Fox News, Once Home to Trump, Now Often Ignores Him

It’s been more than 100 days since Donald J. Trump was interviewed on Fox News.

The network, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and promoted Mr. Trump’s promotion from real estate developer and reality TV star to the White House, now often ignores him in favor of recommending other Republicans. .

In the former president’s view, according to two people who spoke to him recently, Fox ignoring him is a far worse insult than running stories and comments that he complains are “too negative”. This network is effectively displacing him from his favorite spot: the center of the news cycle.

On July 22, when Mr. Trump was rallying supporters in Arizona and teasing the possibility of running for president in 2024, speech “We might have to do it again,” Fox News decided not to publish the event — the same approach it took to nearly all of his rallies this year. Instead, the network aired Laura Ingraham’s interview with a possible opponent for the 2024 Republican candidate, Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida. This was the first of two primetime interviews that Fox aired with Mr. DeSantis over a five-day period; he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show shortly after speaking with Miss Ingraham.

When Mr. Trump spoke to a conservative group in Washington this week, Fox did not broadcast the speech live. Instead, it showed several clips after he finished speaking. That same day, it was broadcast live – for 17 minutes – of a speech by former Vice President Mike Pence.

Mr. Trump recently complained to aides that even Sean Hannity, his friend of 20 years, seemed to no longer pay attention to him, one person who spoke to him recalled.

These are not coincidental, according to several people close to Mr. Murdoch’s Fox Group, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the company’s operations. This month, The New York Post and The Wall Street JournalBoth are owned by Mr. Murdoch, which published sensationalist editorials about Mr. Trump’s actions in relation to the January 6, 2021 riots at the Capitol.

Skepticism towards the former chairman extends to the highest levels of the company, according to two people familiar with the thinking of Mr Murdoch, the chairman, and his son Lachlan, the chief executive. It also reflects concerns that Republicans in Washington, such as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have expressed to the Murdochs the potential harm Mr. of the party in the upcoming elections, especially the possibility of taking control of the Senate.

The Murdochs’ displeasure with Mr Trump stems from his refusal to accept defeat in his election, according to two people familiar with those conversations, and is generally in sync with the views of those Republicans, like Mr. McConnell, have largely supported the former president but have long said the election was rigged and condemned his efforts to overturn it.

A person familiar with Murdoch’s thinking said they still insisted that Fox News did the right thing when their decision desk predicted that Joseph R. Biden would win Arizona just after 11 p.m. on election night – a move Thai makes Mr. Trump and scuppered efforts to declare victory early. The person said Lachlan Murdoch privately described the decision desk call, which took place days before other networks concluded that Mr. Trump had lost his state, as something only Fox “had the courage and the science to do”. learn to do”.

Some concede that Fox’s current approach to Mr. Trump may be temporary. They said that if Mr. Trump announced he was running for president or if he was indicted, he would ensure more coverage.

A spokesman for Mr McConnell declined to comment. A spokesman for Fox Corporation also declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Mr.

The relationship between Mr Trump and the Murdoch media empire has long been complicated – an arrangement of convenience and mutual distrust that has had sensational ups and downs since Mr. Trump first spoke about himself. on the gossip pages of The New York Post in the 1980s.

But the controversy between the former president and the media mogul, who has helped set the Republican agenda for decades, is occurring in a much larger and more fragmented media landscape, because of New ways and platforms make it much harder for any store to change the story. . Mr. Trump’s allies in the more loyal conservative media – including Breitbart, Newsmax and talk radio – have taken up Fox as evidence of betrayal.

Mr Trump appeared ready to fight. He explode This week, “Fox & Friends” on his social media service, Truth Social, for being “horrible” and had “went into the ‘dark side'” after one of the hosts mentioned that Mr. DeSantis defeated Mr. Trump in two games. recent polls on a hypothetical 2024 Republican primary. Then, presenting no evidence, he blamed Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker in the House, with whom he frequently clashed. Mr. Ryan sits on the board of directors of Fox Corporation.

The Post often sided with Mr. Trump in editorials when he was president. But it sometimes goes against him, like when Mr. Trump refused to give in to the 2020 election and the newspaper’s front page headline exploded: “Mr. President, STOP INSURANCE.“

Mr. Trump found a home on Fox News when the network’s founder, Roger Ailes, offered him a weekly spot on “Fox & Friends” in 2011. Mr. Trump used the platform to connect with the style. The Tea Party movement was budding as he defeated the established Republicans. like Mr. Ryan and spread a lie about the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

At first, neither Mr Ailes nor Mr Murdoch thought Mr Trump was a serious presidential candidate. Ailes told colleagues at the time that he thought Trump was using his 2016 campaign to get a better deal with NBC, the station that broadcasts “The Apprentice,” according to “Insurgency, This reporter’s account of Mr. Trump’s rise in the GOP And, when Ivanka Trump told Mr. Murdoch at lunch in 2015 that her father was going to run for office, Mr. Murdoch reportedly didn’t even look up from the soup. himself, according to “The Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green.

But when Mr. Trump becomes bigger than any newspaper – and bigger than his own political party – he can turn the tide and rally supporters against Fox or any other outlet without he feels too critical of him. He frequently uses Twitter to attack Fox figures like Megyn Kelly, Charles Krauthammer, and Karl Rove.

The network can always criticize him in its news coverage. But now the skepticism is growing – alongside the news, in interviews with voters or in opinion articles about other properties owned by Murdoch.

Referring to the congressional investigation into the January 6 attack, Fox host Bret Baier said it made Mr Trump “look horrible” by detailing how he lost 187 minutes to convince him to say anything publicly about the riot. A recent segment on FoxNews.com featured interviews with Trump supporters, who were not at all excited about a possible third campaign, saying they thought “his time.” it’s over” and he’s “a little bit polarized”. They then gave their thoughts on who would replace him on the ticket. Unanimously, they named Mr. DeSantis.

Eric Bolling, a former Fox host who now works for Newsmax, said: “I’ve spent 11 years at Fox and I don’t know what happened before an unsigned Fox screen and sanctioned at the highest levels of management. “Especially when it involves a presidential election.”

There’s no denying that Fox News is still Fox News. In recent weeks, viewers have occasionally received critical coverage of Mr. Trump, but, unlike other news networks, Fox has opted to air the show in its own primetime slot instead of the hearings. of the committee investigating the January 6 attack. (This writer is a contributor to MSNBC.) Mr. Carlson, Mr. Hannity and Ms. Ingraham dismissed the hearings as a “demonstration trial”.

“They are lying, and we are not going to help them,” Mr. Carlson said. “What we’ll do instead is try to tell you the truth.”

The network aired the committee hearings on January 6 during the day, when far fewer people were watching. But other segments during the day and early evening talk about violent crime in Democratic-run cities or Biden’s verbal and physical stumbles. When the government announced that a key indicator of economic health shrank last quarter, the headline Fox scrawled across the screen read “Biden recession as US immigration declines.”

On April 13, Mr. Trump phoned Mr. Hannity’s show and went through a list of crises that he claimed would not have happened “if we had won this election, which we do.” I did”.

He has not been interviewed online since.