Donald Trump’s Republican party debate no-show deepens rift with Fox News

Barring a last-minute change of heart, Donald Trump is set to snub Fox News this week in a sign of how deeply the relationship has fractured between the former US president and the television channel that helped propel his ascent to the White House seven years ago.

Rupert Murdoch’s cable powerhouse is hosting the first Republican primary debate during primetime Wednesday evening, unofficially kicking off a frenetic US presidential election media cycle that is a crucial period for the Fox News profit machine.

Yet Trump is skipping the proceedings in Milwaukee and reportedly plans to upstage the network by giving an interview to Tucker Carlson, the former Fox star who was fired earlier this year. Carlson is expected to stream the pre-recorded interview on Elon Musk’s X, formerly Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The rejection came even after Fox News executives Suzanne Scott and Jay Wallace visited Trump at his New Jersey golf course earlier this month and tried to persuade him to attend, according to a person familiar with the matter.

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In an expression of his discontent, Trump last week complained on his social media network that Fox News was airing unattractive photos of him, “especially the big ‘orange’ one with my chin pulled way back”.

These were the latest barbs thrown in a years-long psychodrama between Trump and the billionaire Rupert Murdoch, who has for decades held an unmatched ability to shape US politics through his media outlets.

At 92, Murdoch faces one of the biggest quandaries of his career – with repercussions for financial powerhouse Fox News and his enduring influence on conservative America – what to do about Trump?

Once a financial and political boon to Murdoch’s empire, Trump has become a headache for Fox News. A defamation lawsuit brought by Dominion Voting Systems, related to claims that its ballot devices fraudulently awarded votes to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, surfaced embarrassing text messages and led to a $787 million (about €730 million) payout to the company.

In the aftermath of the US Capitol riots in 2021, Murdoch told a former aide that he wanted to “make Trump a non-person”. But as Trump holds a commanding lead over other potential Republican candidates in the polls, Murdoch may be left with few good options but to cosy up to him, say former aides.

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“Rupert has an uncanny sense of who is likely to win, and he gets on board early so he can play a role in them winning and gets the power and influence that comes from that. That’s been his playbook,” said a former News Corp executive who worked closely with Murdoch.

“[Trump] is so clearly going to win the Republican nomination ... that he’s letting Murdoch know he’s not soliciting their good graces,” the executive added. “He’s demanding it in a dominant way.”

Trump boycotting a debate is not unprecedented; he similarly skipped a Republican debate hosted by Fox in 2016 and has long used social media as a megaphone for his views.

But his shunning of television – the medium that made him a household name, first through The Apprentice reality show and later through fiery tirades on Fox and CNN – comes as the TV industry is in a more vulnerable position than it was two election cycles ago.

Among US households who have a television, fewer than 40 per cent subscribed to a cable or satellite service this year, down from more than 70 per cent in 2016, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. In July, a new milestone was reached: traditional television made up less than half of US viewership for the first time, according to Nielsen.

For these reasons, it is unlikely that Fox News will be able to match the 24 million people who tuned in for 2015′s first primary debate, regardless of whether Trump attends.

While Fox News has fared better than CNN, all of the big US cable news channels have suffered shrinking audiences as the news cycle has calmed. About 1.7 million people watched Fox News during the “primetime” 8pm to 11pm hours in the second quarter of 2023, down from 2.3 million a year before, and well behind the audience of 3.6 million in the same quarter of 2020, according to Nielsen.

A Fox News spokesperson said that since revamping its programming line-up in July, the network’s primetime ratings have climbed back up to 2.2 million on average per night.

Fox News is the financial juggernaut within a cable division that makes almost $3 billion in underlying annual profit and operating profit margins of more than 40 per cent, making it a valuable piece of Murdoch’s portfolio.

But it makes most of its money from fees cable providers pay to run the channel. These “affiliate” fees, which typically run on multiyear contracts, have kept Fox News’s finances relatively protected from ratings fluctuations or a weaker advertising market.

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Some observers were sceptical of whether Trump’s stunt this week would move the needle in Fox’s command over rightwing media.

“There is a decades-long entanglement of Fox and conservative media, and more broadly cable [television] with the Republican Party. Can Trump break that?” said Kathryn Brownell, a professor at Purdue University. “That remains to be seen. It’s a deep connection. Things don’t change overnight.”

For Murdoch-watchers seeking clues to his thinking, his media outlets are often the best tell.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board last week urged Republicans to “give former President Trump a challenge that the party and the country deserve”. The New York Post, after depicting “Trumpty Dumpty” as a delusional election loser last year, has largely held back on Trump’s most recent indictment. Both newspapers are owned by Murdoch’s News Corp.

Fox News on Monday morning aired a segment where a pundit argued that the Republican primary race remained competitive, despite Trump holding a 20-plus percentage point lead in the polls.

“This is way open,” Marc Thiessen, a Fox News contributor, said on the show. “We haven’t had the first debate yet. The players haven’t taken the field.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2023