Look, the great sin of Fox News is it broke the monopoly of the liberal media.

 

That's the reason why it is so wildly successful. I once said years ago that the genius of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch is to have discovered a niche audience of American broadcast news, namely, half of the American people.

 

And the other consequence is that it angers the Obama administration, which is used to, particularly after last year, wall-to-wall adulation.

 

I mean, this is almost comical if you look at the lineup. On the one hand, in the tank are NBC, ABC, CBS, NPR, PBS, CNN and MSNBC. Some of these like MSNBC are so in the tank they need scuba gear. Some of them occasionally emerge for a breath of air, but only occasionally.

 

And Fox stands up and refuses to bend a knee, and that's what they can't stand.

 

Look, CNN was patted on the head by the Obama administration as objective. CNN is an organization that a few weeks ago had a fact-checking on a "Saturday Night Live" skit that was mildly critical of Obama, but did no fact checking on wildly, grotesquely, libelous racist statements allegedly made by Rush Limbaugh which were not made by Rush Limbaugh.

 

?That's not a matter of sloppiness. That's a matter of ideology.

It is one thing for the government, the administration, to attack opponents, institutions, media. It is another to go out and try and delegitimize them and destroy them.

 

I thought it was sort of repulsive audacity on the part of the administration to go out and to declare Fox is not a real news organization, particularly when there might be big companies out there who might think twice about having an ad on Fox or other news media who might think twice about following a Fox story because it might incur the displeasure of the administration.

 

Similarly, to go after the Chamber of Commerce — you can argue against it, defend yourself on the arguments — but to try to induce defections as a way to destroy it is a new level. It's Chicago-level politics.

 

Look, there is nothing illegal about it. It is not unconstitutional. But it is outside the Democratic norms of our society, which is Madisonian.

 

Our idea is that you have — as a way to protect against tyranny in government — the growth, the interaction, and the clash of what Madison called "factions" but what we call "interests," special and otherwise. You argue, interact and you clash. But you don't undermine, delegitimize, and destroy.

 

That is the Madisonian way, and we are getting, instead, is the Chicago way.

?.It isn't a question of defending the Chamber. It is a question of being offended by a certain style of politics. And that's what I think is the problem here.

Here's a curious turn in the White House vs. Fox News fight.

On Monday, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow were among several people who attended an off-the-record briefing with Pres. Obama at the White House. Sources tell us other attendees at the two-and-a-half hour chat included Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post, Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, Gwen Ifill of PBS and Gloria Borger of CNN. Perhaps not surprisingly, no one from Fox News was in the room.

This fact quickly turned into ammunition for the folks at FOX. Last night on "Special Report," Bret Baier revealed the information pointing out that opinion hosts from one channel were being invited to a briefing with the Commander-in-Chief, all the while Fox was declared not a news organization.