In the hours that followed the news that President Joe Biden was bowing out of the 2024 election, a striking series of baseless conspiracy theories found a home on Fox News.

Biden’s shocking but predictable announcement, delivered in a letter posted to social media, was a massive and historic political bombshell with enormous implications for the 2024 election and the future of American politics.

The news had been a long time coming: Biden had been under pressure for weeks to drop out, including from top members of his own party behind the scenes and in public, since his disastrous debate performance against former President Donald Trump. That pressure eventually reached a breaking point, prompting Biden to drop out.

While it’s a novel political storyline — the likes of which we haven’t seen in modern times so close to the general election — Biden’s dropping out makes sense, particularly in light of his immediate endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris and the same top Democratic players immediately lining up in support of her.

The whole endeavor was so tightly coordinated that it was reminiscent of how Speaker Nancy Pelosi would whip votes among her caucus with great effect. The seamless choreography of the entire affair—and the fact that it created a challenge for Trump’s campaign, which was all too gleeful in its expectation of facing Biden in the general election—meant the news was received poorly on Fox News, the biggest media megaphone of the Trump movement.

The affair was immediately met with cries of a “coup” from Trump’s biggest boosters, cries that made their way quickly onto Fox News. In fact, this started even before Biden dropped out: Fox News host Jesse Watters spent part of his Saturday-taped interview set to air Monday night with Trump and running mate JD Vance asking about this particular conspiratorial claim. Trump demurred in his reply, but Vance suggested Biden bowing out was somehow unconstitutional.

“Look, there’s a constitutional process, the 25th amendment,” the Ohio Senator insisted. “If Joe Biden can’t run for president, he can’t serve as president. And if they want to take him down because he’s mentally incapable of serving, invoke the 25th Amendment.” He’s correct about the 25th Amendment, but there is nothing in the Constitution about how parties select their candidate. To frame Biden’s bowing out as a “coup” is flatly absurd and even more braindead than how Biden’s harshest critics see the president.

The attack on democracy angle was not just left to Jesse Watters Tonight — it has proliferated all over conservative media. It’s such a poorly thought-out line of attack that it barely merits discussion. But when it’s amplified on the top-rated cable news network without any pushback, it goes to demonstrate just how toxic the discourse has become in today’s political climate. It’s a particularly harebrained attack coming from the very people who have spent the last few months insisting Biden is too old and should drop out of the race. Now that he has, it’s an attack on Democratic voters?

Take, for example, the segment above featuring Senator Josh Hawley, who appeared on a special Sunday night episode of The Ingraham Angle and said Biden’s bowing out was an “insurrection” on the US government.

Clearly, he is trying to use this development to diminish the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters on January 6, but for a US Senator to equate a political candidate withdrawing from a race to a violent attempt to disrupt the certification of a free and fair election? Even if said with ironic detachment, it’s beyond the pale and shocking that Laura Ingraham didn’t provide pushback. Instead, she laughed with her guest about the ludicrous claim.

Our third example came Monday morning, courtesy of Fox & Friends co-host Lawrence Jones, who conspiratorially noted that Biden hadn’t been seen in public for days and claimed he DIDN’T SIGN THE LETTER that announced he was withdrawing from the campaign.

Jones compared the letter to a notorious moment in which Senator Diane Feinstein appeared unaware of a retirement letter her staffers had submitted. “I don’t think it’s too much for us to request some type of press conference or some type of video from the commander-in-chief to figure out if he’s the one who really signed this letter,” Jones said, clearly suggesting something nefarious at play.

It is noteworthy that Biden has not yet appeared in public following his announcement, but there is a trove of reporting explaining exactly why that’s the case. Biden is still recovering from Covid, and as Politico’s Jonathan Lemire noted Monday morning, his voice is still raspy and weak and not necessarily ideal for a historic address to enter the archives.

There’s also the theoretical emotion that would come from such an announcement—either anger or sadness—that could undermine the very legacy that Biden is looking to preserve. It seems likely that Biden will address the public in the next few days, which will put to rest conspiracies that he’s gravely ill, or worse, that have been proliferating in conservative social media circles.

Look, crazy people are going to say crazy things, especially in an environment like social media that quickly delivers the dopamine rush by shameless engagement farmers. Ideally, however, cable news outlets like Fox News would hold themselves to a higher standard than that. The baseless suggestions of something nefarious in the form of “analysis” or “just asking questions” undermine what little reputational authority the network has in the years since it was forced to pay nearly $800 million for airing lies about the 2020 election.

One would think they’d learn, but alas…they have not.

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