Wednesday’s Iowa town hall rankled staffers who see the network—like most of the GOP—falling in line behind the 2024 front-runner. As one correspondent acknowledged afterward, “Trump is the monster we created.”

Wednesday’s Iowa town hall rankled staffers who see the network—like most of the GOP—falling in line behind the 2024 front-runner. As one correspondent acknowledged afterward, “Trump is the monster we created.”

With less than a week until the first votes are cast in the 2024 Republican primary, front-runner Donald Trump blew up Fox News’ prime time schedule on Wednesday. The former president and de facto programming executive booted his longtime ally Sean Hannity out of his 9 p.m. time slot and held a town hall with Iowa voters to compete with CNN’s debate between Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley.

Baier had been wooing Tump for quite a while, and Trump suddenly agreed to participate after the CNN debate details were locked. “They would only do it if it was at that time,” he said. “We offered a number of different times. That was their stipulation.”

…

The history between Trump and Fox is so fraught, and the relationship is so convoluted, that writers typically spend several paragraphs explaining the complexities. But it is also, at a gut level, quite simple. The Fox brand and the Trump brand are both about defeating Democrats and exploiting the levers of power.

…

…Rupert Murdoch really did try to make him a “non person,” as Murdoch’s own emails (also obtained by Dominion) revealed. “Fox News very busy pivoting” away from Trump, Murdoch remarked to a former Fox executive in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. At the time, Murdoch and almost everyone else thought that Trump’s political life was over. But Fox—and then host Tucker Carlson in particular—also helped revive Trump by recasting January 6 as a government plot to entrap poor Trump voters. As the base warmed back up to Trump, so did Fox. And Lachlan Murdoch didn’t stand in the way.

    • DigitalTraveler42@lemmy.worldEnglish
      39·
      10 months ago

      “but he generates clicks, drives engagement, and keeps people tuning in whether they hate him or not, why would we quit that?”

    • aew360@lemm.ee
      262·
      10 months ago

      Blame the right wing outlets. WaPo, The Atlantic, NYT, and others are covering him a lot… by exposing how he will try to end democracy as we know it. That’s not the coverage he wants and it’s the coverage that we need to get out there to the uninformed

    • mogoh@lemmy.ml
      91·
      10 months ago

      This even includes lemmy. Trump generates upvotes. In that sense, I did my part.

  • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
    361·
    10 months ago

    There’s no disadvantage to them being constantly against Biden, but if they make an enemy of Trump and he gets elected, he’s going to seek revenge. And they’re cowards.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
    241·
    10 months ago

    Promoting fascism and spreading disinformation is just so damn profitable, (until the lawsuits.)

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
    9·
    10 months ago

    Their relation is such that both pretend to hate each other while in secret they both know they can’t survive without each other

  • ReallyActuallyFrankenstein@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
    7·
    10 months ago

    …Rupert Murdoch really did try to make him a “non person,” as Murdoch’s own emails (also obtained by Dominion) revealed. “Fox News very busy pivoting” away from Trump, Murdoch remarked to a former Fox executive in the immediate aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. At the time, Murdoch and almost everyone else thought that Trump’s political life was over. But Fox—and then host Tucker Carlson in particular—also helped revive Trump by recasting January 6 as a government plot to entrap poor Trump voters. As the base warmed back up to Trump, so did Fox. And Lachlan Murdoch didn’t stand in the way.

    These people… They will never learn, because their egos are always one step ahead of their reason.