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One of the most important observations of the Donald Trump era of American politics, now celebrating its eighth anniversary, came in the book “The Divider” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker. It refers to Trump’s early relationship with Fox News and its founder Roger Ailes.
“What Ailes saw in Trump that he didn’t see in any other Republican politician in recent years,” Glasser and Baker write, “was someone who connected with the Fox audience even more than Fox.”
These were the early days, after Trump had surged to the top of the Republican primary polls in July 2015. Ailes was “bewildered” by Trump, the authors write, adopting a strategy of appeasement rather than destruction.
The network’s appeasement strategy survived Ailes. Fox News spent the duration of Trump’s presidency defending him and undercutting his opponents out of fear that their ratings would die off. In May 2020, Monmouth University asked Republicans who they trusted more, Fox or Trump. They elected the president, by a wide margin.
After Trump lost the 2020 election, Fox News began to slowly distance itself from Trump, only to see their worst fears realized. He lashed out and demanded that the network cover his false claims about voter fraud. Their base demanded the same, turning to other more right-wing cable news channels for such content. The Fox hosts tried to appease once again, giving oxygen to the misinformation. It ended up costing Fox three quarters of a billion dollars.
It’s no surprise, then, that two recent reports suggest that Rupert Murdoch, chairman of Fox News’ parent company, isn’t thrilled to see Trump win the Republican nomination again in 2024.
Murdoch “has made it clear in private conversations over the past two years that he thinks Mr. Trump, despite his popularity among Fox News viewers, is not healthy for the Republican Party,” the New York Times. reported Wednesday. And so, like many Republicans skeptical of Trump, he has been looking for an alternative.
Also, like many Republicans skeptical of Trump, Murdoch apparently believed the party could run again in 2016, but with a twist: putting a popular alternative to voting against a moderately popular Trump, consolidating the anti-Trump vote and watch Trump move. But that approach has already shown significant limitations, including the fact that Trump’s no vote has not taken hold.
He is also hampered by the fact that the strongest non-Trump candidate to emerge was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who for months enjoyed favorable treatment from Murdoch’s media properties. But his campaign has proven to be an alternative to Trump not in the sense that anti-Trump voters like. Instead, he is an alternative to Trump in the sense that Trump voters like him as a second choice.
DeSantis needed a strong campaign launch to quell concerns that he might not be the established anti-Trump candidate. He didn’t understand. So now, according to the Times and rolling stoneMurdoch is looking elsewhere.
“Murdoch has also noted DeSantis 2024’s recent failures to chip away at Trump’s dogged dominance in the polls, despite the campaign’s pre-launch hype about how things would change significantly right after DeSantis’ statement,” he report Rolling Stone. Murdoch, the Times adds, has talked about getting Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin into the race (an idea that obviously appeals to Youngkin).
Again, though, the blame for the Murdoch situation rests heavily on Murdoch properties, including Fox News.
Consider what happened in 2015 and 2016. Before Trump announced his candidacy — and immediately after — Fox News didn’t spend much time talking about him. His anti-immigration rhetoric then sparked controversy and a surge in support, and Fox News went from covering Jeb Bush 60 percent more than Trump (in June 2015) to covering Trump four times more in July.
From then on, Trump consistently got far more coverage than his opponents. Fox News decided that appeasing its fan base with Trump was better than antagonizing him.
As president, Fox spent far more time covering Trump than Barack Obama did. From 2017 to 2019, Trump was consistently mentioned in 10 percent of the 15-second blocks aired on the channel each month. That’s double what Obama got in 2016 and more than Biden got in 2021. Even out of office in 2021, Trump continued to get as much attention from Fox News as Obama did in his last year in office.
One result was that no Republicans were more loyal to Trump than those who watched Fox News.
Over the past 20 months, Trump has remained the focus of Fox News coverage, often thanks to his allies at the network defending his actions. There was an increase in Fox News coverage of Trump in August 2022, coinciding with the FBI’s search of his Mar-a-Lago property. Suffice it to say that this new attention was not critical of the former president.
So far this year, Trump has consistently garnered more attention than DeSantis on the Fox News airwaves. On average, he is mentioned four times more often in a month than the governor of Florida. Even in the month DeSantis announced, Trump still beat him nearly 2-to-1.
And that was the height of Fox’s attention for DeSantis. In the past two months, Fox News has mentioned Biden’s name in the context of the president’s son Hunter more often than DeSantis.
(Youngkin barely registers in Fox’s coverage.)
Trump is now better in the primary polls than he ever was in 2015 or 2016. His standing with Republican voters — and by extension Fox News viewers — is better than the last time he was in a primaries
A key reason for this is that Murdoch and his media empire decided it was better to strengthen his position and maintain his viewer base than to challenge him on even the most obvious issues. They still do.
Murdoch is frustrated with DeSantis and wants someone else who can challenge Trump. Few people are more to blame for their current position than Rupert Murdoch.
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