Former President Trump, while in office, could usually turn to Fox News for comfort. There have been occasional differences, and Trump has made headlines from time to time by going after Fox personalities — most notably Megyn Kelly during the 2015 GOP primary debate.
But for the most part, Trump, a rabid follower of cable news, can tune in to find Fox News anchor stars heaping praise on him and his administration while slamming his critics and political foes.
Trump still has his supporters online, but the dynamic between a former president who is openly flirting with another White House bid and Rupert Murdoch’s biggest media asset is definitely changing.
For one thing, Fox is more focused on President Biden, the target of relentless prime-time attacks, than on Trump, and the network did not air Trump’s speech this week in Washington, D.C., although it aired part of an earlier speech on Tuesday by former Vice President Mike Pence.
“Trump’s superpower gets all the coverage. That doesn’t happen anymore. Fox doesn’t cover it 24 hours a day,” said Daniel Cassino, a media expert who wrote a book in 2016 about the network’s influence on American politics. “So that seems to lead to frustration that he’s not dominating Fox the way he used to.”
Those tensions flared this week when Trump attacked Fox and its flagship morning show, “Fox & Friends,” after two of the show’s longtime co-hosts threw cold water on polls that suggested young voters thought Trump was the most -the best choice for Republicans looking to take back the White House.
Other Murdoch-owned media outlets separately fired editorials critical of Trump after the damning revelations from the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
“Character is revealed in crisis, and Mr. Pence passed his trial on Jan. 6,” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board wrote last week. “Mr. Trump has failed miserably.”
“Mr. Trump took an oath to defend the Constitution, and he had a duty as commander-in-chief to protect the Capitol from a mob attacking him on his behalf. He refused,” the board said.
The New York Post, also owned by Murdoch, refuted Trump in a separate editorial.
“The Department of Justice has to decide whether this is a crime. But as a matter of principle, as a matter of character, Trump has proven himself unworthy to be the chief executive of this country again,” it said. “His sole focus was to find any means – consequences be damned – to block the peaceful transfer of power. There is no other explanation, and no defense for his refusal to stop the violence.”
Trump complained in a statement Tuesday that Fox, the Journal and the Post “were always against me until I won.”
News Corp., which owns and operates the three outlets, declined to comment on Trump’s latest attacks.
A Trump representative did not respond to a request for comment on suggestions that he had fallen out of favor with Murdoch.
Disputes between Trump and Murdoch’s conservative media empire are not unheard of.
The former president was enraged by the outlet’s decision to call Arizona for Biden on election night and famously sparred with one of its former top anchors, Chris Wallace, several times before the election.
Several of Fox’s top personalities have also been critical of Trump since the 2020 election.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ recent rise to the national spotlight has given Murdoch’s news outlets a new face to present to their millions of viewers and readers as a potential successor to Trump as leader of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
British pundit Piers Morgan, whom Murdoch recently hired to host a show on U.K.-based TalkTV, wrote an op-ed in the Post earlier this summer specifically calling on conservative U.S. voters to “dump Trump” and support Desantis.
“I think Trump is frankly dead weight for Fox and Murdoch,” said AJ Bauer, a professor at the University of Alabama who studies and analyzes conservative media trends. “He’s done a lot of very good work for them, he’s encouraged them for four, five, six years, but they’re not loyal in the way that he expects and the way that he needs to change his political wind.”
Some say that if Trump wins the GOP presidential nomination again, Murdoch and the former president could put their public feud aside, as they have done in previous years.
“If Trump runs for president in 2024 and bury the field, there will be plenty of time for Murdoch to do what he traditionally does: bet on the leading pony,” said Jack Schaefer, a longtime media writer, in a column reacting to the editorials from the Journal and the Post this week. “Like a pair of powerful gangsters squabbling over how to divide the spoils, Murdoch and Trump will reconcile if they decide it’s in their mutual interest to reconcile.”
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Trump also still gets plenty of Fox prime-time coverage, which he likes.
Host Laura Ingraham on Tuesday night reacted to news that the Justice Department had included Trump in its ongoing investigations on January 6, calling it “a political vendetta to prevent someone from running for office and succeeding and winning the presidency again for millions and millions of Americans.”
Fellow prime-time host Sean Hannity, a longtime personal friend of Trump, routinely denounced the Jan. 6 panel as a “witch hunt” without merit.
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