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.

A network owned by Rupert Murdoch and boosting Mr. Trump’s promotion from a real estate developer and reality television star to the White House is now often circumventing him to introduce other Republicans. ..

In the view of the former president, in the opinion of two people who recently spoke to him, Fox’s ignorance of him is a far worse insult than carrying out the stories and commentary he complained about. The network has effectively pushed him out of his favorite place, the center of the news cycle.

July 22, when Mr. Trump gathered supporters in Arizona and was teasing the possibility of running for president in 2024, say it “Maybe we have to do it again,” Fox News chose not to show the event — the same approach adopted in almost all of his rallies this year. Instead, the network aired an interview with Laura Ingraham with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who may be a 2024 Republican nominee rival. This was the first of two prime-time interviews Fox aired to DeSantis in five days. He appeared on the Tucker Carlson show shortly after talking to Ingraham.

Fox didn’t broadcast the speech live when Mr. Trump spoke to a Conservative rally in Washington this week. Instead, some clips were displayed after he finished speaking. That same day, the speech of former Vice President Mike Pence was broadcast live for 17 minutes.

Someone recalled that Mr. Trump recently complained to his aide that even his 20-year-old friend Sean Hanity no longer seemed to pay much attention to him.

Snubbing isn’t a coincidence, according to some people near Fox Corporation, Murdoch, who discussed the company’s business on condition of anonymity. this month, New York post When The Wall Street JournalBoth are owned by Mr. Murdoch and have published a ferocious editorial on Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the riots at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Skepticism about the former president has reached the highest level of the company, according to two people who know the thoughts of Chairman Murdoch and CEO’s son Lachlan. It’s also a potential harm that Washington Republicans, such as Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, who is a minority leader, could pose to the party’s chances in the next election, especially the Senate. ..

McConnell’s discomfort with Mr. Trump stems from his refusal to accept the election defeat, and according to two people familiar with these conversations, he generally favors the former president mostly. Synchronized with the views of Republicans like Mr. McConnell. Long ago, he said the election was settled and blamed his efforts to overturn it.

One familiar with Murdoch’s ideas said he continued to claim that Fox News made the right call when the decision desk predicted that Joseph R. Biden would beat Arizona shortly after 11 pm on election night. rice field. Trump short-circuited his attempt to declare victory prematurely. He personally said that only Fox “had courage and science” in a decision-making desk call made a few days before Lucklan Murdoch concluded that Mr. Trump had lost his nation by other networks. Said explained to.

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

McConnell’s spokesman declined to comment. A Fox Corporation spokesman, like Mr. Trump’s spokesman, declined to comment.

The relationship between Mr. Trump and the Murdoch Media Empire has long been complicated. It’s a mutual convenience and distrust arrangement that has had sensational ups and downs since Mr. Trump first spoke on the New York Post gossip page in the 1980s.

But the struggle between the former president and the media mogul, who has helped set the Republican agenda for decades, makes it much harder for new personalities and platforms to change the story at any outlet. So it’s happening in a much larger and more fragmented media landscape. Mr. Trump’s allies in the corner of conservative media such as Breitbart, Newsmax and Talk Radio have already seized the turn inside Fox as evidence of betrayal.

Mr. Trump seems willing to fight.he Blast This week, his social media service Truth Social’s “Fox & Friends” went “terrible” and “dark side” after one of the hosts said DeSantis had beaten Trump twice. Said. A recent poll of the fictional 2024 Republican primary. Then, without providing evidence, he accused Paul Ryan, a former Republican chairman of the House of Representatives with whom he often clashed. Ryan sits on Fox Corporation’s board of directors.

When he was president, the post was often on Mr. Trump’s side in the editorial. But it sometimes opposed him, as when Mr. Trump refused to concede the election in 2020 and the headline on the top page of the paper shouted:President, stop the madness.“

Mr. Trump found his home on Fox News when network founder Roger Ales gave him a weekly slot for “Fox and Friends” in 2011. Like Mr. Ryan, he lied about the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

Initially, neither Yales nor Murdoch considered Trump a serious presidential candidate. Ales told his then-colleague that he believes Trump is using the 2016 campaign to improve transactions with NBC, which broadcasts The Apprentice, according to Insurgency. .. Republicans And when Ivanka Trump told Murdoch in 2015 that her father was going to run at lunch, Joshua Green’s “Devil’s Bargaining” said Murdoch didn’t even look up from the soup. It has been reported.

But as Mr. Trump grew bigger than any news agency, and bigger than his own political party, he turned the table and supported Fox and other media outlets he felt too critical. I was able to collect it. He regularly used Twitter to attack Fox personalities such as Megyn Kelly, Charles Clouthammer, and Karl Rove.

The network can always criticize him in news coverage. But now, in addition to newscasters, skepticism is even greater with interviews with voters and opinion pieces about other Murdoch-owned real estate.

In reference to Congressional investigation into the January 6 attack, Fox anchor Brett Byer details how it took 187 minutes for Mr. Trump to be persuaded to say something publicly about the riots. By explaining, he described Mr. Trump as “looking scary.” One of FoxNews.com’s recent segments featured interviews with Trump supporters who weren’t overwhelmingly keen on the potential of the third campaign. Then they offered their thoughts on who should replace him in the ticket. Unanimously, they nominated Mr DeSantis.

“I’ve spent 11 years at Fox and never get a pre-tape on the screen of Fox, who hasn’t been signed off and isn’t licensed at the top level of management,” he now belongs to Newsmax. Former Fox host Eric Boring said. “Especially when it is related to presidential elections.”

There is no denying that Fox News remains Fox News. Viewers in recent weeks have occasionally seen Mr. Trump’s critical coverage, but unlike other news networks, Fox is not a hearing of the committee investigating the January 6 attack, but its own. I chose to broadcast a prime-time show. (The author of this article is an MSNBC contributor.) Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham dismissed the hearing as a “show trial.”

“They are lying, and we’re not going to help them do that,” Carlson said. “Instead, what we do is try to tell you the truth.”

The day and evening news broadcast segments cause violent crimes in Democratic cities and Mr. Biden’s verbal and physical stumbling blocks. When the government announced in the previous quarter that a key indicator of economic health had declined, Fox, the headline, read across the screen: “When the United States plunges into a recession, Biden denies the recession.”

On April 13, Mr. Trump called on Mr. Hanity’s show to look up a list of crises he claimed would not have happened “if we won this election we had.”

He hasn’t been interviewed on the network since then.