By Jeffrey A. Rendall
Trump’s public digs at Fox News showed there was definitely something to see there.
It passed under the radar like so many pre-election stories focusing on President Donald J. Trump these days, but the little-regarded snippet concerning the embattled chief executive lashing out at Fox News last week deserves at least a smidgen of consideration – and comment.
Everyone knows Trump is a master of attracting news coverage from practically any source, but when he took the MAGA friendly cable network to task for not devoting sufficient blanket coverage to his most recent endeavors to boost Republican turnout for next month’s federal midterm elections, it raised eyebrows among friends and foes alike.
Was the president correct in his harsh assessment?
In an article titled, “Trump’s media war reaches Fox News: president says network has ‘totally lost their way’”, Mary McCue Bell reported at the Washington Times last week:
“President Trump has officially decided Fox News has ‘lost their way.’ Mr. Trump, a longtime ally of the Murdoch family-controlled media company, said Fox News doesn’t cover Republicans enough compared with coverage of left-wing candidates and officials.
“’Fox News spends more time covering the Jihadist and Dumocrat candidates than they do the good old fashioned Republicans, the people that have saved America, and are making it great again,’ he said [last week] on social media. ‘All they talk about is Dumocrat Jihadists like [Michigan Democratic Senate nominee Abdul] El-Sayed, with his softball interview by [Fox News anchor] Martha MacCallum, and the like. She never interviews me like that.’
“The president added, ‘They don’t show my record breaking Rallies the morning after, but others do, and that’s what MAGA is watching. Fox is promoting the Dumocrats, not the Republicans and MAGA. They have totally lost their way!’ His dissatisfaction with Fox’s coverage isn’t new. He has criticized the network for years, including for not covering his recent rallies.”
So that’s it. President Trump is put-off by the fact Fox isn’t lending wall-to-wall coverage to his daily rally appearances, thus depriving the GOP of valuable “free media” exposure in the process.
The only problem is the rallies themselves aren’t so much “Fake News” as they are “No News”. From what I’ve seen of them, they’re reasonably repetitive and the president’s “The voters should be smart enough to recognize that everything’s great” tone hasn’t changed, either.
It’s understandable why Fox prefers to bash on the Democrats instead – and lower the leftist party’s approval ratings – rather than flaunting yet another Trump rally in a red state of his choosing.
There’s a lot here that isn’t necessarily apparent from the president’s words or his latest social media salvos against Fox News, the network that heavily contributed not only to his political rise in 2015 and 2016, but helped sustain his MAGA movement during his first term, the difficult 2020 COVID period, his subsequent election disappointment, post-January 6 (2021) “banishment” from Washington, and then… whatever came after that.
President Trump likely feels he accomplished everything he’s done on his own, but this isn’t close to being true. The lawfare witch hunts Democrats and their adherents waged in the years following the 2020 election were extensively covered on Fox, and the network’s commentator class has all-but become single-minded cheerleaders for the outsider politician-turned-two-term-president from the beginning.
Why? For the same reasons establishment media mavens latched onto Trump from the outset, namely because he always was entertaining, frequently controversial and, perhaps most importantly, made himself available for news questions and one-on-one unscripted interviews at the spur-of-the-moment.
These things translated to eyeballs watching Fox News. It was a symbiotic relationship, where both parties benefitted, not to the same degree in every instance, but Donald Trump’s political rise might not have been possible but for the willing cooperation (coordination?) of the network.
Liberal/leftist media conglomerations have coasted off of Trump’s media coattails as well, though in a different kind of way than Fox. MSNBC (or whatever it’s called NOW) and CNN most definitely took advantage of the anti-Trump feelings that have existed since the outset. And that’s the way it is in a cutthroat media environment where producers compete to bring in viewers.
Is this wrong? I don’t think so. Supporters of Free Speech and the First Amendment realize there’s an awful lot of bad that goes with the chunk of good where uninhibited discourse is concerned. A couple centuries’ worth of Supreme Court jurisprudence established that reporters and writers can publish pretty much whatever they like as long as it’s not libelous or slanderous, and, where public figures are concerned, the proof threshold for these restrictions is intentionally high.
The Founders wanted it that way. It’s a little like saying, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.”
Everyone with a morsel of common sense understands that words can – and do – hurt very much when spoken or transmitted under the wrong circumstances. Or if lies/“Fake News” is put forth as the truth in a political context. I hate to be a contrarian, but Republicans are pretty much stuck with a media complex that hates them. This goes double or triple for the man in the White House.
Trump, however, personally enjoys the back-and-forth with the media and always has. Trump, in his book (The Art of the Deal), wrote that all publicity is beneficial, even when it’s negative. And the 45th and 47th president has lived with this philosophy his entire career, both in the private sector, as a tabloid celebrity, as a reality TV star, and finally in the highest office in the land.
Trump has played the media and now must live with the results of his strategy. The man who’s notorious for never apologizing or backtracking on anything must realize that his own failure to demonstrate humility or an ability to admit when things didn’t go his way has resulted in political consequences for himself and, possibly, Republican party candidates up and down the line.
The logical effect of his strategy has resulted in his approval rating dipping into the low 30’s in some surveys. That’s almost George W. Bush territory, which is unfortunate, since Trump has been a much more effectual leader than Bush ever was. It’s a shame.
But if Trump has a Shakespearean-type “fatal flaw”, it’s his inability to let go of certain aspects of the past. The man carries grudges. He’s not an unforgiving human being, but there are subjects he just can’t let go of, even if it could/would politically cost him.
The hubbub over the 2020 Election is one such subject. Regular politics consumers understand Trump feels wronged by what happened in late 2020, and the equally disappointing reaction from many close to him who refused to join his effort to overturn the result. Or, in Mike Pence’s case, to actually count the Electoral Votes. It’s an action Pence never recovered from.
Trump’s current beef with Fox News stems from this, and his criticisms of the network are related to the manner in which Fox treated the 2020 aftermath, though some of its personalities – such as Sean Hannity – never wavered from their “it was stolen” narrative.
Some – or all – of it may be true, but clinging to the “stolen” narrative isn’t helping in 2026. The people who remain angry about 2020 are already with Trump. Most of the public, including many, many conservatives, have moved on and prefer concentrating on the here and now rather than devoting more time and attention to relitigating something that transpired six years ago and can’t be changed.
Or, it could be that Trump keeps the J6 issue alive because he surmises it will potentially spur action from Trump-supporters who might otherwise consider sitting out this year’s elections because they aren’t inspired by the Republican Party’s congressional candidates.
Either way, in my opinion, President Trump’s observations about Fox News don’t ring true. The right-leaning network isn’t perfect, but neither is Trump’s messaging operation for this year. Conservatives are trying desperately to motivate anti-Democrat voters this year, and we’re split on the best ways to accomplish this goal.
Fighting the headwinds generated by high gas prices is difficult, and there’s no clear way to divert voters’ attention away from their own family budget struggles. Personal household debt is rising, an issue that the winning party in 2026 will need to address one way or the other. Trump can work with Fox to shape opinion, or he can become and even bigger part of the problem.
Jeff Rendall is editor and publisher of GolfintheUSA.com and has written about golf and politics for over a quarter of a century. A non-practicing attorney from California, he moved to the east coast three decades ago to pursue and combine his interests in all things American history and culture. Jeff has worked as an intern on Capitol Hill and in various capacities in grassroots organizing and conservative organizations and publications, including a nearly two-decade stint at ConservativeHQ.com. Column republishing or other inquiries: Rendall@msn.com .