Fox News is tuning out Trump’s rallies. Here’s what that means

Jessica Koscielniak/Reuters

President Donald Trump keeps holding midterm election rallies, and Fox News keeps choosing not to air the rallies live.

This programming decision has huge political and cultural significance. Fox News, America’s most-watched cable channel, has been one of Trump’s top ways to reach voters for more than a decade.

Trump is perturbed about it. But Fox evidently doesn’t think his speeches are worth showing in full right now, which speaks volumes about this political moment.

The implication: Fox agrees with the Republican candidates and strategists who are privately fretting about Trump hurting their chances in the midterms.

Fox’s response is to basically turn him off. Perhaps Fox patriarch Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan believe the network’s opinion hosts are better messengers for the GOP than the president himself, especially now, as Trump’s approval ratings are hitting record lows.

“We talk so much about how Trump is the ‘executive producer in chief’ but often forget that even the most popular shows tend to run out of steam after one season too many,” veteran Republican strategist Doug Heye said.

“That’s exactly where we are and why — whether you’re in Lake of the Ozarks or Emmetsburg, Iowa, fewer Trump flags are being flown every day,” Heye added.

Fox isn’t publicly commenting on the matter. But current and former hosts at the network say it’s a freighted calculation.

“This is coming from the top down,” a current Fox host said on condition of anonymity. The host said they didn’t officially know the reasons why, but said the conventional wisdom at the network right now is that “Trump doesn’t rate anymore.”

Fox executives and hosts are famously attuned to the day-by-day television ratings. The audience’s interest in Trump helped wed the candidate and the network back in 2016.

As recently as 2024, in the closing weeks of Trump’s reelection campaign, Trump was a reliable ratings draw for Fox. When Trump held a giant rally at Madison Square Garden, Fox showed the spectacle live, and its audience tripled in that time slot.

But the ratings dynamic is quite different now. When the GOP held a midterm convention show in Dallas, Texas, last month, the ratings needle barely moved when Fox carried Trump’s speeches live.

Trump, always sensitive to perceptions about popularity, has since resorted to misleading people about how well those speeches performed.

The treatment of Trump’s rallies is a sensitive subject for Fox. A person familiar with the network’s inner workings said “there is no top-down order” to avoid Trump’s rallies, and described the chatter as “uninformed speculation.”

Last month Fox faced controversy for removing longtime anchor and Trump ally Maria Bartiromo, who had shared internal network guidance with Trump aide Peter Navarro, who then passed it along to the White House.

The directive told Fox Business shows to avoid covering a prime-time Trump speech full of unverified claims about election vulnerabilities. According to Navarro , the note said, “Hi – We don’t want to promote it or push to the speech at all. We don’t want to do 2020 election segments at all Thurs or Friday.”

The flagship Fox News channel did air the prime-time speech in July, but barely followed up on it afterward.

Now the rally coverage, or lack thereof, is coming under close examination. Last weekend Trump noticed that his midterm rallies weren’t getting the attention he craves from the network he covets.

“Sad to see that Fox & Friends (Sunday) is not covering our packed house and incredibly enthusiastic (beyond!) Rally that took place in Ohio last night, or the ones in Alabama, Texas, or Oklahoma over the past two days,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Refuting news reports of empty seats at some events, Trump insisted “they were all sold out,” and blamed an “old undercurrent” at Fox for ignoring him.

“Our people want to see our Rallies, and reports on our Rallies, on FoxNews, or they will very quickly stop watching (like I am doing right now!),” he wrote.

Trump has made similar threats before, but without much success. Fox largely tuned out Trump in 2021 and 2022, but the network’s audience stayed loyal.

Trump “needs Fox way more than Fox needs him,” Mediaite co-managing editor Tom Durante, who formerly worked at Fox News and its sister property, the New York Post, wrote earlier this week.

Durante pointed out that despite Trump’s frustration about the lack of rally coverage, he has continued to watch Fox, as evidenced by his recent posts and comments complaining about Democrats appearing on the network.

“​​Fox tried this act once before, and almost went out of business,” Trump wrote in one of the posts.

Fox’s business remains so strong that it makes other media operators envious. Trump has tried to prop up other outlets catering to conservative viewers, like Newsmax and One America News, but those channels have relatively small audiences.

Charles Herring, the president of One America News, said his channel is carrying all of Trump’s midterm rallies — “generally commercial-free, typical of our live coverage of events,” he noted.

Fox, on the other hand, has kept the commercials and commentary flowing, but without the rallies that helped brand Trump’s political movement.

On Wednesday evening, Laura Ingraham began her show with a live report from a correspondent at Trump’s rally in San Antonio, Texas. But once Trump took the stage, there was no further mention of it. Later hours of programming didn’t mention the rally at all.

The correspondent, Brooke Taylor, noted that Trump is on the defensive in Texas: “This is a state he won by nearly 14 points just two years ago, and now he’s finding himself back here in Texas defending this state and keeping it red. I mean, hard to believe those words are even coming out of my mouth, right?”

Then Ingraham moved on to an interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Fox did live-stream the rally online, but for the president, not getting attention on the flagship channel is undoubtedly a slight.

On Thursday morning, the San Antonio rally only merited a couple of brief mentions on “Fox & Friends.”

An innocent explanation might involve editorial judgment: A stemwinder Trump rally, full of repetitive and predictable lines, is not inherently newsworthy. Fox has lots of other material to broadcast, including a rare sit-down interview with Jeff Bezos on Wednesday.

A more cynical explanation might involve the political calculations that Fox has made for decades.

As Durante put it, Fox was around long before Trump “became a political candidate. And they’ll be there long after he’s out of office.”

杰西卡·科斯切尔尼亚克/路透社

唐纳德·特朗普总统不断举行中期选举集会，而福克斯新闻却一直选择不直播这些集会。

这一节目安排决定具有巨大的政治和文化意义。福克斯新闻是美国收视率最高的有线电视频道，十多年来一直是特朗普接触选民的主要渠道之一。

特朗普对此感到不安。但福克斯新闻显然认为他目前的演讲不值得完整播出，这充分说明了当前的政治形势。

这意味着：福克斯新闻认同共和党候选人和策略师们私下里担忧特朗普会损害他们在期中选举中的机会。

福克斯的回应基本上就是把他拉下水。或许福克斯的掌门人鲁珀特·默多克和他的儿子拉克兰认为，该电视台的评论员比总统本人更能代表共和党发声，尤其是在特朗普支持率跌至历史新低的当下。

“我们经常谈论特朗普是‘首席执行制片人’，但常常忘记，即使是最受欢迎的节目，在播出多一季之后也会后劲不足，”资深共和党策略师道格·海耶说。

“这就是我们现在的处境和原因——无论你身处奥沙克湖还是爱荷华州的埃米茨堡，每天都能看到越来越少的特朗普旗帜飘扬，”海耶补充道。

福克斯电视台对此事未公开置评。但该电视台现任和前任主持人表示，这是一项经过深思熟虑的考量。

一位不愿透露姓名的福克斯新闻现任主持人表示：“这是自上而下的决定。”这位主持人说，他们官方并不清楚具体原因，但目前该电视台的普遍看法是“特朗普的支持率已经下降了”。

众所周知，福克斯电视台的高管和主持人对每日收视率非常敏感。2016年，观众对特朗普的关注促成了这位候选人与该电视台的合作。

直到2024年，在特朗普竞选连任的最后几周，他仍然是福克斯电视台收视率的保证。当特朗普在麦迪逊广场花园举行大型集会时，福克斯电视台进行了现场直播，该时段的收视率翻了三倍。

但如今的收视率形势已大不相同。上个月共和党在德克萨斯州达拉斯举行中期选举大会时，福克斯电视台直播特朗普的演讲，收视率却几乎没有变化。

特朗普一向在意人们对他受欢迎程度的看法，因此他后来开始误导人们，让他们误以为这些演讲效果很好。

对福克斯新闻来说，如何报道特朗普的竞选集会是一个敏感话题。一位熟悉该电视台内部运作的人士表示，“并没有自上而下的命令”要避开特朗普的集会，并称这些传言是“未经证实的猜测”。

上个月，福克斯新闻因解雇长期担任主播且是特朗普盟友的玛丽亚·巴蒂罗姆而面临争议，巴蒂罗姆曾与特朗普的助手彼得·纳瓦罗分享了内部网络指导意见，而纳瓦罗随后又将这些意见传递给了白宫。

该指令要求福克斯商业频道旗下节目避免报道特朗普在黄金时段发表的、充斥着未经证实的选举漏洞言论的演讲。据纳瓦罗称，该指令写道：“您好——我们完全不想宣传或推广这场演讲。我们周四和周五都不想播出任何与2020年大选相关的节目。”

福克斯新闻旗舰频道确实在7月份黄金时段播出了这段演讲，但之后几乎没有进行后续报道。

现在，集会报道的情况（或者说缺乏报道）正受到密切关注。上周末，特朗普注意到，他的中期选举集会并没有得到他梦寐以求的媒体关注。

“令人遗憾的是，《福克斯与朋友们》（周日版）没有报道我们昨晚在俄亥俄州举行的座无虚席、热情高涨的集会，也没有报道过去两天在阿拉巴马州、德克萨斯州或俄克拉荷马州举行的集会，”特朗普在 Truth Social 上写道。

针对一些活动出现空座的新闻报道，特朗普坚称“所有场次都已售罄”，并指责福克斯新闻内部“由来已久的暗流”忽视了他。

“我们的人民希望在福克斯新闻上看到我们的集会和集会报道，否则他们很快就会停止观看（就像我现在这样！），”他写道。

特朗普此前也曾发出过类似的威胁，但收效甚微。福克斯新闻在2021年和2022年基本上没有播出特朗普的节目，但该电视台的观众依然忠诚。

Mediaite 联合执行主编汤姆·杜兰特（Tom Durante）本周早些时候写道，特朗普“比福克斯新闻更需要福克斯新闻”。杜兰特曾就职于福克斯新闻及其姊妹媒体《纽约邮报》。

杜兰特指出，尽管特朗普对集会报道不足感到沮丧，但他仍然继续观看福克斯新闻，他最近的帖子和评论就证明了这一点，他抱怨民主党人出现在该电视台上。

“福克斯电视台以前也试过这种做法，结果差点倒闭，”特朗普在其中一篇帖子中写道。

福克斯的业务依然强劲，令其他媒体运营商艳羡不已。特朗普曾试图扶持其他面向保守派观众的媒体，例如Newsmax和One America News，但这些频道的观众群体相对较小。

“一个美国新闻”总裁查尔斯·赫林表示，他的频道正在播出特朗普的所有中期选举集会——“通常没有商业广告，这是我们现场报道活动的典型做法，”他指出。

另一方面，福克斯新闻虽然继续投放广告和发表评论，但却没有举办那些帮助塑造特朗普政治运动形象的集会。

周三晚间，劳拉·英格拉姆的节目以一位记者在德克萨斯州圣安东尼奥举行的特朗普竞选集会现场的报道开场。但特朗普登台后，节目中就再也没有提及此事。之后几个小时的节目也完全没有提到这场集会。

记者布鲁克·泰勒指出，特朗普在德克萨斯州处于守势：“两年前他曾以近14个百分点的优势赢得了这个州，而现在他却发现自己回到了德克萨斯州，要捍卫这个州，保住它的共和党阵地。我的意思是，真不敢相信这些话竟然是从我嘴里说出来的，对吧？”

随后，英格拉姆转而采访了财政部长斯科特·贝森特。

福克斯电视台确实在网上直播了这场集会，但对总统来说，没有在旗舰频道上获得关注无疑是一种轻视。

周四上午，圣安东尼奥集会在“福克斯与朋友们”节目中只被简短地提及了几次。

一种合理的解释可能涉及编辑判断：一场冗长的特朗普集会，充斥着重复且可预测的言论，本身并不具备新闻价值。福克斯新闻还有很多其他素材要播出，包括周三对杰夫·贝佐斯的一次难得的专访。

更愤世嫉俗的解释可能与福克斯几十年来进行的政治算计有关。

正如杜兰特所说，福克斯新闻在特朗普“成为政治候选人”之前就已存在。“而且在他卸任之后，他们还会继续存在。”