Laura Ingraham, host of The Ingraham Angle on Fox News Channel, celebrates 15 years at Fox News, and five years for the show. With The Ingraham Angle hitting the anniversary mark October 30, Ingraham spoke with Broadcasting+Cable about her highlights at Fox News, how much more divided our nation might get, cable news’s role in the great divide, and the guest she’d most like to have on The Ingraham Angle.
Ingraham said she’d love to have Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House, on The Ingraham Angle. “I’d actually like to have a real conversation with her because I think she’s super-smart,” Ingraham said. “She’s obviously done an amazing job for her ideological position. I don’t agree with her on pretty much everything, but it would be nice to actually have a conversation with her.”
(Pelosi’s husband was attacked in a home invasion October 28, after Ingraham spoke with B+C.)
Ingraham said they tease Pelosi frequently on the show, but added that it is in good humor.
Asked if Pelosi has been invited on The Ingraham Angle, Ingraham said it probably happened years ago. “Thank you for reminding me,” she said. “I think we should do it again.”
Her show airs at 10 p.m., leading out of Hannity. Asked what The Ingraham Angle offers that viewers don’t get anywhere else, Ingraham said, a different perspective on the key issues. “I have a unique perspective because I came from the world of government, but the law was my focus for a number of years,” she said. “So I think I have the legal and the conservative movement experience that does set me apart.”
Viewers are “going to hear and see new information and new angles” on the show, she added, even on “stories that you might have heard mentioned earlier in the day.”
With the midterms approaching, Ingraham said America is “on a knife’s edge.” She sees the GOP prevailing in both the House and the Senate November 8. “If you’re the party in power, you can’t spin this. This isn’t a communication problem, this is a policy problem,” she said.
Ingraham mentioned crime and the economy as the key issues. “People are getting poorer and the country’s getting weaker,” said Ingraham.
We asked Ingraham about our divided nation, and if that will get worse. She said that the division has become “the accepted narrative” in America, and cited “the government taking over so much of our lives” as a factor, as well as a “media bubble” that lacks diversity of opinion.
To what degree are cable news outlets, and their political pundits, responsible for the divisiveness? Ingraham did not address the question directly. “I think we’re reflecting what the people feel,” said Ingraham. “I think people are seeing the country they love slip away.”
We also discussed whether these political pundits should be permitted to appear at political rallies, as some Fox News hosts have done in the past. She admitted not having “a great sense about that,” but said she could see a problem for “supposedly objective anchors” speaking at such events. The pundits, whose political viewpoints are a secret to no one, may be in a different group.
“It’s not a secret that I’m a conservative,” Ingraham added.
Ingraham’s media consumption touches on just about everything, she said: The Atlantic, The Economist, The Independent (U.K.), BBC, The National Post (Canada) and The Wall Street Journal, among others. “I read a lot of the stuff on the left,” she said, “because I want to know what the left is thinking or what they are planning.”
Ingraham, who worked at MSNBC and CBS News before Fox News, said launching The Ingraham Angle has been the highlight of her 15 years with the company. She called it “exciting, insane … in a good way” and “a fun endeavor.”
“It’s been a great privilege to be given time with viewers every night,” Ingraham said. ■
