Tthe episode is called “America Decides”. But fans of HBO’s widely-watched satire Succession won’t have been surprised to see the sons of the eminently unsavory Roy dynasty show little respect for who Americans elect as president when it clashes with the financial and political interests of the family
It’s also no secret that Succession’s story of a domineering father and the grisly rivalries of his offspring draws heavily on Rupert Murdoch’s family, his media empire and his ugliest creation, Fox News.
In Succession, Fox News surrogate ATN declares the likely loser, Republican neo-fascist Jeryd Mencken, as the winner of a presidential election in an attempt to overturn the vote. Parts of the story reflect the turmoil of various US elections, from what many consider George W Bush’s theft of the Florida ballot in 2000 to Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat two decades later . But Succession deviates from the story at a crucial moment.
The show’s writers were clearly inspired by Fox News’ late-night adventures in what one ATN executive calls its “unique perspective” on the news, particularly Tucker Carlson’s recently abandoned campaign to paint the U.S. election. 2020 as rigged against Trump.
But what if Fox News starts taking inspiration from Succession? Could the news outlet that cared so little about the truth that it was forced to pay $787.5 million over false allegations of rigged voting machines go so far as to declare Trump the winner of this year’s election coming, even if he loses, just to keep his viewers happy? ? And if he did, what would be the consequences?
Succession has yet to reveal whether ATN and Mencken get their hit. But Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, is skeptical that the reality is so straightforward.
“I can believe that Fox would cheat. I can believe that Fox would try to call an election or insist that these four, five, six states are too close to call, and that means the election is up when others say it is they’re over. I can see all kinds of things like that. I just don’t think it’s going to produce a crisis as bad as [Succession] is trying to suggest, because we’re on Fox. We know what they are doing,” he said.
“And while there’s a small chance that some weird scenario could play out because we’ve had weird scenarios play out before, it’s hard to create a legitimacy crisis unless there are factors other than Fox.”
In Succession, we see Mencken facing defeat, but not accepting it.
“If I lose, I want it to be properly characterized as a big win,” he tells Roman Roy, the ruthless and sarcastic CEO of ATN’s parent company. “I want to be the president.”
The tone of ATN’s coverage is already set. In an echo of the revelations about Fox News, ATN’s election night personality Tom Wambsgans is worried about losing viewers to other right-wing stations. Try to report anything that calls into question the legitimacy of the votes of Mencken’s Democratic opponent, Daniel Jimenez.
“Did you see the viral of the woman who voted 40 times for Jimenez with her dead mother’s name?” Wambsgans asks the station’s news manager.
The manager says the woman making the claim is “not a good person.”
Fox News infuriated Trump by going out on a limb and calling Arizona for Joe Biden on 2020 election night in front of other news organizations. Photograph: Jeffrey Isaac Greenberg 3+/Alamy
“You’re not a doctor,” Wambsgans replies. “Until you qualify, why don’t you put it on the air?”
Soon after, a report comes in of a fire at a vote counting center in a heavily Democratic part of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The 100,000 destroyed ballots seem almost certain to decide the election.
Roman Roy characterizes the fire as an “antifa firebomb,” although he favors Mencken. On the air, ATN’s version of Tucker Carlson pushes that line.
“Maybe some of the crazies felt they were underperforming and decided to stop the count and destroy the evidence,” he says.
Roman Roy seizes the opportunity to declare Wisconsin for Mencken in a move that swings the entire election in his favor.
“We’re not waiting for burnt votes, so say so,” Roy asks ATN editors.
Mencken gives a victory speech in which he declares that his victory has been called “by an authority of known integrity” and that, indeed, there is no need to wait for the official results.
There is reason to doubt that this move would succeed in reality. As cumbersome and compromised as the US electoral machinery can be at times, it can also prove resilient.
Trump’s repeated efforts to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state, governor and other officials to “find” the extra votes to overturn Biden’s 2020 victory have been met with a wall of denial, despite support from Fox News. The courts wouldn’t play ball either. The system remained, and the former president could go to prison for his efforts, along with some of his cronies.
In fact, some key events in 2020 occurred in a mirror image of the Succession scenario in which ATN claims Wisconsin for Mencken.
The Fox News data team played it straight in 2020 and infuriated Trump by going out on a limb and calling Arizona for Joe Biden on election night before other news organizations. It turned out to be the right call, even if it was based on unreliable exit polls, and the result turned out to be much closer than they suggested.
But Succession captured a fallout from Fox News’ call.
Once Fox gave Arizona to Biden, the numbers meant the network couldn’t call another state for him without also declaring that he had therefore won the presidency and, more importantly for Fox viewers News, which Trump had lost. When the Fox News team in Washington was ready to call Nevada for Biden, some anchors blocked it, and the network withheld a result until all other networks had declared it more than 14 hours later.
In Succession, Roman Roy understands that with Wisconsin a Mencken victory, he can use the result of one of the two remaining states in play to declare the Republican outright victory even if the votes aren’t actually there.
This scenario requires the election to come down to a single state, a rare occurrence. Even if Fox News had called Arizona for Trump in 2020, he still would have had to take two or three of the other closely run states to win the electoral college.
Craig Harrington says Fox News was instrumental in determining the outcome of the 2000 presidential election. Photo: Fox News
But Craig Harrington, director of research at Media Matters for America, which tracks misinformation in conservative media, said the election came down to a single state two decades ago in Florida and Fox News was instrumental in determining the result.
“The succession was uncomfortable to watch because we’ve already lived a lifetime in a world where Fox News’ decision to pre-emptively call an election on behalf of its political ally possibly changed the course of history. Then, “this could happen again?” the question is instead of “Could this happen?” He said.
Harrington sees the fictitious burning of the polls in Wisconsin based on the elimination of thousands of votes in Florida in 2000 that delivered the state and the presidency to George W Bush.
In the evening, television networks, including Fox, initially called Florida for Al Gore. But then the Bush team started calling. As it happened, the head of Fox News’ election night decision desk was George W Bush’s cousin, John Ellis.
Soon after, George W and his brother, Jeb, who was the governor of Florida, telephoned Ellis to tell him that the election was much closer than the polls said and to urge him to rescind the declaration by Gore. Ellis obliged. Then Fox News called out the state for Bush. The other networks quickly followed. Gore called Bush to back down.
Fox News was wrong. The vote was still too close to call and the networks reversed themselves a couple of hours later. Gore withdrew his concession. But then a large number of Americans thought that Bush had won the presidency, and that had consequences.
Hundreds of Republican Party staffers and lawyers led what became known as the Brooks Brothers Riot, named after a dress shop, which shut down vote counting and froze the bid for victory Bush until the US Supreme Court handed him the keys to the White. house
“Because of Fox News’ decision to make the call when they didn’t have the data to back it up, it was reported to the entire nation that George W Bush had won the presidency,” Harrington said. “He began to be the president-in-waiting. The government began the transition. He set a tone in public that changed the course of history.”
Sabato sees 2000 as a “terrible breakdown of the system” but believes it is unlikely to happen again.
Harrington agrees and said that without other factors at play, Fox News could only go so far in trying to push any particular candidate into the White House.
“In order to really manipulate an outcome, you have to have processes or individuals in place to intentionally prohibit operations and slow things down,” he said.
In the Succession story, Harrington said it’s highly likely that the ATN guns would have been inflated in real life by Milwaukee election officials finding a way to fix the problem of burned ballots. But he added that it could be different if the Trump camp had succeeded in its attempt to place supporters in strategic roles.
“We saw this effort in 2022 to get election naysayers elected to key positions in local government, state government and county governments across the country during the midterm elections. We saw them deny the election to run and they lost in a landslide. And so we dodged this attempt to infiltrate the election system,” Harrington said.
Still, as Fox News demonstrated in painting the 2020 election as stolen from Trump, its ability to cause trouble should not be underestimated. The network’s insistence on claims of voter fraud played a major role in rallying support for Trump after the election and fueling the myths and anger that fueled the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021 .
Sabato said Fox News may not decide the winner, but it can still provoke “a small number that can cause a great uproar in free societies.”
“Fox could easily be the party that started a prairie fire, at least in very red states or places where white nationalists or supremacists are prominent,” he said.
“I think the democratic process would win, but there are other points in American history where it’s gotten really messy. That’s what worries me.”
