Trump Fox fingerpointing

Molly Butler / Media Matters | Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Creative Commons

How Fox powered Trump’s first term — and what that means for his second

Written by Matt Gertz

Published

Fox News dominated wide swaths of federal decision-making during Donald Trump’s first presidency, as his administration effectively merged with the right-wing propaganda network that had propelled him to power. 

It’s currently unclear how the battle for Trump’s attention will shake out in a second one — but here’s how his media diet influenced the U.S. government the last time he was in the White House.

Trump owed his 2016 political ascent to that right-wing media ecosystem. A longtime Fox regular, he was obsessed with the network’s programming and channeled its demagoguery on the campaign trail, winning over its audience, as well as upstart alt-right organs like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart.com. He dominated Fox’s airtime on the way to his primary campaign win, bending the network and the GOP to his will before garnering a narrow Electoral College majority.

Once Trump was in office, Fox became a state TV outlet that lavished him with praise and denounced his foes, and in doing so it gained unprecedented influence over the U.S. government. The hours Trump spent each day consuming the network’s content and speaking privately with its stars shaped his worldview and dictated his reaction to various events. Hundreds of his hyperaggressive, seemingly stream-of-consciousness tweets came in response to what he was seeing on his television, a phenomenon I dubbed the “Trump-Fox feedback loop.”

Fox’s employees affected wildly important policy decisions on matters of war and peace, and they turned right-wing tantrums into matters of national importance because the president of the United States happened to be tuning in.

It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous — or dangerous — this Fox-Trump pipeline could be. At one point, after a Fox contributor turned to the camera and urged Trump to renounce his support for a bill, the president appeared to do so on Twitter, causing chaos on Capitol Hill. Later in his term, Trump put the full force of government behind a purported coronavirus “miracle cure” that he had seen touted on Fox but proved ineffective against the virus.

Below, I detail how Trump's communications, his administration’s personnel, and his administration’s actions on executive clemency, law enforcement investigations, domestic policy, and even military strikes all came to revolve around Fox during his first term. 

Jump to section...

  • Communications

    Journalists struggled in the early days of Trump’s presidency to explain his Twitter activity. The sitting president’s often-hyperaggressive tweets would begin early in the morning and continue late into the night, skipping from topic to topic with little clear rhyme or reason. 

    While some attributed the pattern to strategic genius and others to mental instability, the truth was more prosaic: Trump was spending much of his days watching cable news, particularly Fox, and responding in real time to segments that captured his fancy. 

    I ultimately traced nearly 1,300 Trump tweets back to Fox News and its sister channel, Fox Business. He live-tweeted dozens of different Fox shows, with hundreds of his missives attributed to his favorite program, Fox & Friends, alone, on a bevy of topics. These live tweets — and thus, Fox’s coverage — often set the agenda for the broader news media, as reporters dropped whatever they were working on to cover the newsworthy comments from the TV-addled president.

    Some of the Fox live tweets were a humorous sideshow — a June 2019 tweet about Mars and the moon that baffled journalists turned out to be Trump giving feedback to a NASA official he had just seen on Fox Business. 

    But Trump’s reactions to the network were often deadly serious: Based on what he saw on Fox, he raised tensions with foreign adversaries; demanded investigations of his political foes; lashed out at public officials with racist invective; denounced an array of journalists and media outlets; undermined the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic; and fueled the election fraud conspiracy theories that ultimately triggered the January 6 insurrection.

    While Trump has in recent months at times feuded with Fox, that hasn’t stopped him from continuing to promote segments from its programming.

  • Personnel

    Trump’s unprecedented relationship with Fox created a revolving door between the network and his administration during his first term.

    Trump relied on Fox as a staffing agency, filling the ranks of the federal government with familiar faces from his TV screen. At least 20 former Fox employees ended up working for the Trump administration in some capacity, a tally that included multiple Cabinet secretaries (Ben Carson and Elaine Chao), top White House aides (Kayleigh McEnany and John Bolton, among others), and U.S. ambassadors (Scott Brown and Georgette Mosbacher). Fox, in turn, hired at least 16 members of his administration for roles at the network or its parent company during his presidency or after it concluded.

    Trump also relied on advice from Fox personalities who remained at the network. He reportedly spoke with Sean Hannity so frequently that White House aides described the Fox host as “the unofficial chief of staff.” He also brought Laura Ingraham into the White House to brief administration officials, patched Lou Dobbs into Oval Office meetings via speakerphone, and privately consulted with Jeanine Pirro, Pete Hegseth, and Tucker Carlson.

    These relationships proved so strong that some of the unofficial Fox advisers dislodged official Trump appointees: Attorney General Jeff Sessions resigned after losing a power struggle with Pirro, as did Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen with Dobbs, U.S. Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer with Hegseth, and Bolton with Carlson.

    Trump appears to be returning to the same source as he begins filling out his second administration. His initial spate of picks included five former Fox employees: Fox & Friends Weekend host Hegseth for defense secretary, former host Mike Huckabee for U.S. ambassador to Israel, and former contributors Tulsi Gabbard, Tom Homan, and Michael Waltz as director of national intelligence, “Border Czar,” and national security adviser.

  • Policy

    Fox’s coverage and the influence of its personalities permeated every aspect of federal policy during Trump's first term, including but not limited to:

    Domestic actions. Trump blew up a potential immigration deal after consulting with Hannity. He abruptly changed his trade policy with China due to criticism from Dobbs and Brian Kilmeade. He triggered a partial government shutdown after goading from Fox hosts; awarded a contract to build border wall due to a Fox PR campaign. He backed an ineffective treatment as a coronavirus “miracle cure” because it was championed by Fox stars. And in response to critical Carlson segments, he terminated a federal antisegregation plan, abandoned police reform legislation, and launched an administration-wide turn against diversity training.

    Foreign actions. Trump launched the Ukraine abuse of power scheme that resulted in his first impeachment in response to coverage from Hannity. He publicly criticized South Africa’s government after seeing Carlson promote false white nationalist talking points, leading South African to condemn his statement. He responded to a Fox segment about North Korea by threatening nuclear war. And he both cut off funding to the World Health Organization and repeatedly called off military strikes on Iran due to Carlson monologues.

    Executive clemency. Fox influenced at least 25 of Trump’s acts of executive clemency. He gave pardons and commutations to individuals whose cases had the support of Trump-loving network personalities and to clients of prominent pro-Trump lawyers who regularly appeared on its shows. Individuals seeking clemency and their family members and lawyers used the president’s favorite programs to request clemency from him directly. Hegseth in particular played a key role in lobbying for clemency for alleged and convicted war criminals.

    Law enforcement investigations. Trump repeatedly demanded — and received — law enforcement action against his perceived foes in response to coverage he saw about them on Fox, including John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, Google, and the Russia probe. 

    Who knows what the second term will bring.

    This post is adapted in part from my op-ed at MSNBC.com.