Fox News has warmed to Donald Trump again

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For months, Fox News has treated Donald Trump like yesterday’s news. But now the former president is back on the popular network for conservative viewers, especially since he was indicted in New York on hush-hush charges.

The Trump revival was on display Tuesday night, when Tucker Carlson devoted his entire prime-time program to a historic interview with him, promising more quotes on Wednesday. This comes two weeks after Sean Hannity similarly gave Trump extensive airtime.

No mention was made of Carlson’s two-year-old private text messages, disclosed in a defamation lawsuit against the network, in which he disparaged Trump and passionately discussed putting the former president behind him. In one of the exchanges, from Jan. 4, 2021, Carlson wrote that we are so close to ignoring Trump almost every night and I really can’t wait.

Trumps is reversing what some have called a soft ban on Fox News, which has had no on-air interviews with him since Sept. 22, 2022, and Hannity on March 27.

The short answer is, they need each other, says Jane Hall, a journalism professor at American University and author of Politics and the Media: Intersections and New Directions.

He gets attention, he gets ratings, and cable news needs it because they’re down, Hall said.

Records released as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against the network and its parent company, Fox Corp., show that Fox repeatedly made false allegations about 2020 presidential elections as part of a bid to win back viewers, the network angrily called Arizona for Joe Biden on election night. The lawsuit also revealed how Fox executives disbelieved many of its star hosts, including Carlson, but aired them anyway.

A week ago, Fox News Channel carried Trumps entire speech from Mar-a-Lago on the day he was indicted by a Manhattan grand jury alleging business records were used to hide payments made. before the 2016 election to silence a porn star who said she and Trump had an extramarital sexual encounter years earlier; Trump has denied the two had sex.

The speech reached 6.7 million viewers, or about double the average audience that Carlson typically receives in the same hour, the Nielsen company said.

Fox says Trumps comeback is due to news, not ratings. The Hannity interview was billed as Trumps first after his indictment, Carlsons first after his arraignment, when the former president pleaded not guilty to the charges. Fox personalities and commentators jumped to his defense when news of the grand jury indictment broke.

Trump’s higher profile also coincides with his growing strength in the polls of Republican voters, according to the network.

While Fox News continues as the top-rated cable network, its prime-time viewership is down 18 percent in the first three months of the year, compared to 2022. CNN is down 34 percent in the same measure and MSNBC is down 8 percent, Nielsen said.

They’re in the fan service business and now conservative politics is all Trump shows, said Charlie Sykes, a conservative and founder of the Bulwark website. If the show comes back to town, Fox may try to counterprogram or buy it. Now, what is counterprogramming?

The return of the Trumps was always inevitable, said Sykes, also an MSNBC contributor. They couldn’t let him go. Fox knows what its audience wants and what its audience will accept.

If Fox doesn’t quit on Trump, it certainly backs off.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, viewed as Trumps chief GOP rival, has made 12 appearances on Fox News this year but none since March 13, according to the liberal advocacy group Media Matters for America, which monitors Fox.

March 5-11 was the first week this year in which DeSantis’ name received more mentions (177) than Trump’s (142) on Fox, Media Matters said. Others also recognized the Trumps’ potential for their viewers: In the same week, Trump was mentioned 925 times on MSNBC, compared to 268 for DeSantis.

In Jan. 8, 2021, two days after the insurrection at the US Capitol, Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch wrote in an email to a former Fox executive that the network was pivoting.

We want to dehumanize Trump, Murdoch wrote, according to documents disclosed as part of the election technology company’s defamation lawsuit against Fox.

The trend away from Trump accelerated following the midterm elections when the candidates he supported did worse than he expected. When he announced in November that he was running for president again, Fox did not deliver his speech in full.

Other Murdoch-controlled media properties are even harsher: The New York Post leads with its story: Man advertises in Florida. Following the midterms, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal headlined, Trump is the Republican Party’s biggest loser.

However, as spring approached, Fox warmed to the former president again. The network carried Trump’s entire 90-minute speech to the Conservative Political Action Committee live on the network on March 4.

Tuesday night, Carlson apparently did not speak about his critical texts and emails directed at Trump following the 2020 election, as seen in court papers related to the Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit. In January 2021, when Carlson said his show was about to ignore Trump almost every night. he wrote, I hate him passionately.

Carlson said in a WABC radio interview last month that a wounded Trump called him, demanding an explanation after the text messages became public. Carlson said he was upset about election information passed out by Trumps team that turned out to be false.

He told the radio station that he found Trump funny and insightful and that he spent four years on the air defending his policies.

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