Trump Insists Fox News ‘Would Die Without Me’ (Despite Ratings Dominance While Ignoring Trump)
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Drew Angerer/Getty Images
Former President Donald Trump tried to insult Fox News Wednesday but instead paraded his ignorance of cable news ratings.
The current relationship between the 45th president and the top-rated cable news outlet appears to be in… let’s call it disrepair. Trump has repeatedly called out what he sees as unfair coverage from Fox News, and instead opts to promote the slavish coverage he gets from more extreme and marginal outlets like recently de-platformed OAN(N?) and Newsmax.
On Wednesday, Trump promoted comments made by Dave Rubin in which the conservative provocateur said “MSNBC, CNN, rest of liberal media ‘desperately need’ Trump to run in 2024.”
Trump added via TruthSocial, “And Fox, which would die without me!”
Ironically, the interview was posted on FoxNews.com, which neatly illustrates how Trump needs Fox News more than the other way around. However, a better illustration of that point is the ongoing dominant ratings that the cable news network is currently enjoying, especially as they editorially move away from the former president.
As Jeremy Peters reported last week for the New York Times, it has been over 100 straight days since Trump was interviewed on Fox News. “The former president hasn’t been interviewed on the Rupert Murdoch-owned cable network in more than 100 days, and other Republicans often get the attention he once did,” the dek of which succinctly notes.
Washington Post also noted last week how the Murdoch media empire, which domestically also includes the Wall Street Journal and New York Post, appears to have pivoted away from Trump.
Further, the news side of Fox News has been rather unsparing in their criticism of the former president following what Bret Baier called “horrific” details of Trump’s behavior — or more precisely, lack of action — on January 6th. Sure, prime-time opinion hosts are still well in the tank, but it doesn’t take the savviest media mind to note that Fox News has taken a different position on Trump, even if it’s more accurately described as dispassionate instead of inimical.
So is Fox dying without Trump as he alleged on TruthSocial? No. The opposite is happening.
For July, Fox News had more total viewers (1.35 million) than CNN and MSNBC combined (541,000 and 765,000, respectively.) Fox News was the third most-watched network in all of television. The turnaround for Fox News since it was in third place in January of 2021 is stunning, and given that its return to dominance was accomplished largely without Trump? That should be gravely concerning to the former president.
There is an adage in the media business that you never get in a fight with a guy holding the microphone. Yes, Trump’s TruthSocial account is, in its own way, a microphone, but the size of his amplifier? Let’s just say he puts the micro in “microphone” while he’s ginning up a fight with a 24/7 megaphone.