Credulous reporters spent the years after Donald Trump left the White House declaring that Fox News’ love affair with the former president had gone cold. Reading too deeply into reports of Rupert Murdoch’s personal dislike of Trump and his right-wing propaganda network’s often flattering coverage of his would-be successors, they confidently asserted that Fox was moving on.
But claims of an imminent Fox-Trump breakup have aged as poorly as the similarly confident predictions that Trump himself was on the verge of a pivot. Forget the network’s brief flirtations with Ron DeSantis, Glenn Youngkin, Vivek Ramaswamy, and now Nikki Haley. Fox never fully abandoned Trump, and its biggest stars spent 2023 furiously defending him from legal jeopardy. Its political and business models demand that as the GOP field clears and leaves him as the party’s nominee, Fox will inevitably backslide into being Trump TV.
Fox co-founders Murdoch and Roger Ailes launched the network with dual goals: Making lots of money, and helping Republicans win elections. The network built a huge audience and kept viewers coming back for more by employing right-wing demagogues skilled at stoking the grievances of the Republican base, while selling advertisers on the canard that its “news” division functioned like that of a normal news outlet. Meanwhile, the network put the hammer to Democratic politicians and progressive icons, gestated and disseminated right-wing talking points and pseudo-scandals, and generally served as the communications arm of the GOP—while reshaping that party in its own image.
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Fox’s strategy garnered industry-leading ratings and huge profits while Foxifying the Republican Party until it produced its natural end product, President Trump. Trump learned how to win over Republican voters not by serving in office but with a regular guest spot on the network’s insipid morning show, Fox & Friends, then crafted a political platform from Fox obsessions and dominated airtime on the network throughout the 2016 election cycle.
As Trump rocketed to the White House, Fox refashioned itself as what its own current and former employees called a Trumpist “propaganda machine” that functioned as “state TV.” And Trump responded by turning the network into an unprecedented power center. As I documented throughout his term, Trump watched Fox programming religiously, channeled its lies and hate onto his Twitter feed, sought out its stars for advice, and doled out everything from pardons to federal contracts based on what he saw on its airwaves. Trump would, at times, chastise individual Fox commentators for insufficient servility. But by the end of his presidency, Fox hosts were winning power struggles with high-level officials and Trump was reciting lists of his favorite Foxers to cheering campaign crowds.
Fox had reached the zenith of its power after more than two decades of financial and political success. But after Trump lost the 2020 election, the network briefly stepped out of line—and was brought to its knees by the president.
When Fox’s decision desk put Arizona in Joe Biden’s column on election night, Trump reacted with fury. His base—the network’s core audience—soon followed. As Fox ratings collapsed, panic set in among Fox’s biggest stars and top executives terrified by the prospect that longtime viewers were switching loyalties to Newsmax, a network rival more willing to tell them Trump was winning.
Fox responded to its jeopardized profits by promoting the conspiracy theory that the election had been rigged against Trump. Internal communications later released through the defamation suit filed by Dominion Voting Systems, one of the targets of the fable, revealed hosts and executives did not actually believe it. But Fox spent weeks pushing the lie, driven by a financial need to “respect the audience” rather than enlightening it. The fruits of this effort were picked on Jan. 6, 2021, when a mob of enraged Trumpists, bent on subverting the results of an election they believed had been stolen, stormed the U.S. Capitol (and two years later, when Fox settled with Dominion for a record $787.5 million).
The devastation of Jan. 6 could have proven a reckoning for Fox. Privately, Murdoch himself blamed Trump for the insurrection and suggested a pivot. “Best we don’t mention his name unless essential and certainly don’t support him,” he wrote in an email to Fox CEO Suzanne Scott on the day of Biden’s inauguration.
But any public breakup would not be possible for Fox without once again threatening its bottom line. So it didn’t happen: Fox’s biggest stars made excuses for Jan. 6, blaming antifa agitators or undercover feds instead of acknowledging that Trump—and the network—had nearly led the nation to ruin. The network would showcase a new generation of GOP leaders willing to turn its rants into policy—but did not dare to take Trump on, or attempt to disrupt his hold on the Republican base.
Fox had opportunities all this year to end its relationship with Trump as federal and state prosecutors filed a series of indictments against the former president. But instead of condemning Trump for his alleged criminality, Fox’s stars returned to the barricades on his behalf, telling their viewers that attacks on Trump were attacks on themselves. Trump’s rivals-in-name-only largely responded by following Fox’s lead and denouncing the prosecutions, yet another potential primary issue taken off the table by Trump’s loyal propagandists.
With Fox protecting his vulnerabilities, Trump’s support in the GOP primary rose throughout the year, leaving him poised to wrap up the nomination early next year. At that point, Fox will inevitably return to its role as Trump’s lapdog.
They’ll do it because they want to do it. Fox’s primetime lineup is perhaps the Trumpiest it’s ever had. Network hosts like Bill O’Reilly, Megyn Kelly, and Tucker Carlson might at times offer critiques of Trump's actions and behavior. But the current stable of Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity, and Greg Gutfeld are lickspittles who substitute personal loyalty to Trump and the Republican Party he leads for anything resembling political convictions. Meanwhile, “news side” personalities who had a problem with what Fox became in the Trump era have left, leaving its bureaus filled with GOP political operatives and willing pawns.
And they’ll do it because they must. The lesson Fox executives learned from their 2020 election fiasco is that when they defy Trump their viewers are up for grabs. That is truer now than it was at the time. A Fox diaspora of former stars, now headlined by Carlson, joined Fox’s existing rivals or launched their own after leaving the network, and have largely pledged fealty to the former president.
With more talent outside Fox than within it, the network has enough trouble holding on to its audience in an increasingly competitive right-wing media market than ever before. If Fox splits from Trump, it will give those rivals the opportunity to turn on the network and steal its viewers.
After all the public scorn Fox took from the Dominion revelations, and the hundreds of millions of dollars it paid, the network is right back where it was three years ago. The network has lashed itself to Trump, preferring to follow him into the fever swamps, rather than ever facing the prospect of getting eaten alive by its competitors.
Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America. His work focuses on Fox News, news coverage of politics and elections, and media ethics.
