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Daily Inspiration Quote by Rachel Maddow

"The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them"

About this Quote

Maddow isn’t trying to win a semantic argument about bias; she’s charging Fox with fabrication, and she chooses the most textile, almost old-fashioned phrase for it: “whole cloth.” It’s a vivid, domestic metaphor that turns newsmaking into counterfeit manufacture. Not spin, not selective framing - a loom, a costume shop, a prop department. The image matters because it drags the dispute out of the mushy realm of “both sides” and into a harder allegation: this isn’t interpretation, it’s invention.

Her syntax does a second job. “The problem that I think is reasonable to assert…” is lawyerly padding, a preemptive self-defense against libel standards and the predictable backlash. Maddow signals she knows the terrain: media criticism is a contact sport, and precision is armor. That careful throat-clearing also frames her as measured, not hysterical, even as she levels a scorched-earth claim.

Then comes the clincher: “and then make a big deal out of them.” She’s not only indicting a false story; she’s indicting the business model that turns a made-up premise into a multi-day outrage cycle. The subtext is about incentives: attention is currency, and manufactured controversy is scalable content. In the cable-news ecosystem where narrative beats verification, “big deal” is a blunt phrase with an insider’s sting - a reminder that amplification, not accuracy, is often the point.

Contextually, this lands in the long trench war between partisan outlets and fact-driven branding, where each side accuses the other of propaganda. Maddow’s intent is to shift the argument from ideology to epistemology: if you can’t agree on what’s real, politics becomes performance art with consequences.

Quote Details

TopicTruth
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Maddow, Rachel. (2026, January 15). The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-problem-that-i-think-is-reasonable-to-assert-153062/

Chicago Style
Maddow, Rachel. "The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-problem-that-i-think-is-reasonable-to-assert-153062/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The problem that I think is reasonable to assert about Fox and its coverage is that they make up stories out of whole cloth and then make a big deal out of them." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-problem-that-i-think-is-reasonable-to-assert-153062/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.

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Rachel Maddow: Fox fabricates stories and amplifies coverage
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Rachel Maddow (born April 1, 1973) is a Journalist from USA.

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