InvestigationSince the hasty withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, attacks by conservative radio hosts against Joe Biden have intensified. Across the United States, they are fueling the exasperation of their listeners. A radical tendency and sometimes conspiracy which weighs on the destiny of the Grand Old Party.
It’s a little past 6 a.m. and the early summer sun is rising over Little Rock, the capital of Arkansas. It is also the hour when the voice of Dave Elswick rises on The Answer radio. It immediately settles in the kitchens of Republicans who get up early and in the cars of those who are already on the roads.
In the studio perched in a building overlooking the city, the veteran opinion radio welcomes a young local Republican official, Ken Yang that morning. Once again, Democratic President Joe Biden, “O’Biden,” as the host calls him after his Irish roots, is on the program. Supposed drift of the country, trial of a man deemed overwhelmed by events and a puppeteer toy, heavy implication about his age, everything goes. The interventions of listeners, many of whom are regulars, reinforce a comfortable sense of self.
At the end of the line, Willy deplores the influence of “Crazy Bernie” Sanders, the independent senator who camps to the left of the Democratic camp. “I pray for Biden’s health, so that communist Kamala Harris does not become president,” adds the listener. Laurie, she, plague against “Fraudulent elections”, convinced, like many Republicans, of the illegitimacy of the tenant of the White House, then Kenny assures that “Joe Biden is controlled by George Soros, who writes the legislation [le milliardaire d’origine hongroise est une des cibles favorites des complotistes] “. In the studio, Dave Elswick, hairless head and white goatee of a veteran of microphones, sometimes nods, obviously dubious, but refrains from the slightest comment.
An indisputable ideological weight
On 101.1, at this time, we display its colors as surely as the host in his den. Hanging on the wall, the cardboard silhouette of Donald Trump watches over the backs of this wave rider, alongside those of Captain America, a legendary American football player and actor John Wayne. An Israeli flag adorns another wall of the studio. The Ten Commandments of the Republican Party of Arkansas are at your fingertips. Reminder of the centrality of faith, the sanctity of life, government reduced to its minimum, individual responsibility, the right to have a weapon, nothing is lacking.
Like Dave Elswick, dozens of radio hosts maintain a holy partisan fire in conservative strongholds like Arkansas, but also in the Blue States, the color of the Democratic camp. Their cohorts, like the powerful network of local television channels Sinclair Broadcast Group, relativize the image of media hostile to the Conservative bloc, in which the behemoth Fox News would be an exception.
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