Fox News is floundering this week as the network tries to calibrate its relationship with former President Donald Trump. Its executives and stars believe that he is an unhinged, destructive force in American public life — and that he controls their audience and thus their ratings and profits. The result has been coverage that swings wildly back and forth between promoting his 2024 candidacy and trying to stymie it.
Trump returned to Fox on Monday night after a six-month absence that had triggered complaints from his cronies that the network had given him a “soft ban.” The interview, unsurprisingly, was with Sean Hannity, the Fox prime-time host and Trump confidant who had so much influence over the last administration that White House officials referred to him as a “shadow” chief of staff. Hannity’s show had hosted Trump at least 38 times since August 2017, according to Media Matters data, by far the most of any weekday cable news show over that period.
Trump’s interviews with Hannity are notoriously boring, and Monday’s full-hour installment hit all the same marks: The host echoed his guest’s talking points and tried to steer the conversation away from potential trouble spots.
But what came next was striking.
Fox typically promotes its interviews with prominent Republicans with segments up and down the lineup. On Monday night and Tuesday, though, Hannity’s colleagues alternated between ignoring his Trump interview and bashing the former president’s responses.
Right-wing commentators criticized Trump to the Fox audience for “constantly dwelling on grievance,” being excessively critical of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential primary opponent and a Fox favorite, and “whining.” And the one Trump line that other news outlets picked up on — his claim that DeSantis might be “working in a pizza-parlor place” if Trump hadn’t endorsed his 2018 gubernatorial campaign — didn’t get covered by Fox’s own website, as The Washington…
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