“We were the deplorables, we were smelly Walmart people, then we were chumps for Trump, bitter clingers, now it’s Neanderthal,” said “Fox & Friends” host Pete Hegseth, who went into television after a failed Senate bid in Minnesota and whose elite pedigree includes degrees from Princeton and Harvard. “This is how the left views people who prefer choice and personal responsibility over government mandates.”

The cable empire keeps pumping from this well of resentment because doing so has proven profitable, keeping viewers angry and tuned in. Fox Corp. Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch suggested as much during an investor conference on Thursday when he acknowledged that Fox News plans to juice its ratings in the post-Trump era by playing the role of “loyal opposition” to Biden.

Fox News’s efforts to capitalize on the cultural epidemic of grievance and victimhood are, however irresponsible, entirely rational. The same is true for the GOP: Trump’s success taught a new generation of Republicans the continuing potency of us-against-them, anti-elitist messaging — even if it was more rhetoric than reality.