Former President Donald Trump threw more MAGA dirt on Fox’s proverbial grave by burying his own longtime sycophant Laura Ingraham. On Monday evening, the ex-president urged his fans to switch to Newsmax after the Fox News star aired a “hit piece” about his poll numbers.
During her Monday night program, Ingraham brought on conservative pundit Chris Bedford to analyze recent polls showing Trump faring worse in several key battleground states than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis against President Joe Biden.
“Donald Trump, in almost all the polls that we’ve seen that have been done so far—granted it’s early—is behind Joe Biden,” Bedford noted while standing next to a touchscreen. “Now Joe Biden is running pretty badly against generic Republicans, maybe against a Tim Scott or against a Ron DeSantis type figure, but he’s consistently beating Donald Trump.”
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Trump, who was apparently watching the segment live, took to his social-media site just minutes later to bash his one-time informal adviser for having the temerity to show polls of him losing to Biden. (The ex-president has a tendency to lose it whenever Fox News seems to cover DeSantis in a remotely positive light.)
“Laura Ingraham on FoxNews just did a hit piece on me (there go her ratings!) showing some polls which indicate that Ron DeSanctimonious may do better against Biden than I would, when actually polls show that I do MUCH better against Biden than ‘Rob,’” Trump blared on Truth Social.
While sharing screenshots of Trump-favorable polls, the ex-president then called for his supporters to flip the channel to Ingraham’s head-to-head rival on right-wing competitor Newsmax, the cartoonishly pro-Trump host Greg Kelly.
“The poll your looking at now, which has me doing far better against Crooked Joe, was just put out by FOX, I am sure unhappily,” he concluded. “I’m also leading DeSanctus by over 40 points in Primary Voting. Watch Greg Kelly on Newsmax at 10:00 P.M.”
Trump’s latest broadside against Fox News targets a former acolyte who famously sang his praises at the 2016 Republican National Convention and regularly advised him on- and off-air throughout his presidency. For instance, Ingraham was a vocal proponent of the use of the ineffective COVID treatment hydroxychloroquine and personally met with Trump in the early days of the pandemic to tout the drug.
Since Trump left office, however, Ingraham has shown hints of distancing herself from the twice-impeached former president. Last year, the staunch Trump ally seemingly began to champion DeSantis over Trump for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, prompting Trump’s media lackeys to publicly blast her while Trump privately fretted about Ingraham’s loyalties. Since then, Ingraham has called on Trump to stop obsessing over his 2020 election defeat and move on.
In recent weeks, meanwhile, MAGA viewers have fled Fox News in droves after the conservative cable giant shockingly fired Tucker Carlson late last month. The network’s ratings have plummeted since Carlson’s ouster, dropping to levels the conservative channel hasn’t seen since before 9/11.
At the same time, amid Carlson’s allies calling for a Fox News boycott, Newsmax—which has openly courted the ex-Fox host—has witnessed a surge in ratings and has even beaten CNN in total primetime viewership on several occasions.
