the right wing spent trillions of dollars and decades harassing, distorting, corrupting, and to a large extent just plain owning the media, until it became a suitable propaganda network.
a portion of it is blatantly right-wing propaganda, from rush limbaugh to others on AM radio, to foxnews, to oan, newsmax, right-wing podcasters, etc., and the rest of it has been at best bullied into allowing those right-wingers to dominate discourse, in terms of topic, framing, catch-phrases, word choices, and the terms of debate (republicans must be given equal or more time, and equal or more respect, etc, no matter how much they lie or disrespect others or the process, etc.).
if you can dig up some political news reporting or discussions shows from the 1970s, you'd be blown away at how different it was back then. mutual respect, politeness, cooperation, it was considered poor form not to end the show with some point of agreement, etc. and they agreed on the basic facts. none of this "fake news" crap.
once they had a favorable news environment in place, then they were able to turn to corrupting parts of the government, which is what the first donnie adminstration was all about. by the time he got back into office, especially after the media largely brushed off his felony convictions, it was obvious he could get away with murder, and it was obvious he would govern as an actual autocrat, as opposed to merely a wannabe in his first term.
and all this was made possible by the steady consolidation of wealth starting with reagan.
it took decades, during which the left noticed all this with alarm, but weren't able to do anything effective at all other than call it out. we needed to raise billions to protect the media or at least counter them. we didn't.
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