President Donald Trump began election night by lashing out at Fox News. He implausibly tried to blame the conservative network for the GOP’s devastating midterm losses.
By the end of the night, though, Trump was on the phone with Fox’s anchors — underscoring just how much he relies on the network’s platform, even as he rails against its coverage.
Fox “bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse,” Trump declared on Truth Social shortly before midnight Eastern time.
But he didn’t repeat that hard-to-fathom talking point during his phone interview a few minutes later. Instead, he said “congratulations to the Democrats” and expressed surprise at some of the results.
He took one brief swipe at Fox while on the network’s air, calling Fox’s polling unit “terrible,” when in fact it’s highly respected throughout the industry.
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Anchor Bret Baier defended his colleagues, remarking, “Tonight, actually, the results are pretty close to what the Fox polls showed.”
Trump’s “I thought they’d do better” call to Fox reflected a broader reckoning that began to take shape across the right-wing media world on Tuesday night.
“Sometimes you get your ass kicked, and deserve it. Tonight is one such time for the Republican Party,” radio host Buck Sexton wrote on X.
He went on: “Way too many mistakes. Bad messaging. Poor candidates. High prices. Unnecessary war that did not go as promises. We get up tomorrow and carry on. But there are lessons here.”
Tellingly, though, Sexton didn’t invoke Trump’s name.
To explain the GOP’s losses, which were more sweeping than many political prognosticators had anticipated, some Fox commentators and MAGA social media influencers cited Trump’s war in Iran, the resulting high gas prices, and other broken promises of the past two years.
But they did so gingerly, criticizing the president’s policies without quite bringing themselves to blame the president himself.
Baier asked Sean Hannity at one point, “If we as a country did not go into the war in Iran… is this a much different race tonight?”
“I think 100 percent,” Hannity said, then pivoted to defend Trump’s decision to start the war.
Fellow Fox host Laura Ingraham said Trump has had “an unbelievably successful set of political judgments, other than the Iran conflict, which has been really tough and not well explained — sorry, in my view — and I think the people just don’t like war. They just do not want to go to war.”
The Fox commentators were all too well aware that the president was probably listening as they spoke.
During the 5 p.m. hour on Tuesday, shortly before the first polls closed, Trump raged about Jessica Tarlov, the lone liberal host on “The Five.”
He called Tarlov “dumb as a rock” and said her voice is irritating. He also texted a rebuttal to one of the show’s other hosts, Greg Gutfeld, who dutifully read the message on air.
Tarlov treated it like a spammy campaign text and joked that he should reply, “STOP.”
She later responded to Trump further on X, writing, “Reality is a tricky thing and he should get better at dealing with it.”
As Fox struck a pessimistic tone about the GOP’s electoral performance, Trump also griped about the network’s polling questions and guest bookings, hinting that he might treat the network as a scapegoat in the days ahead.
“FoxNews Ratings are way down (27%!) because they’re spending too much time covering the Trump Deranged Dumocrats,” he wrote.
Trump accurately described Fox’s recent ratings decline, but he blamed it on perceived disloyalty. Media analysts have largely attributed Fox’s slump to GOP voter malaise, and Fox Corp CEO Lachlan Murdoch has blamed “viewer fatigue.”
Trump, seemingly in denial about his low approval ratings, claimed, “It’s them, not me — My numbers are better than they have ever been.”
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In reality, Trump is at or near record lows in numerous approval rating polls.
There have been some signs lately that Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch, the father and son who control Fox News, have been thinking about a post-Trump era and looking ahead to the 2028 presidential election.
But for the time being Fox and Trump awkwardly share a Republican base. When Trump complains about Democrats appearing on Fox’s air, he is voicing how some of Fox’s most ardent fans feel.
A few minutes before his call to Baier, Trump objected to the presence of former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio on Fox’s pundit panel.
Trump wrote that de Blasio was “ranting and raving like a Lunatic.”
The former mayor actually talked about the power of a “populist economic message” in America and said many Republicans decided to vote for Democratic candidates in a form of protest against Trump.
CNN’s Liam Reilly contributed reporting.
