “Anybody on your radar, anybody you’d care to mention?”
JA: “Yeah, well no. There is, but I don’t want to say just yet. As I wrote in my essay, I’m still processing all this.”
AFNH: “Now that you’re onboard with America-First News, is there anything you think we could do better in your opinion?”
JA: “Well, it would be good if you could get some bigger-name guests, like Newt Gingrich, or Donald Trump Jr.”
AFNH: “Okay, Jeremy, listen, congratulations on the essay, stay the course, and thanks for coming on.”
JA: “Thanks for having me on…”
Mark Ellis is Associate Editor at the Northwest Connection, Portland, Oregon’s only conservative web/print publication. He is the author of A Death on the Horizon, a finalist in the 14th annual National Indie Excellence Awards in the category of General Fiction. Follow Mark, who has not yet been banned from Twitter.
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