Fox News, once home to Trump, now often ignores him

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

The network, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and has fueled Mr. Trump’s rise from real estate developer and reality TV star to the White House, now often passes him by to showcase other Republicans.

According to the former president, according to two people who spoke to him recently, Fox’s ignoring him is a far worse insult than spreading stories and comments that he has complained are “too negative.” The network is effectively pushing him from his favorite spot: the center of the news cycle.

On July 22, as Mr. Trump gathered supporters in Arizona and teased the possibility of running for president in 2024, proverb “Maybe we should do it again,” Fox News chose not to show the event — the same approach it has taken for nearly all of its rallies this year. Instead, the network aired Laura Ingraham’s interview with a potential rival for the 2024 Republican nomination, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. It was the first of two prime-time interviews Fox aired with Mr. DeSantis in five days; he appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show shortly after speaking with Mrs. Ingraham.

When Mr Trump addressed a conservative gathering in Washington this week, Fox did not broadcast the speech live. It instead showed a few clips after he finished talking. That same day, it did broadcast a live — 17 minutes long — speech by former Vice President Mike Pence.

Mr Trump has recently complained to aides that even Sean Hannity, his friend of 20, doesn’t seem to pay him much attention anymore, one person who spoke to him recalled.

The snubs are no coincidence, according to several people close to Mr Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the company’s activities. This month, The New York Post and The Wall Street Journalboth owned by Mr. Murdoch, published scorching editorials on Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots.

Skepticism against the former president extends to the highest levels of the company, according to two people knowledgeable in the thinking of Mr. Murdoch, the chairman, and his son Lachlan, the general manager. It also reflects concerns that Republicans in Washington, such as minority leader Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, have expressed to the Murdochs about the potential damage Trump could do to the party’s chances in upcoming elections, especially the chance to take control of the party. Senate.

The Murdochs’ discomfort with Mr Trump stems from his refusal to accept his election loss, according to two people familiar with those talks, and is generally in line with the views of Republicans, such as Mr McConnell, who the former president largely supported, but long ago said the election was over and condemned his efforts to undo it.

One person familiar with the Murdochs’ thinking said they insisted Fox News made the right decision when the decision desk predicted that Joseph R. Biden would win Arizona just after 11 p.m. on the night of the election — a move Mr. . Trump and interrupted his attempt to declare victory prematurely. This individual said Lachlan Murdoch had privately described the decision-making call, which came days before other networks concluded Mr Trump had lost state, as something only Fox had “the courage and the science to do.”

Some people recognized that Fox’s current approach to Mr. Trump could be temporary. If Mr. Trump announces that he is running for president, or if he is indicted, he will warrant more coverage, they said.

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

The relationship between Mr. Trump and the Murdoch media empire has long been complicated — an arrangement of mutual convenience and mistrust that has had sensational ups and downs since Mr. Trump first appeared on the gossip pages of The New York Post in the eighties spoke.

But the feud between the former president and the media lord that for decades helped set the Republican Party’s agenda is taking place in a much larger and more fragmented media landscape, as new personalities and platforms make it that much harder for a single point of sale to to change the story. Trump’s allies in the corners of the conservative media more loyal to him — including Breitbart, Newsmax and talk radio — are already seizing the turn within Fox as evidence of treason.

Mr Trump seems willing to fight. He blasted “Fox & Friends” this week on its social media service, Truth Social, for being “terrible” and having “gone to the “dark side”” after one of its hosts said that Mr. DeSantis had split Mr. Trump in two. defeated recent polls of a hypothetical Republican primary in 2024. He then, without providing evidence, blamed Paul Ryan, the former Republican Speaker of the House, with whom he often clashed. Mr. Ryan serves on the board of directors of the Fox Corporation.

The Post often sided with Mr Trump in its editorials when he was president. But it went against him at times, such as when Mr Trump refused to concede the 2020 election and blared the headline on the front page of the paper:Mr. President, STOP THE INSANE.”

Mr. Trump found a home on Fox News when the network’s founder, Roger Ailes, gave him a weekly slot on “Fox & Friends” in 2011. Mr. Trump used the platform to connect with the burgeoning Tea Party movement while beating out incumbent Republicans like Mr. Ryan and spread a lie about the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Initially, neither Mr Ailes nor Mr Murdoch considered Mr Trump a serious presidential candidate. Mr. Ailes told his colleagues at the time that he thought Mr. Trump was using his 2016 campaign to get a better deal with NBC, which aired “The Apprentice,” according to “Insurgency,” this reporter’s report on the Mr. Trump’s Rise in the GOP And when Ivanka Trump told Mr. Murdoch over lunch in 2015 that her father was planning to flee, Mr. Murdoch reportedly didn’t even look up from his soup, according to “The Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green.

But when Mr. Trump became bigger than any news outlet — and even bigger than his own political party — he was able to turn the tables and rally his supporters against Fox or any other news outlet he felt was too critical of him. He regularly used Twitter to attack Fox personalities such as Megyn Kelly, Charles Krauthammer and Karl Rove.

The network could always be critical of him in its reporting. But now the skepticism is coming through louder — in news anchors aside, in voter interviews or in opinion articles for other Murdoch properties.

Referring to Congress’ investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, Fox host Bret Baier said it had “horrified” Mr. Trump by explaining how it took 187 minutes to persuade him to say something publicly. to say the riots. A recent segment on FoxNews.com featured interviews with Trump supporters who were overwhelmingly unenthusiastic about a potential third campaign, saying they thought “his time is up” and that he was “a little too polarizing.” Then they gave their opinion on who should replace him on the ticket. They unanimously called Mr. DeSantis.

“I’ve worked at Fox for 11 years and I know that nothing pre-recorded touches a Fox screen that hasn’t been signed and approved at the highest levels of management,” said Eric Bolling, a former Fox host who now works at Newsmax. “Especially when it has to do with presidential elections.”

There is no denying that Fox News remains Fox News. Viewers have seen occasional critical coverage of Mr Trump in recent weeks, but, unlike other news outlets, Fox has opted to air its own primetime programming rather than the committee hearings investigating the attack. of January 6. (The author of this article is an MSNBC contributor.) Mr. Carlson, Mr. Hannity, and Ms. Ingraham dismiss the hearings as a “show trial.”

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

The network aired the Jan. 6 committee hearings during the day, when far fewer viewers tune in. But other segments during the day and early evening play out violent crime in Democrat-controlled cities or Mr. Biden’s verbal and physical stumbling blocks. When the administration announced that a key indicator of economic health has declined in the past quarter, Fox’s headline scribbled across the screen: “Biden denies recession as US enters recession.”

On April 13, Mr. Trump called to Mr. Hannity’s show and went through a list of crises he claimed wouldn’t happen “if we won this election, which we did.”

He has not been interviewed on the network since then.