When he appeared on a Fox News panel days after the presidential election, smiling and answering questions about his potential role in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration, it was already a very good week for Senator Marco Rubio.
“He’s going to make good choices.” Rubio said.avoiding any definitive answer. “He had some really good people working with him the first time around and there are some really good people working on it now.”
Of course, Rubio is now exploited to become the next secretary of state, joining a growing list of cabinet appointees who were either regulars or paid contributors to Fox News — the once-struggling channel is now poised to win big under a second Trump presidency.
On election night, it was Rupert Murdoch’s channel that completely decimated CNN, attracting millions more viewers than its rival. While a Fox News host described Trump as “a phoenix from the ashes“, the positive vibes that night were a far cry from 2020, when the network made him angry by declaring Arizona for Joe Biden.
Before its recent audience gain, Fox News recently experienced a tumultuous journey: defamatory comments Dominion voting machine scandal cost him $787.5 million; it bled public to right-wing newcomers NewsMax and One American News Network (OANN); and then there was the famous firing of the popular prime time host Tucker Carlson.
But as Trump lays the groundwork for a Fox News-inspired White House, the question is: What role will the media company play in the new presidency?
“Now that it’s back in power, compared to networks like NewsMax and OANN and a lot of podcasts and a lot of websites, it’s mainstream,” said Wendy Via, the association’s co-founder. Global Project Against Hate and Extremism and an expert on far-right politics in the United States. “(Fox News) is going to be the place where all of his friends, all of these people that he’s going to nominate or nominate, are going to go and sing his praises.”
Several Fox News insiders will be at the heart of the Trump administration and able to exert their influence: the new border czar, Tom Homan, is a former paid aide who said: “I love Fox» on the network a few hours after his appointment, while the future director of the CIA, John Ratcliffe, also appeared on Fox News several times.
“This will be Trump’s network,” Via said. “So this will be the kind of respected media outlet that will support every one of Trump’s anti-democratic proposals, initiatives (and) actions.”
Additionally, controversial Congressman Matt Gaetz, spearhead of the Maga movement and recurring face on Fox News, is Trump’s pick for attorney general.
Perhaps, or at least so far, no other Trump appointment personifies Fox News’ dominance in the new administration than the appointment of Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth. as future Secretary of Defense. Hegseth, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran with no military or national security experience, takes the reins of the world’s most powerful military, which he has regularly criticized on air as “also”woke up» for the fights.
“Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth as defense secretary is our best indicator of how much he will value Fox News over the next four years,” said Margot Susca, an assistant professor of journalism at American University and author of Covered: How private equity helped destroy America’s newspapers and undermine democracy. “What he would get with a loyalist like Hegseth has nothing to do with the pushback he received during his first administration from James Mattis, a four-star general who, of course, resigned after disagreement over Syria and called Trump a threat to the Constitution.”
After the 2020 election, the Biden administration made fall under fire for hiring a number of MSNBC talking heads, none of whom held positions as serious as those overseeing the Pentagon.
“Pete Hegseth has been an exceptional host on Fox & Friends and Fox Nation,” a Fox News spokesperson said in an emailed statement. “His ideas and analysis, particularly on the military, resonated deeply with our viewers and made the program the major success it is today.”
The same spokesperson added that the network was “extremely proud” and “wishes him well in Washington.”
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Susca highlighted the “Fox company is a publicly traded companymeaning that its primary mission is to serve shareholders, not the general public”, and its “leaders will do everything they can to increase audiences and profits in this competitive attention economy media like OANN that lean even more to the right.
In other words, Murdoch’s global media empire, which has already raked in more than 3 billion dollars in turnover in the last quarter of 2024has everything to gain from his naked allegiance to Trump.
Susca continued: “When that loyalty extends to news programs, you’ll likely see a channel like Fox News become a more prominent voice for Trump’s actions rather than acting as a watchdog on policies administrative and their impacts. The biggest loser in such a system is the public.”
During his last presidency, Trump often called Fox News live, providing unprecedented access to a modern president in media history. But the media landscape since his mandate has changed radically. Even though Fox News is armed with a retinue of Trump acolytes sure to keep its relevance and ratings high, it still faces challengers.
Not only are NewsMax and OANN vying for Trump’s attention, but even Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, has become one of the platforms of choice for right-wing politicians and Maga types. It is also Musk, not Murdoch, who appears poised to become one of the most influential figures in Trump’s orbit; Musk is already participating in calls with world leaders and will lead the new Ministry of Government Effectiveness.
“Musk, as the owner of “OANN, Newsmax and X are fighting for their own piece of the billion-dollar media pie in an increasingly polarized and fractured media ecosystem.”
Despite everything, Fox News remains the undisputed vector of Trumpism: THE “grand theory of replacement“, election denial and attacks on Trump’s Democratic rivals were and still are the pillars of his programming.
“Trump gets an unfiltered cable audience, and Fox gets a former reality TV star who continually lowers the bar with his outlandish and often non-factual statements that drive ratings,” Susca said.