{"id":134001,"date":"2020-08-26T10:08:46","date_gmt":"2020-08-26T18:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134001"},"modified":"2020-08-28T09:58:37","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T17:58:37","slug":"hoax-donald-trump-fox-news-and-the-dangerous-distortion-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=134001","title":{"rendered":"Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brian Stelter writes in his new book<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know what we need,\u201d a senior producer of Fox & Friends told her staff during a rare dip in the ratings. \u201cWe need outrage.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s really what F&F was about. Certain segments were designed to instill fear; others, to stoke hate; others, less often, to spark love. And the hosts were encouraged to ask viewers for feedback to confirm that the segments were having the intended effect. Gavin Hadden, the executive producer, sometimes had the foxfriends@foxnews.com inbox up in a window on his computer in the control room to monitor responses as the seconds rolled by. Had the viewers had enough of Geraldo yet? If so, wrap him! It was the closest thing to Choose Your Own Adventure on TV.
\nHadden was one of the most important people at Fox that no one outside Fox ever heard about. He joined F&F in 2006, when Gretchen Carlson was the female cohost, and worked his way up to the top spot by proving he knew \u201cwhat works\u201d and what doesn\u2019t. What works:<\/p>\n

Stories about undocumented immigrants killing Americans
\nStories about citizens standing up to the government bureaucracy
\nStories about college students disrespecting the flag
\nStories about hate crime hoaxes
\nStories about liberal media outlets suppressing the truth
\nAnd, whenever possible, stories involving attractive women (They could be the hero or the villain, it didn\u2019t matter, but they had to be attractive.)<\/p>\n

\u201cJob one is to titillate the audience,\u201d the former producer said. \u201cFor celebrity stories, I had to pick the sexiest photos. And then I\u2019d still hear, \u2018Can you find hotter photos of her?\u2019 Sigh. Okay, we\u2019ll spend another thousand bucks on three photos from Getty.\u201d It got to the point where the producer knew, without being told, which specific photos of Angelina Jolie the execs would expect to see. This sexualized approach spilled over to other parts of the show. If it was a quiet news day and the producers needed to fill a spare block, \u201cwe would look and see, what are the locals doing?\u201d Fox tapped into its network of stations in big cities all across the country. \u201cThen we would Google around to find the hottest reporter.\u201d Workers striking in Detroit or rush hour flooding in Houston? Sometimes that\u2019s how the editorial call was made.
\n\u201cYou have to understand how completely sexualized Fox is,\u201d a former star said. What was visible to viewers on the air also affected the culture off the air.
\nSex is what Ailes wanted, and sex is what he got. He used his power to enforce the short skirts and \u201cleg cams\u201d and exploitative segments that kept men watching. He also abused his power by preying on dozens of women, including Gretchen Carlson, who hatched a plan to hold him accountable. Ailes\u2019s downfall would coincide with Trump\u2019s takeover of the American right. <\/p>\n

* While others heard a rambling and racist campaign speech, 5 p.m. cohost Kimberly Guilfoyle heard a rousing call to arms. \u201cIt was like The LEGO Movie, the theme song \u2018Everything Is Awesome.\u2019 It really got me excited. I felt richer just listening to him!\u201d Guilfoyle exclaimed while the control room re-racked the tape of Trump gliding down the escalator for the umpteenth time.
\nGuilfoyle, who was once the first lady of San Francisco through her marriage to the city\u2019s mayor, Democrat Gavin Newsom, was tapped by Ailes in 2006 to be a weekend host and legal analyst. Guilfoyle was mighty hungry for airtime. \u201cKimberly\u2019s an avatar,\u201d a Fox insider said. \u201cIf MSNBC offered her a better gig with more money, she\u2019d be a raging liberal.\u201d
\nGuilfoyle maintained that she\u2019d always been a registered Republican. She occupied what was known as the \u201cleg chair\u201d on the set of The Five, and it was a prime perch from which to be noticed by Trump. \u201cLet\u2019s see\u201d what happens, she said on launch day, already sounding like Trump. \u201cI don\u2019t know. I think it will be fun!\u201d
\n\u201cI get it, that he\u2019s entertaining,\u201d cohost Dana Perino said, piping in with the GOP establishment position. Perino, the former Bush 43 press secretary, scoffed at Trump and wondered how long his stunt would last. Come on, she said, prodding her cohosts, \u201cyou\u2019re gonna build a wall and you\u2019re gonna make Mexico pay for it?\u201d She pushed the show\u2019s satirist Greg Gutfeld: \u201cOn what planet could that actually happen?\u201d
\n\u201cPlanet Trump,\u201d Gutfeld replied.
\nGutfeld looked at Trump very skeptically, but noticed something Fox-y about the topics Trump hit in his speech. \u201cHe did ISIS, Obamacare, immigration, Bowe Bergdahl,\u201d Gutfeld said. \u201cHe did the Five rundown!\u201d<\/p>\n

* Ailes was a Bush guy at heart, having worked so closely with H.W. decades earlier. According to Ailes\u2019s confidants, he favored Jeb Bush early on in the primary season. He also told his New Jersey neighbors that he was pulling for Chris Christie.<\/p>\n

* When his campaign began, Rupert Murdoch claimed to detest him. Murdoch was always more of a Paul Ryan or Jeb Bush kind of Republican. He wanted comprehensive immigration reform and tax cuts and relaxed regulations, not \u201cMexicans are rapists\u201d rhetoric. In mid-July, Murdoch tweeted, \u201cWhen is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing his friends, let alone the whole country?\u201d Behind the scenes, Murdoch tried to prop up contenders like Ben Carson, who prepped for his 2016 run by being a paid pundit on Fox. And Murdoch urged others, like Michael Bloomberg, to step into the ring and challenge Trump as well. So much for that.<\/p>\n

* The host of The Kelly File was Fox\u2019s No. 1 rising star. Kelly branded herself as a free-thinker in contrast to O\u2019Reilly\u2019s faux folksiness and Hannity\u2019s blind partisanship. She knew to stand on the side of Fox\u2019s viewers, yes, which meant insisting Santa is white amid heaps of social media mockery, but she was also willing to buck the system. She wanted to be unpredictable. Uncontrollable. And she was succeeding like no one at Fox ever had. Over the course of a decade, she transformed from an unhappy lawyer to a bona fide television star. Her career trajectory was the stuff of TV news dreams: from bottom-of-the-ladder general assignment reporter to Supreme Court correspondent to mid-morning co-anchor to host of her very own two-hour afternoon show. Kelly was everywhere: She was a regular on The O\u2019Reilly Factor. She anchored election night. And in 2013, Ailes moved her to prime time.
\nAlmost immediately, The Kelly File at 9 p.m. was one of the hottest shows on cable. The talk show tilted right but got good press for Kelly\u2019s surprising \u201cindependent\u201d moments. It was a win all around: for Kelly, for Ailes, for the Fox ad sales execs. The only loser was O\u2019Reilly, who hated seeing Kelly challenge him in the 25\u201354 demo.
\nO\u2019Reilly publicly claimed to stand up for Kelly, and she said she respected him too, but they sniped at each other\u2019s shows at every turn. O\u2019Reilly resented her good press and her relationships with Rupert and Lachlan. Kelly mocked O\u2019Reilly\u2019s \u201clooking out for you\u201d shtick and his lackadaisical approach. (He taped his show several hours ahead of time, while she was live.) Execs dreaded the end of the month because O\u2019Reilly would argue over the ratings results. If Kelly was No. 1 in the demo, he would come up with a reason to say it shouldn\u2019t count. The way O\u2019Reilly saw things, he had made Kelly a star by giving her airtime on his show. \u201cThe Kelly File was formed from me!\u201d he groused. Ailes laughed away O\u2019Reilly\u2019s bellyaching: \u201cHe thinks he made her a star? No, I made her a fucking star.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Trump\u2019s media relationships were so transactional that you could move from bad to good in the space of a minute. I noticed this when I conversed with Trump at the TIME 100 gala. On Reliable Sources I scrutinized his loose relationship with the truth every week; no one could mistake Reliable for a pro-Trump talk show. But when Trump saw me, he smiled and pointed and said, \u201cGood show. Good numbers.\u201d He meant the ratings, which were way up thanks to campaign coverage. I took it as an attempt at flattery.<\/p>\n

* It is hard to imagine now, but there once was a time when Rupert Murdoch sternly told Trump to \u201ccalm down.\u201d
\nThe date was February 18, 2016. The octogenarian mogul was gradually giving up on Jeb and giving in to Trump. His reluctance was palpable for all to read on Twitter. When Trump flipped out at Kelly after the first debate, Rupert defended Fox\u2019s moderation and said \u201cfriend Donald has to learn this is public life.\u201d On December 15, 2015, he tweeted that Donald \u201cseems to be getting even more thin skinned!\u201d He wondered, \u201cIs flying around the country every day tiring him?\u201d
\nAll campaign season long, aboard Trump Force One and atop Trump Tower, the candidate watched Fox to get talking points, used Fox to vanquish his rivals, and complained about Fox to manipulate the coverage. He was constantly on the phone with Ailes ranting about perceived slights, which Rupert then heard about.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re showing the wrong polls!\u201d
\n\u201cWhen are you going to fire Karl Rove?\u201d
\n\u201cWhy is Megyn such a bitch?\u201d
\nAnd he ranted in public too. On February 17, 2016, he claimed Fox didn\u2019t want him to win. The next day he accused Murdoch of rigging a scientific poll. That\u2019s when Rupert talked down to Donald like a grandparent soothing a toddler.
\n\u201cTime to calm down,\u201d Rupert tweeted. He observed that if he was running an \u201canti-Trump conspiracy\u201d then he was doing a \u201clousy job!\u201d
\nRupert \u201calways craved a relationship with the US president. And he really craved it when it could help his business,\u201d according to a family friend. Rupert wanted the ability to strut into the Oval Office at a moment\u2019s notice. He wanted the state dinner invites and the policy briefings. Trump could be his ticket, if only the fellow could settle down.
\nIf only.
\nTrump continued to come up with new ways to attack Kelly. Fox execs fumed\u2014at Trump, at the RNC for not corralling the guy, and at the press for delighting in the so-called \u201cfeud.\u201d They weren\u2019t feuding\u2014Trump was just wildly thrashing around, trying to cull Kelly from the Fox herd and make an example out of her. Almost every week during the primaries, I heard from a Fox exec or anchor who groused about the GOP front-runner.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s nuts,\u201d one Fox exec complained to me.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s out of control,\u201d said another.
\n\u201cFuck him,\u201d said a third exec.
\nBut their complaints rang hollow for this reason: Whenever Trump wasn\u2019t pissing on Fox and Fox producers weren\u2019t cursing over him, he was live with Hannity or O\u2019Reilly or Greta Van Susteren or Fox & Friends or Special Report or Fox News Sunday. And his rallies were being carried live on Fox and all across cable TV. His campaign was fought mostly on television, with the rallies serving as elaborate stages for the show.
\nKelly noticed all the interviews and rallies and live shots. She felt like Ailes did the bare minimum to defend her. Other insiders saw it the same way. Ailes, on the other hand, wasn\u2019t sure what more Kelly expected from him. He was like an ego juggler, having to keep up with a dozen multimillionaire stars and Trump too, and he wasn\u2019t as nimble as he used to be. For all the talk of him as an all-powerful and sinister force in politics, what was not well understood is that he was, according to ex-employees and even friends, \u201closing it\u201d in his final few years. \u201cIt was so sad, seeing him lose his fastball,\u201d one confidant said. He simply didn\u2019t have much fight left.
\nAnd his history of abuse was finally, finally catching up with him.<\/p>\n

* \u201cCable news is a snake pit,\u201d Bill O\u2019Reilly warned Megyn Kelly when she moved to prime time in 2013. He knew because he was the biggest python of them all. But Kelly could bite too: Years later, another Fox host told me \u201cI\u2019ve never known someone with as many enemies as Megyn Kelly.\u201d
\nThose internal enemies existed long before Kelly spoke to the Paul, Weiss lawyers about Ailes\u2019s sick treatment of women. Here\u2019s why: When someone goes from a correspondent gig to the anchor desk and then to her own two-hour show and then her own prime time spot and a $15 million-a-year contract, others are going to feel passed over.<\/p>\n

* In the immediate aftermath of Ailes\u2019s expulsion, the man was portrayed in the press like a nuclear weapon pilfered by a rogue state. There were numerous reports that Ailes was advising Trump ahead of the debates. Clinton campaign aides talked about what kind of advice Ailes might be feeding her opponent. But they didn\u2019t need to worry. While Ailes did run a very informal debate prep in Bedminster, his coaching was of limited value, partly because he babbled about past debates and bragged about his past victories\u2014a sure way to lose Trump\u2019s attention. Besides, as Ailes once said, his talent was in getting people to loosen up and be themselves on TV. \u201cIf you see them at home,\u201d he said of typical politicians, \u201cthey\u2019re laughing and they\u2019re physical and they could move. And as soon as you put them on television they turn into stiffs and they\u2019re boring.\u201d So his go-to move, he said, was to \u201cpeel the layers back so they could be themselves.\u201d Trump definitely didn\u2019t need that advice. There were no layers. What you saw on TV was what you got.
\nSo Trump didn\u2019t really need Ailes. Neither did Fox. The network kept humming along without him. The Murdochs and Shine and Abernethy were moving the network from a dictator model to a committee model of leadership. They didn\u2019t try to improve the content; they just kept a good, profitable thing going. The summertime scandal had proven that everyone was replaceable, even Roger Ailes.<\/p>\n

…Trump was in charge of the television wing of the GOP now and had all the deputies he needed. Rudy Giuliani was at debate camp along with Fox commentator Laura Ingraham and assorted friends. Hannity was at Trump\u2019s beck and call. And Fox & Friends spewed toxic waste at his opponent every day.<\/p>\n

* There was a moment, after Ailes lost, before Trump won, when Fox News could have gone in a different, truthier direction. Ryan Grim, the DC bureau chief of the Huffington Post , wrote a pivotal October 2016 story about what might have been. It was titled \u201cIs Shep Smith The Future of Fox News?\u201d
\nShep was a hero to the Fox newsroom. He was unlike every other newsman on the air. First people noticed his boyish good looks and Mississippi drawl. Then his unflappable delivery. He exuded an electricity. Without shouting, he made viewers want to listen. A reporter once called Shep \u201cthe Red Bull of TV news anchors.\u201d
\nShep came from the Walter Cronkite \u201cthat\u2019s the way it is\u201d school of journalism\u2014which, as Fox made its rightward turns, increasingly clashed with Hannity\u2019s \u201cthis is the way I want it to be\u201d school of spin. Shep stood for journalism while Hannity tried to tear down journalism. How could they possibly share airtime? How could they coexist? Eventually, in the Trump age, they couldn\u2019t.
\nBut in October 2016 Fox was planning for the Clinton age. Smith and others on the news side of Fox News \u201cwere hoping that with Ailes collapsing and Murdoch coming back in, that this was their moment,\u201d Grim told me. \u201cAnd perhaps with Hillary winning the White House\u2014perhaps it was a moment for them to pivot.\u201d<\/p>\n

* At 5 p.m. Megyn Kelly, Bret Baier, and a raft of producers gathered for a final pre-show prep meeting. \u201cWe were all around this long table, Rupert at the head of the table, and all of the producers and anchors on both sides of it,\u201d Chris Wallace told me later. \u201cThey gave us the first wave of exit polls. While it didn\u2019t flat out say Clinton was going to win, if you read it
\nyou had to think Clinton was going to win.
\n\u201cIn fact,\u201d he added, the sheaf of paper even said \u201cit was likely that we would make the call between eleven and eleven-thirty.\u201d The networks never called the election before West Coast polls closed at eleven, so this was another sign of Clinton\u2019s apparent strength. The forecast called for an early night.
\nAn exec at ABC News, Chris Vlasto,
\nshared the early exit poll results with the Trump campaign. Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump told the patriarch that the data looked bleak. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to win,\u201d Donald told Melania.<\/p>\n

* The early exit poll findings informed the tone of the early eve ning TV coverage. But by 8:30 p.m., as actual votes poured in, the picture started to change, just as Parscale had expected. \u201cThe sweep that the exit polls had predicted just wasn\u2019t happening,\u201d Wallace recalled. \u201cNow we were down to counting individual votes.\u201d
\nThere were no immediate calls in states like Michigan or Wisconsin. Wallace factored that in as, on-air at 9:05, he told Kelly that he was becoming \u201copen to the possibility that Donald Trump could be the next President of the United States.\u201d His voice betrayed his own amazement at the words. It was a pivotal moment in the coverage of the night because he said aloud what others had until then been saying only to themselves. \u201cI\u2019m kind of proud of it,\u201d Wallace told me, \u201cin the sense that it altered altered our coverage a little bit.\u201d
\nIt sure did. The crowd outside Fox\u2019s sparkling new $20 million street-level studio started to cheer. \u201cI turned around toward them and said, \u2018I\u2019m not saying he\u2019s going to win, folks, but it\u2019s possible,\u2019 \u201d Wallace recalled. Trump\u2019s election night party was five short blocks up the street at the Midtown Hilton, so some people strolled back and forth between the Fox broadcast and the ballroom. Pirro, Ingraham, and former Fox contributor Sarah Palin all hung out at the Hilton. Trump was still ensconced in Trump Tower, wondering whether to believe Parscale\u2019s insistence that they could pull this thing off. Wallace\u2019s comments had an immediate impact. There were tears of joy and tears of fear in Trump\u2019s inner circle. Chris Christie, who was in charge of the transition team, sensed that Trump was scared shitless.
\nTrump watched from a room on the fourteenth floor of Trump Tower, which was actually just the sixth floor in a building full of exaggerations. Around midnight he went upstairs to his residence to come up with an acceptance speech. Once it was clear that Trump was going to win, Hannity called in to Fox and called the result a \u201cmodern-day political miracle.\u201d At 2:41 a.m., Fox News was the first TV network to officially project that Trump was the president-elect. Baier credited him with winning \u201cthe most unreal, surreal election we have ever seen.\u201d Wallace looked across the studio, where one of the oversized screens flashed \u201cTRUMP ELECTED PRESIDENT,\u201d and he shook his head, the way you try to wake yourself up from a nightmare or a dream. \u201cIs this really happening?\u201d
\n\u201cThere\u2019s nothing more exciting for a political reporter,\u201d Wallace said, \u201cthan when things go off-script.\u201d
\nKelly looked into the camera and wondered if she could remain at Fox.
\nAiles watched from the sidelines from his mansion and took comfort in a bag of chips.<\/p>\n

* O\u2019Reilly was on CBS This Morning to promote his next book, even though it wasn\u2019t coming out for another week. O\u2019Reilly had been a staunch defender of Ailes, and on CBS that day he went further, saying he\u2019d \u201chad enough\u201d of people treating Fox News like a \u201cpi\u00f1ata.\u201d
\nWhen the anchors asked about Kelly\u2019s allegations against Ailes, O\u2019Reilly said \u201cI\u2019m not that interested in this.\u201d
\nNorah O\u2019Donnell interjected: \u201cIn sexual harassment? You\u2019re not interested in sexual harassment?\u201d
\nO\u2019Reilly: \u201cI\u2019m not interested in basically litigating something that is finished, that makes my network look bad. Okay? I\u2019m not interested in making my network look bad. At all. That doesn\u2019t interest me one bit.\u201d
\nO\u2019Donnell: \u201cIs that what she\u2019s doing?\u201d
\nO\u2019Reilly: \u201cI don\u2019t know. But I\u2019m not going to even bother with it.\u201d
\nThis old white guy culture was still deeply entrenched at Fox even though Ailes was gone. Kelly, disgusted by the CBS appearance, wrote an email to management around three in the afternoon that called out O\u2019Reilly\u2019s \u201chistory of harassment.\u201d
\n\u201cHis exact attitude of shaming women into \u2018shutting the hell up\u2019 about harassment on grounds that it will disgrace the company, is in part how Fox got into the decades-long Ailes mess to begin with,\u201d Kelly wrote. She urged them to intervene\u2014to defend her\u2014and to defend the other women O\u2019Reilly insulted.
\nAccording to Kelly, Bill Shine called her and promised to \u201cdeal\u201d with O\u2019Reilly. But he didn\u2019t. O\u2019Reilly went ahead and pretaped his 8 p.m. show and included another shot at Kelly. Her executive producer Tom Lowell caught wind of it early in the 8 p.m. hour and alerted her.
\n\u201cWe\u2019ve got a problem,\u201d he said. \u201cI just looked at his rundown. At 8:50, he\u2019s going to double down.\u201d
\nLowell tried to get through to Shine. O\u2019Reilly was on tape, but Lowell had an idea for a breaking news insert that could replace the offending segment and stop the 8 p.m. host from attacking the 9 p.m. host. You\u2019d think that the copresident of Fox News would call back and thank him\u2014Yes, Tom, please break in, thank you for alerting me to this, I\u2019m sorry I didn\u2019t take action sooner\u2014but that\u2019s not what Shine said. He said, \u201cThe segment stands.\u201d Lowell had to go tell Kelly.
\nAt 8:50, O\u2019Reilly devoted his \u201cFactor Tip of the Day\u201d segment to the Kelly fracas\u2014disguising it, barely, as being about the subject of \u201cloyalty\u201d\u2014by saying that \u201cif somebody is paying you a wage, you owe that person or company allegiance. If you don\u2019t like what\u2019s happening in the workplace,\u201d he lectured, \u201cgo to human resources or leave! I\u2019ve done that. And then take the action you need to take afterward.\u201d
\nThis was beyond audacious, coming from a man who was credibly accused of sexual harassment in a 2004 lawsuit, and who had\u2014unbeknownst to his viewers\u2014settled multiple cases with other accusers. \u201cLoyalty is good,\u201d he concluded, condescension dripping from his voice.
\nLoyalty to whom? The Murdochs knew, from the law firm investigation, what Ailes had done. They had approved of Kelly writing about her experience. Her book was for their publishing house! Kelly was in disbelief and almost in tears. When she went live at 9 p.m., she hid her shock from O\u2019Reilly\u2019s drive-by shooting, but she mentioned the Murdochs at the end of the hour: \u201cLike me,\u201d she said, \u201cthey believe that sunlight is the best disinfectant.\u201d
\nRight then, Kelly knew she was done with Fox. Done with these executives, done with this place. That night, she told friends, was the \u201cfinal straw.\u201d She wondered: Was the decision to allow O\u2019Reilly\u2019s drive-by made by Shine? Or did he consult with Rupert and Lachlan? Were they afraid to intervene because they were trying to sign O\u2019Reilly to a new contract? Were they just ignorant? She never found out the answer. But the episode spoke to a basic lack of leadership that would hobble the network for years to come.<\/p>\n

* Lachlan truly wanted to keep Kelly in the fold. He offered her a $100 million contract plus all the sweeteners she could ever want. \u201cWhen Trump won, Lachlan thought, \u2018We need her more than ever,\u2019\u200a\u201d an insider told me. His theory was that The Kelly File would be the X factor of the Trump years\u2014the unpredictable, buzzy hour that would make Fox News stand out.
\nBut deep down inside, Kelly knew that she probably couldn\u2019t be what the Trump-era Fox would need her to be\u2014a PR flack pretending to be a fiercely independent journalist…<\/p>\n

* How many times have you heard someone say \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with those people?\u201d while referring to Hannity\u2019s groupies? Or say \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong with those people?\u201d about Rachel Maddow\u2019s fans?
\nWhether they\u2019re wrong or right, they\u2019re different. For all the pandemic-era talk of togetherness and common humanity, there are massive differences between the liberal and conservative tribes\u2014and Fox and Trump both exacerbate those differences. Look no further than the studies that show variations in brain chemistry between conservatives and liberals. Some people really are hardwired to value tradition and preservation. They are more likely to perceive threats from outsiders. One study showed frightening images to participants\u2014maggots in an open wound, a spider on a man\u2019s face, a crowd fighting with a man\u2014and found that conservatives reacted more strongly to the images than liberals. I think about that now when I notice Fox\u2019s fear-based appeals.
\nUp until Election Day in 2016, Fox fans, when compared to the public at large, were far more pessimistic about America\u2019s future, far more critical of Obama\u2019s performance, and far more fearful of a Clinton presidency. (Common denominator: fear.) Fox\u2019s highest-rated shows reinforced this point of view night after night. \u201cThe conservative entertainment news complex has constructed an alternative reality so all-encompassing that the chance of conservatives happening on any sort of good news is virtually nil,\u201d Jason Sattler wrote in USA Today. This foreboding view of the world benefitted Trump.
\nA Suffolk poll in October showed that people who trusted Fox over other networks were way gloomier about the health of the economy than, say, people who trusted CNN or CBS the most. Only 11 percent of Fox devotees said America was in an economic recovery, when the recovery had been going on for years. Fox loyalists were also more likely than other news consumers to say they were concerned about political corruption, media bias, and the bogeyman of voter fraud that Trump kept talking about. Many of these viewers were primed to lose, which made Trump\u2019s victory all the more shocking. Now they felt like they were gaining power for the first time in years, in the most surprising of ways, with the most surprising of leaders. Fox felt like the home team, with one of the network\u2019s super-fans ascending to the presidency. Like many of Fox\u2019s super-fans, he was resentful of news outlets that didn\u2019t reflect his view of the world. Now he had the unique power to do something about it. Trump was determined to delegitimize anyone who stood in his way…<\/p>\n

* Disbelief of, and disdain for, the news media was the cornerstone of Fox\u2019s business model in 1996, and it became the cornerstone of Trump\u2019s presidency. But the anti-media posture was part of something even bigger: The utter transformation of the Fox-fueled Republican Party. The anti-intellectual positioning of the party, the resistance to settled scientific fact, the contempt for intelligence agencies\u2014\u201cit\u2019s all one thing,\u201d as media scholar Jay Rosen liked to say, all part of the same rejection of expertise and resentment of anyone who claims to know better. These observations didn\u2019t just come from liberals like Rosen. In 2012 the straight-edge DC think tankers Norm Ornstein and Thomas Mann described the GOP as \u201cideologically extreme\u201d and \u201cunpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science.\u201d They said \u201casymmetric polarization\u201d afflicted the country, meaning conservatives had moved more radically to the right than liberals had to the left, and accused Fox of being partly responsible. Some veteran members of the GOP establishment, like former Reagan and Bush aide Bruce Bartlett, were equally outspoken about this radicalization and also faulted the Fox echo chamber.
\n\u201cLike someone dying of thirst in the desert, conservatives drank heavily from the Fox waters,\u201d Bartlett wrote in 2015. \u201cSoon, it became the dominant\u2014and in many cases, virtually the only\u2014major news source for millions of Americans. This has had profound political implications that are only starting to be appreciated. Indeed, it can almost be called self-brainwashing\u2014many conservatives now refuse to even listen to any news or opinion not vetted through Fox, and to believe whatever appears on it as the gospel truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Around this time, post-Lewinsky and pre-9\/11, people started taking notice of cable\u2019s color palette. \u201cBlondes make for better TV,\u201d a cringey New York Post story declared. The story named \u201cblond gabbers\u201d Ann Coulter, Kellyanne Fitzpatrick, and Laura Ingraham and said \u201cthe new wave of blond pundits continues the conservative line with the likes of Heather Nauert and researcher Monica Crowley.\u201d <\/p>\n

* Nauert interviewed with Tillerson at the State Department after his confirmation. Though he remained skeptical, Trump was sold, and the deal was done. She gave up a $500,000-a-year job on Fox for a $179,700 government salary but gained a much higher profile and a big new challenge, fielding sensitive questions from some of the toughest reporters in the world. She mostly held her own: She could be snippy at times, but was careful not to alienate the press corps the way Trump and Spicer did. Her hardest relationship was with Tillerson, who rarely let her travel with him and ignored her advice. He dismissed her as a \u201cWhite House spy.\u201d \u201cRex disliked anyone POTUS endorsed,\u201d an insider said.
\nAfter one year, Tillerson was fired through a presidential tweet and Nauert remained. Circumstances changed. Nauert was welcomed into new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo\u2019s inner circle; he promoted her to \u201cacting undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs.\u201d In one year, she went from Fox anchor to high-ranking State Department diplomat, traveling the globe, counseling the leader of the free world.
\nNauert was the first full-time example of the revolving door of the Fox-Trump Temp Agency, so it made perfect sense that she came from Fox & Friends . Within days of the inauguration, White House reporters had to wrap their heads around the fact that the Fox morning show had supplanted the president\u2019s daily intelligence briefing. West Wing aides and lawmakers and lobbyists had to start watching the show so they could follow Trump\u2019s tweets and orders.
\nThe Fox & Friends A-team started at 6:00 a.m. sharp, and Trump planned his day accordingly. Steve Doocy, Trump said, was a 12 out of 10. Brian Kilmeade was a 6, but later earned an upgrade to a 9. Yep, Trump really scored the hosts.<\/p>\n

* Earhardt\u2019s colleagues uniformly told me she is a lovely person. \u201cShe\u2019s very sweet,\u201d one said, \u201cbut\u201d\u2014of course there was a \u201cbut\u201d coming\u2014\u201cthis is not someone with a core set of political beliefs.\u201d
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not just Ainsley,\u201d the source added. \u201cWhat you have to understand is, a lot of these people were basically blank slates. Blank canvasses.\u201d
\nEvery morning in the car on the way in to the studio, Earhardt listened to hymns and read from the daily devotional book Jesus Calling. In the makeup chair, she leafed through the prepared research packet of printouts from right-wing websites. In the host seat, she was curious but not pushy. As one of her colleagues said, \u201cShe knows what she\u2019s there for.\u201d A magazine profile once likened Earhardt to a \u201cwedding-cake figurine come to life,\u201d with a smile \u201cglorious enough that when it flashes it feels like nothing in the world could be wrong.\u201d With the Trump White House in perpetual crisis, and F&F tasked with pretending it wasn\u2019t, that smile was worth millions.<\/p>\n

* So did the producers of F&F reckon with their newfound power? Did they triple-check their facts to make sure the president was fully informed? No. They continued to rip stories off fringe right-wing blogs and promote conspiracy theories and play into the president\u2019s worst partisan impulses. They took the cheaper partisan path. This was the show\u2019s natural setting, but suddenly the stakes were profound: Trump was making policy decisions based on what random TV pundits told him to do. \u201cPeople claim Putin is Trump\u2019s puppet master but it appears that role is actually occupied by Fox & Friends ,\u201d The Intercept \u2019s Glenn Greenwald remarked. It sure seemed like the producers of F&F had more power than the CIA. And they used that power to feed him resentment news and nonsense about voter fraud and random stories about leftists on college campuses. To put it bluntly, the president\u2019s media diet was poisoned\u2026 and he gobbled it up.
\nAs for the hosts, they played their newfound power for laughs. \u201cI asked the president to blink the lights on and off if he was watching,\u201d Brian Kilmeade said at 7 a.m. on January 27. \u201cNow clearly he\u2019s awake,\u201d Kilmeade said as the control room showed a live shot of the White House, where lights in an upstairs bedroom appeared to be flickering.
\n\u201cGood morning, Mr. President!\u201d Ainsley Earhardt said, joking that the flashing lights were a \u201cMayday\u201d or an \u201cSOS.\u201d
\nIt was actually a prank concocted by a control room staffer. \u201cIt\u2019s a video effect,\u201d Steve Doocy told the audience. \u201cJust having a little fun.\u201d HAHAHAHA.
\nA video clip of the prank zipped around Twitter, without the explanation, and many people thought it was real\u2014because it could have been. Every single day, Trump either tweeted about Fox or talked to Fox hosts or cited Fox\u2019s coverage of how well he was doing. \u201cTurn on Fox and see how it was covered,\u201d he said to ABC\u2019s David Muir after Muir brought up widespread criticism of Trump\u2019s self-aggrandizing speech in front of the CIA\u2019s Memorial Wall. Earlier in the interview, when Muir challenged Trump\u2019s discredited belief about widespread voter fraud, Trump justified his lie by saying that \u201cmillions of people agree with me.
\n\u201cIf you would\u2019ve looked on one of the other networks,\u201d he continued, clearly talking about Fox, \u201cand all of the people that were calling in, they\u2019re saying, \u2018We agree with Mr. Trump. We agree.\u2019 They\u2019re very smart people.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Day by day, tweet by tweet, the country came to grips with the fact that presidential statements\u2014which used to really mean something\u2014were now just the misinformed and misspelled rants of an elderly Fox fan.<\/p>\n

* When government officials couldn\u2019t get a face-to-face meeting with the president, they jostled for bookings on F&F. Corporations bought ads on the show, sometimes addressing \u201cMr. President\u201d directly, because it was cheaper and more effective than hiring lobbyists. (What they didn\u2019t realize was that Trump usually muted or fast-forwarded straight through commercials.) Some Fox hosts started to greet the president by name. They understood that if Trump stayed happy with their shows, viewers would stay tuned. It created an incredible and perverse incentive structure that was completely at odds with journalistic values. Everyone at Fox could see that the way to get attention, to get promoted, to get ahead was to hitch a ride with Trump and never look back. This ethos trickled out from Fox & Friends to the shows before and after.<\/p>\n

Take the early morning anchor Heather Childers. Before he ran for office, Trump used to tweet compliments to Childers. \u201cYou are doing a great job Heather!\u201d \u201cYou do a great job on Fox!\u201d In another universe, Trump would just be one of those guys posting comments to her Instagram page, pining for her attention, gazing at Fox\u2019s anchor desk with a hole in the middle that blatantly showed off her legs. But in the Trump age, the roles were reversed. Fox hosts yearned for his attention.<\/p>\n

* In January 2020 I was on the phone with one of Fox\u2019s household names who said, with complete sincerity, \u201cI think it would be good for the country right now if Roger Ailes were still in charge of Fox and Bill O\u2019Reilly were still on the air.\u201d
\nBefore you say \u201cwhich country?\u201d you should know that Ailes nostalgia was very real and very deep at Fox, even three years after his exit. Many insiders believed Fox would be better off with Ailes at the helm.
\nBut O\u2019Reilly? I didn\u2019t detect much longing for the return of Billo. He was not well liked when he was on at 8 p.m., and he was not missed when he was fired. So why would it be good for America to have The O\u2019Reilly Factor still on Fox?
\n\u201cBecause O\u2019Reilly would tell the truth,\u201d they said. \u201cO\u2019Reilly would sit down with Trump and call him a jerk to his face. Hannity will never do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

* \u201cTits up, hair back.\u201d That\u2019s what Ailes said he wanted Suzanne Scott to deliver for him.
\n\u201cShe was the wardrobe enforcer,\u201d a former Fox host told me.
\nThat\u2019s why my phone lit up with texts when Suzanne Scott was named president of programming on May 1. Staffers couldn\u2019t believe that she was being promoted again.
\n\u201cSuzanne Scott? She\u2019s the worst of all of them. Give me a break,\u201d a female Fox talking head wrote. By \u201cworst,\u201d she meant Scott was an accomplice of Ailes.
\nScott has never answered detailed questions about whether she was complicit in his abuse. The closest she came to commenting was in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, when she said \u201cI had no clue on what was going on in Roger Ailes\u2019 office.\u201d Some staffers had a hard time trusting her.
\nHere\u2019s what Scott absolutely did know: that Ailes, for all his charm and power, was a racist and a misogynist with a warped and outdated view of the world. He wanted a certain southern beauty queen look from the women on his channel. And, according to current and former Fox anchors and commentators, he wanted Scott to deliver it.
\nSometimes Scott would convey his messages directly, by telling new hires to \u201clet hair and makeup do their job.\u201d She wanted more glam, longer eyelash extensions, shorter skirts, bronzer legs. Some of the Fox makeup artists called it the \u201cBarbie doll look.\u201d
\n\u201cSuzanne\u2019s job, straight up, was to enforce the dress code,\u201d a male Fox anchor told me. \u201cShe told women how short their skirts had to be.\u201d Scott typically did this indirectly, by sending word to a show producer who would then call a makeup artist to the set. Hosts and guests were told the \u201csecond floor\u201d ordered a change. \u201cShe would call the control room and say, \u2018Fix her necklace.\u2019 Or change which way my hair was parted,\u201d Alisyn Camerota recalled. The source who dubbed her the \u201cwardrobe enforcer\u201d said, \u201cSuzanne would call and say, \u2018I don\u2019t like her shade of lipstick. It looks like shit.\u2019 The poor makeup people would rush out on set and change my lipstick.\u201d Personalities who objected to the cosmetic adjustments would sometimes be asked, \u201cDon\u2019t you want good ratings?\u201d<\/p>\n

* Television is a visual medium, so there are certain expectations, but some staffers charged that Scott took it to the extreme. Griping about facial hair is one thing, but she was known to tell men to shave even when they were in the middle of a breaking news marathon. It\u2019s hard to find a razor while on the scene of a mass shooting.<\/p>\n

Scott joined Fox News at its founding in 1996 as an assistant to Chet Collier, one of Ailes\u2019s deputies. Collier said he believed that TV news had to tap into the \u201cbest elements of the entertainment world.\u201d People watch people, he said, a basic concept that producers sometimes forget when they try to fill the screen with videos and graphics and gizmos. \u201cPeople watch television,\u201d he said, \u201cbecause of the individuals that they see on the screen.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Ailes lost some weight in Florida with his wife Beth\u2019s help, but otherwise had little to show for his post-Fox phase. Roger Stone had predicted that without Ailes, \u201cFox will be surpassed by a new conservative network,\u201d but that was hyperbolic and wrong. Ailes was more replaceable than anyone thought.
\nSome days Ailes stared out at the Atlantic and stewed. Friends like Matt Drudge came to visit. Suitors reached out, wondering if Ailes could help launch something Foxier than Fox, and he took the calls, scratching an itch that never subsided. He was bound by his noncompete deal, so \u201cI can\u2019t call,\u201d he told Wolff, \u201cbut I can\u2019t stop people from calling me.\u201d Ailes had lots of ideas about where to find a billion dollars for a new network. He said he might get Steve Bannon involved. Maybe they could poach Hannity and O\u2019Reilly and leapfrog Fox with its own talent. This was fantastical talk, but it was a way to pass the time. Ailes was scheduled to meet with billionaire tech mogul and Trump backer Peter Thiel about a possible network venture in mid-May. But on the afternoon of May 10, he slipped and fell in one of his bathrooms. When the ambulance crews arrived, he was hemorrhaging blood from his head. He was put into a medically induced coma and never came out.<\/p>\n

* \u201cThis is high school. This is like \u2018The Real World,\u2019\u200a\u201d a Fox host said. \u201cOf course they\u2019re hooking up with each other, because they\u2019re all basically trapped in a house together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pete Hegseth was the most brazen example. He cheated on his second wife, Samantha, with Jennifer Rauchet, one of the top producers of Fox & Friends and a rising star at the network. \u201cJennifer was favoring Pete with airtime. She kept putting Pete on TV,\u201d an exec said.
\nRauchet disclosed the relationship to HR when she got pregnant at the end of 2016. Hegseth was still married at the time. Management moved Rauchet\u2014demoted her, really\u2014to the weekend show Watters\u2019 World so that the couple wasn\u2019t working together anymore.
\nIt was ironic that Rauchet ended up on Watters\u2019 World, because Jesse Watters, with wife Noelle and twin girls at home, was also dating in-house. Colleagues said his relationship with Emma DiGiovine was an open secret around the office\u2014they were posting vacation photos on social media\u2014but management apparently looked the other way until November 2017, when Watters went to the aforementioned HR department and disclosed the relationship. At that point, Emma was transferred to Laura Ingraham\u2019s show. Fox\u2019s PR shop mostly kept a lid on both extramarital affairs. Hegseth and Watters were valuable assets despite their asshole antics.<\/p>\n

* About a year into the Trump presidency, his speeches and interviews lost the pizazz that generated huge ratings. He started to phone it in, both literally and figuratively. When an interview \u201cmade news,\u201d it was usually because Trump felt so comfortable with the hosts that he blurted out something inappropriate, like the time he said he tried to \u201cstay away\u201d from the Justice Department, \u201c
\nbut at some point I won\u2019t.\u201d His aides tried to intervene and stop these chats from happening, but they felt they could only tell him no so many times in a row. The end result: his April 2018 call to Fox & Friends . Trump hijacked the Friends conversation from the get-go; when the hosts tried to ask him about his dealings with Michael Cohen, who had just been raided by the FBI, he railroaded them; and when they eventually tried to wrap the president, he kept rambling. \u201cWe\u2019re running out of time,\u201d Steve Doocy said. \u201cWe could talk to you all day, but it looks like you have a million things to do,\u201d Brian Kilmeade said a couple of minutes later, trying to be polite. But no\u2014the president just wanted to keep talking. When it was finally over, Kilmeade said, \u201cWe\u2019ll see you next Thursday, Mr. President,\u201d alluding to Trump\u2019s weekly segment in the past. \u201cThe phone line\u2019s open!\u201d White House aides groaned. They were worried about his troubling admissions that could come back to hurt him in court, but Trump tweeted that he \u201cloved\u201d being on the show.<\/p>\n

* Shep was the most prominent gay anchor at a network with an ugly history of antigay commentary. He later said he didn\u2019t think he needed to \u201cout\u201d himself because \u201cI didn\u2019t think I was in.\u201d It\u2019s true that his coworkers and New York City neighbors knew about his personal life, but his viewers generally didn\u2019t. He started to talk publicly about \u201cthe gay,\u201d as he once jokingly called it, in 2016, while denying another Gawker report that claimed Ailes tried to keep Shep in the closet. He nonchalantly told a group of college students in 2017 that \u201cI go to work, I manage a lot of people, I cover the news, I deal with the holy hell going on around me,\u201d and then \u201cI go home to the man I love, and I go home to family.\u201d And the family part is what he prioritized as he felt the channel lurching further to the right, caring less about news and more about views he reviled. He cut back on work travel and booked vacations with Gio instead. He developed a reputation as one of those anchors who came in two hours before airtime on slow days. \u201cHe\u2019s in at 1 and out at 4:15,\u201d a source said. It\u2019s no wonder why\u2014the halls of Fox News HQ were not a happy place for him to be. Other hours of the Fox day were increasingly hostile to what he reported. Shep\u2019s show was an island under siege. \u201cWhen something is reported on Shep\u2019s show, it doesn\u2019t make it past the commercial break on Neil Cavuto\u2019s four o\u2019clock show,\u201d Conor Powell said. \u201cThere wasn\u2019t a continuous line of reporting\u201d the way there was at other networks. Each time slot was someone\u2019s fiefdom.<\/p>\n

* Kimberly Guilfoyle had a more successful transition into the Trump orbit. She was forced out of Fox in mid-2018, though in retrospect her days were numbered as soon as Ailes was forced out. The leader of \u201cTeam Roger\u201d had generated quite a few HR complaints that couldn\u2019t be ignored by the Murdochs. The top lawyer for 21st Century Fox, Gerson Zweifach, had to get involved. Chief among the accusations: that Guilfoyle went around the office showing off dick pics on her phone. She claimed the pictures were from her male suitors. One of the people who saw the pictures told me, \u201cI thought, \u2018She\u2019s single, he\u2019s single, what\u2019s the big deal?\u2019 But flaunting it at work was a violation.\u201d
\nThere were other issues too\u2014and sources pointed out that most of the complaints were lodged by women. The bottom line, one colleague said, was that \u201cshe was very open about her sex life. Too open.\u201d An HR investigation dragged on for months. \u201cIf Kim were a man, she would have been out much sooner,\u201d a person with knowledge of the investigation said. (Guilfoyle\u2019s lawyer said, \u201cAny accusations of Kimberly engaging in inappropriate workplace conduct are unequivocally baseless and have been viciously made by disgruntled and self-interested employees.\u201d)
\nIn the spring of 2018 Guilfoyle made her Trump love literal. Depending on who\u2019s telling the story, she either seduced Donald Trump Jr. or he decided to pursue her. Junior\u2019s impending divorce from Vanessa, the mother of his five children, was first reported in March, and when he was first seen in public with Kim in May, Page Six said they had been dating \u201cfor a few weeks\u201d already.
\nGuilfoyle \u201cknew how to use sex to get ahead,\u201d in the words of one friend, and some of her colleagues suspected that she was hitching herself to Junior for more than purely romantic reasons. According to them, Guilfoyle had been told months ahead of time that her last day at Fox was July 1. Undeterred, she fought to stay on the air. \u201cShe had Trump calling Rupert, lobbying on her behalf,\u201d one well-placed source said. \u201cShe thought Rupert would do nothing to her once she was with Trump Jr.,\u201d another source said.
\nIn June, I asked Fox PR how the president\u2019s son\u2019s girlfriend could feasibly cohost a show about politics. Fox dodged the question because the answer was, she couldn\u2019t. Maybe it was true love\u2014but l\u2019affaire Don Junior also supplied an alternative storyline on the day she departed Fox, several weeks after the original deadline. Guilfoyle said she was leaving to go campaign with Junior. That\u2019s when Yashar Ali, writing for HuffPost, published a story saying she did not leave voluntarily. Ali had been chasing rumors about Guilfoyle\u2019s behavior for months. She knew he was working on a story, and before the end of the day Guilfoyle\u2019s lawyers were threatening to sue him and HuffPost. Ali followed up a week later with a detailed accounting of her workplace escapades, noting the Junior angle: \u201cSome people at Fox News were concerned that easing her out of the network would be slowed or halted due to the Trump family\u2019s close relationship with Murdoch.\u201d Alas, Rupert hated feeling like someone was manipulating him. Guilfoyle\u2019s time was up. She went out on the campaign trail with Don Jr. and hosted streaming video shows and extolled all things Trump. The mostly male members of Trump\u2019s inner circle thought she was a huge asset. In the words of former campaign aide Sam Nunberg, \u201cThose legs got ratings, and I think those legs can get votes.\u201d
\nGuilfoyle wasn\u2019t missed at Fox. To the contrary, there were awkward rumblings whenever she came back to Fox HQ with her boyfriend, whom she nicknamed \u201cJunior Mints\u201d for his alleged sweetness. She tagged along on his interviews with Hannity and others, prompting one Fox insider to say, \u201cIt\u2019s not a good look. She seems desperate.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Trump granted himself more \u201cExecutive Time\u201d and watched more TV as the years went by. He outfitted his upstairs residence with multiple TVs and DVRs, and lingered there in the morning, out of sight of the potential leakers who worked for him downstairs. He typically typically watched shows like Fox & Friends on a bit of a delay, which meant he could zap through the commercials with the DVRs. He channel-surfed to Fox Business and Newsmax and the broadcast networks. For all of his professed hatred for CNN and MSNBC , he kept a close eye on those channels too. I knew it for a fact because my Reliable Sources guests occasionally heard from the president after saying supportive things about him on my program. One of the biggest lies he ever told, measured by its distance from the truth, was \u201cI do not watch much television.\u201d He watched so much that he sometimes fell asleep with Fox still on, like the truly hardcore fan that he was.<\/p>\n

The DVRs were the critical part of his television setup. He called TiVo \u201cone of the great inventions of all time\u201d and said television was \u201cpractically useless without TiVo.\u201d But TiVo, which was invented in 1999, was just the brand name for a generic concept, like people who \u201cXeroxed\u201d a paper on a different brand of copier. Trump said he had \u201cSuper TiVo\u201d in the White House, but he actually had the DirecTV Genie HD DVR, a whole-home system that recorded multiple channels at the same time and let users watch those recordings from any screen in the home. It was genuinely awesome technology for a TV junkie. With the Genie, he could flip through hours of Fox in his residence, hit pause, walk downstairs to the Oval Office, and resume watching right where he left off. When he moved in, contractors also installed a sixty-inch TV above a fireplace in his private West Wing dining room, steps from the Oval. That\u2019s typically where he caught up on cable news during the workday before retreating back upstairs in the evening. Obama only kept a small TV in the dining room, mostly tuned to ESPN, as Trump told visitors when he mocked the size of Obama\u2019s screen and pointed out his replacement unit.<\/p>\n

* I covered the newest Carlson controversy on CNN\u2019s air, which caused Tucker to retaliate. While I reported his past statements, he called me names, including \u201ceunuch.\u201d (Google it.) His fans picked up the insult and ran with it. A year later, I still received tweets every day that called me a \u201ceunuch.\u201d (Mission accomplished, Tucker.) He also sent someone over to CNN\u2019s New York office with a Dunkin\u2019 Donuts delivery for me. I threw out the dozen jelly donuts and decided to ignore the fat-shaming attempt, but Tucker made sure everyone knew by tipping off the right-wing website he founded, The Daily Caller. By the end of the week Page Six had called me for comment. I said I would accept the donuts if Tucker accepted my interview requests.
\nWhy did any of this matter? Because this shit was what appealed to Carlson\u2019s audience. Millions of people loved to watch his high jinks every night. As the Bubba controversy swirled, Fox senior statesman Brit Hume defended Carlson by pointing out that he was in first place in the ratings, even ahead of Hannity on some nights. <\/p>\n

* Tucker Carlson used his 8 p.m. perch to push against Trump national security advisor (and Fox veteran) John Bolton and other hawks who wanted aggressive action in Syria and Iran. In June 2019, Carlson and Fox military analyst General Jack Keane were credited with stopping Trump from bombing Iran. (I find it hard to believe that I just wrote those words.)
\nTrump was, by his own account, \u201ccocked and loaded\u201d to strike Iran in retaliation for the downing of a drone. Warplanes were in the air, but Tucker\u2019s publicly aired views weighed on him.
\nEarlier in the day, Trump had phoned Tucker, wanting a more personal assessment of the situation. \u201cWhat do you think?\u201d the president said, his voice blasting through the receiver on Tucker\u2019s end.
\nTo his credit, Carlson held to what he\u2019d been saying on TV: It would be \u201ccrazy\u201d to respond to Iran with force. \u201cThat\u2019s not why the voters elected you,\u201d he said.
\nUnlike Hannity, Carlson never initiated calls to POTUS, but when the White House switchboard called, he answered. Whether through the calls or his television platform, his isolationist views and contempt for Bolton-style neocons got through to Trump, and he could tell that at least part of Trump agreed with him. \u201cHe\u2019s conflicted,\u201d Tucker told a pal. \u201cAll I can do is remind him of what he thinks.\u201d
\nGeneral Keane was also persuasive\u2014whether he intended to be or not. Hours before the planned strike, he appeared on Fox and reminded everyone about the fogginess of war. \u201cOur viewers may have forgotten, but during the tanker war in the late eighties when Reagan did take some action, we actually made a mistake,\u201d Keane said. \u201cWe had a USS warship shoot down an Iranian airliner in Iranian airspace. Two-hundred ninety people killed. Sixty-six of them were children. And we took that for a Tomahawk F-14. That was clearly a mistake by the ship\u2019s crew in doing that. And we acknowledged that we made a horrific mistake.\u201d Politico reported that Trump was \u201cspooked\u201d when he heard Keane tell that story. Trump brought up Iran Air Flight 655 repeatedly later in the day and eventually called off the strike shortly before 8 p.m.
\nCarlson was relieved. His reward was an exclusive interview with Trump one week later during the president\u2019s trip to Japan for the G20. Carlson traveled along as a \u201cguest member\u201d of the White House staff. Tensions with Iran remained high, and Iranian officials knew how to push Trump\u2019s Fox buttons. Not long after Trump and Carlson got back from Japan, on July 3, an adviser to Iranian President Hassan Rouhani tweeted at Trump saying he \u201ccan listen to Pompeo and we\u2019ll make sure he stays a one-term President\u201d or \u201che could listen to @TuckerCarlson and we might have a different ball game.\u201d What a world. \u201cI feel safer having Tucker in charge of the country than Sean,\u201d a Fox commentator joked in a text.<\/p>\n

* Shep was depleted. Colleagues said he was withdrawing from work. \u201cInstead of giving counsel, and nurturing coworkers, and helping the rest of the network, he just focused on his hour,\u201d one of his former friends complained.
\nThis had been true to some degree for years. Correspondents and anchors elsewhere at Fox were proud to call him a colleague, but said he ran hot and cold. One minute he\u2019d be generous, recommending his therapist to a producer in need; the next minute he\u2019d be vindictive, canceling a planned live shot from a correspondent who was on his shit list. Shep was like a \u201ctyrant,\u201d one of the correspondents on his list said. \u201cIf he thought you were anywhere close to being conservative, you were blackballed,\u201d a second correspondent said.
\nEveryone agreed that Ailes had been the Shep whisperer. Ailes knew how to tamp down the newsman\u2019s volatility and bring out his talent. With Ailes buried, and with Trump burying any semblance of shared truth, Shep felt \u201cunprotected and vulnerable,\u201d according to one insider. \u201cHe just got madder and madder and madder. And he aired it on the channel.\u201d<\/p>\n

* Enter jackhammering, Trump-loving lawyer Joe diGenova. He was booked on Tucker Carlson\u2019s show later in the day, September 24. Tucker invoked Napolitano and asked, \u201cIs it a crime? You\u2019re a former federal prosecutor.\u201d
\n\u201cWell, I think Judge Napolitano is a fool,\u201d diGenova said, \u201cand I think what he said today is foolish. No, it is not a crime.\u201d
\nTucker was choosing to use his own legal \u201cexpert\u201d instead of Fox\u2019s official \u201csenior judicial analyst.\u201d And diGenova didn\u2019t just say Napolitano was foolish, he called him a \u201cfool,\u201d a distinction that led one Fox exec to tell me \u201cit was out of line.\u201d There weren\u2019t many lines left to cross at Fox, but diGenova had found one.
\nShep, incensed, wanted what he always wanted: some support from management. None was forthcoming. He thought carefully about what to say and hit back the following afternoon: \u201cLast night on this network during prime time opinion programming, a partisan guest who supports President Trump was asked about Judge Napolitano\u2019s legal assessment, and when he was asked, he said unchallenged \u2018Judge Napolitano is a fool.\u2019 Attacking our colleague, who is here to offer legal assessments, on our air in our work home is repugnant.\u201d
\nIn Shep\u2019s mind, Carlson was the one who \u201cstarted\u201d this, so Scott needed to end it. Bad blood between the two men stretched back several years; Carlson\u2019s Daily Caller website ran anti-Shep stories on the regular. So Scott had to do something. Right?
\nShe didn\u2019t. After dark, Carlson brought back diGenova and kept the feud going. He said Napolitano\u2019s analysis wasn\u2019t news, it was opinion. He mocked Shep for acting holier-than-thou. \u201cApparently our daytime host who hosted Judge Napolitano was watching last night and was outraged by what you said and, quite ironically, called you partisan,\u201d Carlson said, basically calling Shep and the judge anti-Trump crusaders. \u201cUnlike maybe some dayside hosts, I\u2019m not very partisan,\u201d Carlson claimed. He later joked to friends that he gave Shep a \u201cspanking.\u201d Shep hit the roof.
\nNo one knew this outside Fox HQ, but Shep\u2019s staff thought in the wake of Tucker\u2019s comments that he would resign immediately. On Thursday he asked the team where they wanted to order food for a special Friday lunch. They chose Carmine\u2019s, the Italian mainstay on 44th Street just off Times Square, and they nervously awaited the enormous spread, thinking their trusted leader was going to quit right then and there. When the food arrived, Shep gathered everyone and gave a speech. \u201cThe news will always continue at this network,\u201d he said, as staffers exhaled just a bit, learning today wouldn\u2019t be the day. He still had to negotiate his way out. Looking back, \u201cwe knew right then that his mind was made up,\u201d a staffer told me.
\nOn day three of the feud, Shep alluded to network unrest on the air by saying \u201cthere are two different information streams\u201d in competition. On one side, he said, there were facts that the president had admitted. \u201cThen there\u2019s this information stream of constant attacking of the facts that is\u2026 interesting to watch.\u201d
\nAnd, he should have added, exhausting to be a part of.
\nVanity Fair\u2019s Gabriel Sherman reported that Scott and Wallace \u201ccommunicated to Smith\u201d to \u201cstop attacking Carlson.\u201d Fox execs insisted that never happened. Part of the problem was that management wasn\u2019t communicating at all. But Shep had a sense\u2014from Scott\u2019s silence\u2014that the network sided with Carlson. <\/p>\n

* In the weeks before he died in 2017, Roger Ailes told one of his mentees that Trump\u2019s win proved that the cable TV model also applied to politics. When there were only a few broadcast networks, all sharing the same more or less genteel sensibility, politics had to be broad\u2014candidates had to appeal to the whole of the country. Provocation and extremism were turn-offs. But those same techniques were turn-ons in the cable model. Cable channels weren\u2019t for everyone, they were for specific demographics. The winners knew how to rabidly excite their base and blow off everyone else. Turn the levers just right and you ended up with the monstrosity at work at the end of the decade: an untouchable politician protected by his untouchable media apparatus.
\nFox\u2019s cable power extended to the internet, where micro-targeting on social networks meant that candidates didn\u2019t have to cultivate just a single base, they could tell different stories to different audiences simultaneously. Lachlan and Rupert still had to figure out Fox\u2019s position in that world. But the network\u2019s website increasingly functioned as a propaganda workhorse.<\/p>\n

* \u201cTrump wants control,\u201d the insider said. \u201cHe wants Trump TV.\u201d If Trump didn\u2019t win reelection, the theory went, multiple billionaires stood ready to bankroll a media empire of Donald\u2019s own with both television and internet components. He wouldn\u2019t need Fox anymore; he would be in business against Fox.
\nI put my fork down and said, half-jokingly, that I\u2019d always figured Rupert and Lachlan would give Trump a prime time show for his post\u2013White House years.
\n\u201cThink bigger,\u201d my breakfast mate said. With an entire network, Ivanka could have a show, and Don Jr. could have a show, and the Trump brand could span politics and culture and entertainment. The Trump 2020 campaign was already testing this premise with webcasts. What would America prefer to watch\u2014people on Fox talking about the Trumps, or the real thing, straight from Mar-a-Lago?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brian Stelter writes in his new book: \u201cYou know what we need,\u201d a senior producer of Fox & Friends told her staff during a rare dip in the ratings. \u201cWe need outrage.\u201d That\u2019s really what F&F was about. Certain segments … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29576,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fox-2","category-journalism"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t