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If it wasn't clear why the Republican Party selected Fox News to host the first pair of its presidential primary debates, perhaps it made a little more sense after watching the first two-hour melee Wednesday night.

The debate had all the hallmarks of the right-wing channel's programming, with moderators Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum even choosing to kick off the night by playing a video of the viral conservative anthem "Rich Men North of Richmond" and then quizzing the field about the song.

"Governor [Ron] DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now? What do you think it means?" MacCallum asked in the opening question of the evening.

That's right. The first question wasn't about former Republican President Donald Trump, indicted four times, about to face arraignment in Georgia in less than 24 hours. It wasn't about the alarming situation developing out of Russia, where Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin was aboard a plane downed near Moscow. It wasn't about the devastation from the wildfires in Maui or the existential threat posed by A.I. or the broken health care system or the national debt or the opioid crisis or any one of the number of policy issues the broad swath of the public might be concerned about.

No, the first question was about a song that has rocketed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 list as a product of the culture wars. That is how Fox News chose to start the all-important debut Republican presidential debate.

That question set the tone for the evening, which largely resembled what one might expect from the channel's dayside shows, with plenty of commercial breaks in tow. Cities were portrayed as decaying areas rife with crime and homelessness spurred by the pandemic. The notion the U.S. is facing an "invasion" on the southern border was casually floated. And so on and so forth.

No, it wasn't two hours of Sean Hannity delivering dishonest MAGA propaganda. But, broadly speaking, it also wasn't two hours of hard-hitting moderating from a pair of anchors who aggressively put the candidates in uncomfortable positions and compelled them to stick to the facts — as annoying as it might be — and answer difficult questions for the public. 

Yes, there were some important questions. But there was plenty of filler and a license for much of the night allowing the candidates to evade direct answers and sidestep the issues. It was simply what you'd expect from Fox News. And even when Baier and MacCallum confronted the candidates with some of their more strenuous questions, they themselves appeared to do so reluctantly.

Take the issue of Trump, a topic that went noticeably unaddressed for nearly the first hour of the debate. Baier and MacCallum didn't force the candidates to grapple with the disgraced former president, who holds a commanding lead over the GOP field and continues to exert a firm grip over the Republican Party, until practically the second half. Then, after only about 10 minutes of addressing the "elephant not in the room," as Baier put it, the moderators attempted to move the conversation along to another topic.

"As promised, we were going to spend a few questions on it. Let people say what they wanted to say," MacCallum said, effectively uttering the quiet part aloud. "And now we indeed are moving on." 

It displayed for the world that pressing the candidates on the ugly state of affairs inside the Republican Party was a chore that Fox News simply did not wish to perform. The manner in which the moderators treated the whole affair was reminiscent of a parent forcing their child to eat a few bites of their broccoli before letting them dig into the quart of ice cream sitting in the freezer. They knew they couldn't totally avoid the topic, so they worked to quickly check the box and move on.

Of course, it is clear why Fox News preferred to avoid the topic of Trump. He notably skipped the debate and actively tried to upstage it by participating in counter-programming with the network's fired host, Tucker Carlson.

But, perhaps more importantly, the Fox News audience still very much adores Trump. Pitting Republicans against him doesn't play well with the network's fans. Certainly confronting the ugly reality of the January 6 insurrection and the mountain of lies that the former president told about the 2020 election doesn't go over well either. 

So, instead, Fox did what it does best, moving on from Trump controversies while still making time for a "lightning round" that included a question about UFOs. Suffice to say, the network has not forgotten the motto that guided it in the wake of the 2020 election: respect the audience.

———  BELOW THE FOLD  ———

Tucker and Trump: Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson, two figures who owe a substantial amount of their success to Rupert Murdoch and Fox News, tried to outshine the network's GOP debate on Wednesday night with an interview of their own on Elon Musk's X. As you might expect, the interview gushed with election lies and outrageous conspiracy theories, including a suggestion from Carlson that Trump's opponents might try to assassinate him. In many ways, it was a re-run of Trump's standard fare of grievances without any journalistic scrutiny. The interview, clearly an attempt by the pair to try to counter-program the debate as if they were a pair of jilted exes, included swipes at Fox, with Trump claiming with a straight face that the network "isn't particularly friendly to me, frankly."

🔎 Zooming in: Like Carlson's previous attempts to overshadow his former employer, the interview failed to eclipse the debate stage in Milwaukee, despite Trump and Musk's best attempts. As Brian Stelter observed during the debate, the interview was largely "irrelevant" and "has already been forgotten."

CNN's New Chief?: The halls inside CNN are buzzing after a trio of reports indicating that the network's parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, is eyeing former New York Times and BBC chief Mark Thompson as a candidate for its next leader. Semafor's Ben Smith had the scoop, citing three sources to report that Thompson "is among a group of candidates in the mix for the job." The FT's Anna Nicolaou soon after confirmed the news. The NYT's Benjamin Mullin and John Koblin did so as well. Each of the outlets stressed that Thompson is one of several candidates up for the job. It's unclear who the others are. And it's unclear when exactly a decision or announcement might be made. A spokesperson for WBD declined to comment when I reached out on Wednesday. 

Setback for Newsmax: A Delaware judge on Wednesday expanded a defamation lawsuit brought against Newsmax by Smartmatic. The election technology company, which sued the pro-Trump outlet in 2021 over its airing of election lies, later updated its lawsuit to add 26 additional examples of alleged defamation, claiming it found the new material during the discovery process, when Newsmax turned over "hundreds of hours" of broadcasts. CNN's Marshall Cohen has more here.

🔎 Zooming in: The judge's decision to expand the case against Newsmax is the latest blow to the right-wing network, which had attempted to have the added instances of election falsehoods thrown out. But like Fox News and OAN, Newsmax faces serious legal peril over its decision to air baseless conspiracy theories to placate its Trump-supporting audience.

TikTok's Link Lockdown: TikTok has "drawn up plans to bar" users from linking to outside e-commerce websites, such as Amazon, The Info's Erin Woo and Jing Yang report. The major move comes as the short video app attempts to push people to use its own shopping service, TikTok Shop. "TikTok’s plan to bar external ecommerce links is a page out of the playbook of TikTok’s Chinese sibling app Douyin, which has become a shopping powerhouse," Woo and Yang noted. The duo also reported that the new e-commerce service "is expected to lose more than $500 million in the U.S. this year." Read the full story.

The Trajectory in Tinseltown: The writers and studios might still be far apart, but at least they're actively negotiating? That seemed to be the mood on Wednesday, one day after the WGA met with studio honchos Bob Iger, David Zaslav, Donna Langley, and Ted Sarandos to discuss a revised deal from the studios. The AMPTP, the group that represents the studios, said in a press release detailing the new offer that it is the highest wage increase for WGA wages in 35 years. But releasing the details of the proposal earned the AMPTP a swift rebuke. "This wasn’t a meeting to make a deal," the WGA declared. "This was a meeting to get us to cave, which is why, not 20 minutes after we left the meeting, the AMPTP released its summary of their proposals." CNN's Taylor Romine has more here. 

Thank you for reading! This newsletter was edited by Jon Passantino and produced with the assistance of Liam Reilly. Have feedback? Send us an email here. We will see you back in your inbox tomorrow.u