The network, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and fueled Mr Trump’s rise from real estate developer and reality TV star to the White House, now often bypasses him in favor of featuring other Republicans. In the former president’s view, according to two people who spoke to him recently, being ignored by Fox is a far worse insult than running stories and comments he has complained are “very negative.” The network is effectively displacing him from his favorite spot: the center of the news cycle. On July 22, as Mr. Trump was rallying supporters in Arizona and teasing the possibility of a 2024 presidential run, saying “We might have to do it again,” Fox News chose not to show the event — the same approach that followed for almost all of his matches this year. Instead, the network aired Laura Ingraham’s interview with a potential opponent for the 2024 Republican nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. It was the first of two interviews Fox aired with Mr. DeSantis in five days. appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show shortly after speaking with Ms. Ingraham. When Mr. Trump addressed a conservative rally in Washington this week, Fox did not broadcast the speech live. Instead, he showed some clips after he finished his speech. That same day, he broadcast live — for 17 minutes — a speech by former Vice President Mike Pence. Mr. Trump recently complained to aides that even Sean Hannity, his friend of 20 years, doesn’t seem to pay much attention to him anymore, a person who spoke to him recalled. The snoops are not accidental, according to several people close to Mr. Murdoch’s Fox Corporation, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the company’s operations. This month, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, both owned by Mr. Murdoch, published sensational articles about Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot on Capitol Hill. Skepticism towards the former chairman extends to the highest levels of the company, according to two people with knowledge of the thinking of chairman Mr Murdoch and his chief executive son Lachlan. It also reflects concerns that Republicans in Washington, such as Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have expressed to the Murdochs about the potential damage Mr. Trump could do to the party’s chances in upcoming elections, particularly chances of taking control of the Senate. The Murdochs’ discomfort with Mr. Trump stems from his refusal to accept his election defeat, according to two people familiar with those conversations, and is generally in sync with the views of Republicans such as Mr. McConnell, who has supported mostly the former president but long ago said the election was rigged and condemned his attempts to overturn it. A person familiar with the Murdochs’ thinking said they still insist Fox News made the right call when its decision office predicted Joseph R. Biden would win Arizona just after 11 p.m. on election night — a a move that angered Mr. Trump and short-circuited his bid to prematurely declare victory. This person said Lachlan Murdoch had privately described the decision office call, which came days before other networks concluded Mr Trump had lost the state, as something only Fox “had the courage and the science to do.” to do”.
Donald Trump, after the presidency
The former president remains a powerful force in Republican politics.
Some of the people acknowledged that Fox’s current approach to Mr. Trump could be temporary. If Mr. Trump announces he is running for president or is indicted, it will warrant more coverage, they said. A spokesman for Mr. McConnell declined to comment. A Fox Corporation spokesman also declined to comment, as did a spokesman 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 shocking ups and downs since Mr. Trump first spoke in the gossip pages of The New York Post in the decade of 1980. But the feud between the former president and the media mogul who helped set the Republican Party’s agenda for decades is happening in a much larger and more fragmented media landscape, as new personalities and platforms make it much harder for any outlet to change the narrative. . Mr. Trump’s allies in the corners of the conservative media most loyal to him — including Breitbart, Newsmax and talk radio — are already seizing the shift within Fox as evidence of a betrayal. Mr Trump appears willing to fight. He accused “Fox & Friends” this week on its social media service, Truth Social, of being “terrible” and of “going to the ‘dark side’” after one of its hosts reported that Mr. DeSantis had defeated Mr. Trump. in two recent polls of a hypothetical Republican primary showdown in 2024. Then, without offering evidence, he blamed Paul Ryan, the former Republican speaker of the House, with whom he often clashed. Mr. Ryan serves on the board of Fox Corporation. The Post often sided with Mr. Trump in its articles when he was president. But it has occasionally gone against him, as when Mr. Trump refused to concede the election in 2020 and the newspaper’s front-page headline screamed: “Mr. President, STOP THE VIOLENCE.” Mr. Trump found a home at 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 nascent Tea Party movement as he bashed establishment Republicans like Mr. Ryan for spreading a lie about the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Initially, neither Mr. Ailes nor Mr. Murdoch thought of Mr. Trump as a serious presidential contender. Mr. Ailes told colleagues at the time that he believed Mr. Trump was using his 2016 campaign to get a better deal with NBC, which aired “The Apprentice,” according to “Insurgency,” the narrative of this reporter about Mr. Trump’s rise in the GOP And, when Ivanka Trump told Mr. Murdoch over lunch in 2015 that her father intended to run, Mr. Murdoch reportedly didn’t even look up from his soup, according to “The Devil’s Bargain,” by Joshua Green. But as Mr. Trump became bigger than any news outlet—and even bigger than his own political party—he was able to turn things around and rally his supporters against Fox or any other outlet he felt was too critical of him. his. 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 news coverage. But now the skepticism is coming out louder – apart from news anchors, in interviews with constituents or opinion pieces about other Murdoch-owned properties. Referring to the congressional investigation into the January 6 attack, Fox anchor Bret Baier said it made Mr Trump “look horrible” by detailing how it took 187 minutes to convince him to say anything publicly about the insurgency. A recent segment on FoxNews.com included interviews with Trump supporters who were unenthusiastic about a potential third campaign, saying they believed “his time has passed” and that he was “a little too polarizing.” They then offered their thoughts on who should replace him on the ticket. They unanimously named Mr. DeSantis. “I spent 11 years at Fox and I know that nothing taped appears on a Fox screen that is not signed off on and sanctioned at the very highest levels of management,” said Eric Bolling, a former Fox anchor who is now at Newsmax. “Especially when it has to do with a presidential election.” There is no denying that Fox News is still Fox News. Viewers in recent weeks have seen occasional coverage critical of Mr. Trump, but, unlike other news networks, Fox has chosen to air its own program in prime time despite the committee hearings investigating the Jan. 6 attack. (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 do it,” Mr. Carlson said. “What we’re going to do 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 daytime and early-night segments play violent crime in Democratic-run cities or Mr. Biden’s verbal and physical stumbles. As the administration announced that a key indicator of economic health fell last quarter, the Fox headline that flashed across the screen read: “Biden Denies Recession as US Enters Recession.” On April 13, Mr Trump visited Mr Hannity’s show and ran through a list of crises he claimed would not have happened “if we had won this election, which we did”. He has not been interviewed by the network since.
