Fox News just made a move that’s really going to piss off Donald Trump
There’s a perception that Fox News will do literally anything to help Donald Trump. While this may be true of some specific Fox News hosts, at no point has it ever been remotely true about the people running the network. Like any other major media outlet, they’re running a for-profit business, and what they care about is ratings – because ratings are money.
So it’s not surprising that, as Donald Trump’s already-bad approval ratings have continued to sink during this crisis, and even some on the right have decided that Trump is a complete idiot, Fox News has been turning incrementally against him. We’re seeing it on the daytime and weekend Fox shows, though generally not yet in the Fox News primetime lineup. Now Fox has made a move that Trump is going to hate.
Fox News has booted notorious Trump apologists Diamond and Silk off the network, according to the Daily Beast, which says that the decision was made due to the duo’s insistence on pushing phony and harmful coronavirus cures. Of course these are the same phony cures that Trump himself was promoting during his briefings, so this is a slap in Trump’s face in multiple ways.
But that doesn’t matter. Fox News will always go where the ratings are. If enough Fox viewers begin wanting to hear negative coverage about Donald Trump, Fox will start giving it to them. It’s as simple as that. If you think the money grubbers running Fox News are willing to go out of business just to try to prop Trump up as he sinks, you’re as crazy as he is. This is about ratings and audience retention. There are no other factors.
Bill Palmer is the publisher of the political news outlet Palmer Report