Fox News aired nearly as many economic news segments espousing trickle-down economic theory (16 of 66 total segments) as CNN aired total economic news segments (22) during the second quarter of this year — the latter cable network largely having abdicated its responsibility to cover the economy in prime-time. None of MSNBC’s qualifying coverage (54 total segments) was found to promote trickle-down economic theory.

In addition to advocating, in essence, that society should prioritize the top of the income, wealth, and profit spectrum in order to induce broader economic benefits that supposedly “trickle-down” to the rest of the economy, Fox's trickle-down proponents often also argued that fewer benefits should be provided to those at the bottom, inverting the logical fallacy at the center of trickle-down theory.

Of Fox’s segments espousing trickle-down, 12 included discussion of tax policy, and 12 also covered inflation. Wages were discussed in 10 of these segments. The following chart shows the economic topics Fox personalities were discussing when they espoused trickle-down economics.

The leading trickle-down misinformer in Fox’s prime-time lineup was frequent guest, Fox Business host, and former Trump administration official Larry Kudlow, who peddled trickle-down theory while slamming the economic agenda of the Biden-Harris administration and puffing up the accomplishments (and future promises) of disgraced former President Donald Trump. During the 4 appearances in which he peddled trickle-down economics during the second quarter — Kudlow was the only guest to appear more than once in a segment identified as promoting trickle-down economics — he fearmongered about how future tax increases on the wealthy could undermine job creation and slow down economic growth and warned that increasing government spending would imperil the economy.

Fox News and Fox Business personalities Brian Brenberg and David Asman, Fox News host and former Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, celebrity chef Andrew Gruel, South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott, and Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson were among the other prime-time Fox News guests who peddled trickle-down talking points during the second quarter, warning about looming tax increases, clamoring for renewed income tax cuts from a second Trump administration, or warning about the supposed threat posed by stricter government regulations or elevated minimum wages.

Media Matters identified multiple instances in which Fox's prime-time hosts themselves served as the vector peddling trickle down.

Fox prime-time star and informal Trump adviser Sean Hannity led the way with 4 instances of him promoting trickle-down talking points, followed by one instance apiece from hosts Jesse Watters and Greg Gutfeld.

Media Matters has previously demonstrated the simple inadequacy of corporate broadcast coverage of the economy by the networks’ most-watched evening news programs. In the first and second quarters of 2024, viewers tuning in each night to view ABC World News Tonight, CBS Evening News, and NBC Nightly News could go days without seeing any substantive news about the economy. One silver lining of this lack of coverage of the economy may have been that millions of viewers were only infrequently exposed to direct promotions of “trickle-down” economic theory.

In the first quarter of the year, Media Matters identified only 2 segments — each aired by NBC Nightly News — that directly aired arguments in favor of trickle-down economics. In the second quarter, Media Matters identified 1 segment apiece from ABC, CBS, and NBC, as well as 2 qualifying segments broadcast by PBS News Hour that promoted trickle-down talking points. These 5 segments represented a small portion of the networks’ economic news coverage (less than 3% of 191 total segments).

On the April 1 editions of CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News, each program aired segments presupposing that California’s implementation of a statewide $20 per hour minimum wage for fast food workers would result in disruptive price increases and job losses in the industry. The CBS segment included fear mongering from Jeff Hanscom of the International Franchise Association, which represents fast food chains, and from a franchise owner directly alleging that the pay increase would result in job losses and significant price increases. NBC also interviewed a franchise owner who warned that the wage increase would imperil her business and included commentary from economist David Neumark of the conservative Hoover Institution, who expressed his opposition to California’s minimum wage increase.

Both outlets interviewed the same fast food worker, who described the struggles of surviving on minimum wage and voiced her support for the increase. An independent study published on September 30 later found that the negative side effects of industry-wide job losses and onerous price increases predicted by trickle-down adherents did not come to pass.

The April 20 edition of ABC World News Tonight featured a segment on successful efforts by the United Auto Workers to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, as well as the UAW’s efforts to unionize other facilities. The segment featured a statement from six Republican governors, including Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, claiming “unionization would certainly put our states’ jobs in jeopardy.” The UAW is currently bargaining for a new contract on behalf of those Chattanooga members.

The April 8 edition of PBS News Hour aired a segment featuring trickle-down talking points from a spokesperson for the ridesharing company Uber, who warned that the company and its main competitor Lyft would discontinue services in Minneapolis on May 1 if a city ordinance establishing new minimum wages for “gig economy” workers went into effect. Both ridesharing titans announced that they would continue operating in Minneapolis after a legislative compromise on the effective minimum wage for rideshare drivers was negotiated.

A week later, on the April 15 edition of PBS News Hour, PBS correspondent Lisa Desjardins interviewed Wall Street Journal reporter Richard Rubin in an in-depth discussion on the competing tax policy preferences of President Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Desjardins and Rubin discussed the “mixed evidence” regarding the effect that Republican-preferred tax cuts have on the economy, with Rubin explaining the belief that tax cuts can spur “some growth” while noting that “in general, when you hear someone claiming that tax cuts have some sort of outsized effect on growth, take that with a grain of salt.”

• A 2012 Congressional Research Service report, which analyzed tax cuts for the rich since 1945, concluded that tax cuts for the wealthy don’t stimulate economic growth. A September 2012 report from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service determined that “changes over the past 65 years to the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth,” adding, “The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.” The report further concluded that these tax cuts served to exacerbate economic inequality, stating that ”top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with increasing concentrations of income at the top of the income distribution." The CRS report dealt such a heavy blow to trickle-down economic orthodoxy that Senate Republicans fought to suppress the report's findings. The report was eventually revised and re-released months later and featured most of the same conclusions. [Congressional Research Service, 9/14/12, 12/12/12; The New York Times, 11/1/12; NBC News, 12/13/12]
• A 2020 study analyzed the effects of tax cuts for the rich spanning “five decades in 18 wealthy nations” and found that “the rich got richer and there was no meaningful effect on unemployment or economic growth.” Researchers at The London School of Economics and Political Science published a working paper in 2020 analyzing the tax regimes of 18 major developed economies that concluded that “major reforms reducing taxes on the rich lead to higher income inequality as measured by the top 1% share of pre-tax national income.” In a later interview with LSE’s economics blog, one of the researchers who conducted the study added: “Our results align pretty closely with some work from Thomas Piketty, that would suggest that what happens if you cut taxes on the rich is that they then bargain more aggressively for their own compensation at the direct expense of workers lower down the income distribution.” [LSE International Inequalities Institute, December 2020; The London School of Economics, 1/24/23]
• A study of Trump's 2017 tax cuts for the rich found it produced wage gains far below what was promised and that, instead of paying for itself as Republicans promised, it added “more than $100 billion a year” to the national debt. The New York Times reported that the study “found the cuts delivered wage gains that were ‘an order of magnitude below’ what Trump officials predicted: about $750 per worker per year on average over the long run, compared to promises of $4,000 to $9,000 per worker.” [The New York Times, 3/4/24; National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2024]
• Economists predicted in 2016 that Trump's “nonsense … supply-side, trickle-down economics” would do nothing to help the economy. After Trump unveiled his tax and economic policy proposals in August 2016, economists and tax policy experts from across the political spectrum slammed his plan. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich dismissed Trump's plan as the “normal nonsense of supply-side, trickle-down economics” characteristic of Republican politicians. Conservative tax analyst Ryan Ellis noted that Trump’s proposed deduction for child-care expenses “would provide no benefit to low income workers and single parents who are unlikely to have any tax liability to begin with.” University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson posted that “Trump's economic plan focuses in on those he thinks need the most help: the 540 billionaires in the U.S.” [Media Matters, 8/9/16]

Media Matters searched transcripts in the SnapStream and Kinetiq video databases for all original episodes of ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening News and Weekend News, NBC's Nightly News, and PBS' News Hour, including any weekend editions, for any of the terms “debt,” “deficit,” “growth,” “inequality,” “inflation,” “jobs,” “tax,” “revenue,” “supply side,” “trickle down,” “GDP,” “GNP,” “income,” “labor,” “union,” “trade,” “tariff,” “Social Security,” “Medicare,” “Medicaid,” “Affordable Care Act,” or “retirement” or any variations of any of the terms “economy,” “spend,” “wage,” “wealth,” “unemployment,” “product,” “employ,” “Obama care,” “health care,” “healthcare,” “Wall Street,” “stock,” “S&P,” “NASDAQ,” “Dow,” “regulation,” or “loan” from April 1, 2024, through the second quarter of the year ending June 30, 2024.

We searched transcripts in the Nexis and Kinetiq databases for all original episodes of CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, The Source with Kaitlan Collins, and CNN Newsnight; Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters Primetime, Hannity, and Gutfeld!; MSNBC’s Inside with Jen Psaki, All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, Alex Wagner Tonight, and The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell, for the same search terms from April 1, 2024, through the second quarter of the year ending June 30, 2024.

We reviewed the identified segments for whether they promoted or argued in favor of “trickle-down” economics or “supply side” economic theory. We defined these as discussion of reductions of tax and regulatory burdens at the upper end of the income, wealth, or profit spectrum to stimulate economic input; pushing claims that increasing taxes or regulations, or not reducing them, would negatively affect the economy; or that government regulations disincentivize work. We then assessed whether one or more participants privileged the claim that the economy as a whole would benefit if the wealthy do better, and assessed whether these segments argued against this kind of messaging.

For the full methodology and definitions of terms used in Media Matters' assessment of economic news coverage for the second quarter of 2024, click here.