Fox News tried to play hardball with Donald Trump by banning his surrogates from the post-debate spin room.
That looked like payback for Trump skipping the debate and driving down the audience numbers.
But now Fox News declared war on Donald Trump and it blew up in their face in one huge way.
Without Donald Trump, the first GOP debate was not nearly the opening contest of the 2016 election.
“Only 12.8 million watched Fox News’ Republican primary debate Wednesday night in Milwaukee, about 13 million viewers less than former President Donald Trump’s debate debut in 2015, Nielsen Media Research data shows,” Breitbart reported.
The 12.8 million for the first debate was also less than the 15 million viewers CNN attracted for the initial Democrat debate during the 2020 cycle.
Trump opted out of the debate due to his massive lead over the rest of the field.
Instead, Trump filmed an interview with Tucker Carlson on X, formerly known as Twitter.
During the interview, Trump discussed the declining state of the media and cable news.
Trump said the media saw declining audiences because no one trusted the press.
“I think cable’s down because it’s lost credibility. MSNBC, or as they say MSDNC is so bad,” Trump stated. “It’s so wrong. What they write, and what they do, and what they say, it’s fake news.”
The media positioned itself as the “resistance” to Donald Trump after his victory in 2016 and there was not one lie that was too outlandish for the press to report about him as part of their smear campaign.
Trump said this obvious opposition and lack of journalistic integrity led to a massive loss of trust among the American people for the press.
That also included Fox News, Trump explained, as the channel lost 30 percent of its audience following the inexplicable and still unexplained decision to fire Carlson.
“So you have MSNBC, and you have CNN, who’s absolutely doing no ratings at all. I mean, they’re dead, but they’re doing none because they don’t have credibility, they really don’t have credibility. Fox is way down, as you know, and the good old days are long ago,” Trump stated.
“I think it was a terrible move getting rid of you,” Trump continued. “You were number one on television, and all of a sudden, we’re doing this interview, but we’ll get bigger ratings using this crazy forum that you’re using than probably the debate, our competition.”
Without Trump on stage and Carlson to anchor the coverage, Fox News Channel’s ratings clearly suffered.
But what worries some former viewers and fans is that management is ok with that if it means using the network to pivot away from Trump and his agenda.
Patriot Political will keep you up-to-date on any developments to this ongoing story.
