Marshall’s part of the problem. He criticizes cable news while being on it | Opinion
When Roger Marshall is right, he’s right.
And the Kansas senator was oh so right last week when he took on cable news during a meeting with constituents in Topeka.
“Of course they’re not (a) news show. They’re entertainment, and their job is to make you mad,” he said in remarks reported by the Topeka Capital-Journal. “So the goal of Fox News, of CNN, MSNBC (now renamed MS NOW), their goal is to make you mad.”
I have never agreed more with the senator.
We rightly put a lot of blame on social media for the state of America’s degraded, often-disgusting discourse. The internet often seems to be little more than a rage machine designed to raise our collective blood pressure.
Before Twitter or Facebook, though, there was cable news.
As Marshall pointed out, a lot of what’s on TV news isn’t exactly news: We’re often looking at talking heads — folks trying to goose their ratings by keeping your attention, and keeping your attention by pumping up your emotions and keeping you outraged.
“It’s mesmerizing,” Marshall said in Topeka. “I mean, they’re good. They’re really good at keeping you entranced.”
Again: He’s right.
But also: He’s part of the problem. Marshall spends a lot of time appearing on the networks he criticizes.
Feeding America’s anger
Let’s just take this March. Thanks to press releases from his office, we know that Marshall appeared on Fox News or Fox Business for talking head segments at least five times during the month, plus twice more on Fox’s sister radio network. He made at least two appearances on the right-wing Newsmax TV network, at least one spot each on CNN and NBC News, and did a few more slots on conservative video podcasts.
He wasn’t exactly trying to bring Americans together.
“Republicans need to stand tall that we are the party of law and order, and the Democrats are the party of defund the police,” he told Fox’s Aishah Hasnie on March 7. (The press release carried a more pointed headline: “Democrats Are Putting Politics Ahead of the Safety of Your Family.”)
Democrats “obviously have Trump Derangement Syndrome,” he said on Fox Business a few days later. “He could walk in and cure cancer, and they would still find something wrong with that.”
“I can’t believe we cannot get seven Democrats to come across the aisle and vote in favor of our national security,” he told Fox’s Maria Bartiromo last Monday.
You get the idea.
Now, Marshall has every right to his opinions about the ongoing shutdown of Homeland Security and Democrats’ role in that. He also has a right to be cranky about those differences.
But ask yourself: Did Marshall sound like somebody trying to find a productive solution? Or did he sound like somebody trying to feed America’s anger?
‘Switch it to the ballgame’
Marshall isn’t the only Fox News celebrity from the region. Sens. Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley of Missouri also put in their time on the network, making regular appearances on Laura Ingraham’s prime-time show and generally fanning the flames of viewer rage.
Among them, though, only Marshall has so cogently described the injury inflicted by America’s cable news machine.
That machine makes it more difficult for both Republicans and Democrats to come to bipartisan agreement on critical issues, he said, for fear of enraging base voters primed to anger by social media and TV news. The damage even extends to Marshall’s own family.
“I mean, like my parents all the time, they’ll talk to me and you can just see their temperature rising,” he said in Topeka. “I’ll say: ‘Dad, why are you watching that? When you feel like you’re getting mad, switch it to the ballgame.’”
Is there another way to be successful in politics these days? Sen. Jerry Moran of Kansas largely avoids hot-button issues and the cable news circuit, and he won reelection in 2024 with 60% of the vote. It’s not impossible.
A lot of problems are created by “created by social media, by the 24/7 news cycle that we’re just bombarded with,” Marshall told his Topeka audience. “But I haven’t given up. We’ll keep trying.”
The next day, he went on Fox News. Maybe he should have switched it to the ballgame.
This story was originally published April 6, 2026 at 1:11 PM.
