President Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at Fox News, the cable channel that helped make his political career and whose hosts have consistently defended his administration.
He accused the channel in tweets of "heavily promoting the Democrats," and adding, "The New FoxNews is letting millions of GREAT people down! We have to start looking for a new News Outlet. Fox isn't working for us anymore!"
The tweets were the latest criticisms of Fox that Trump has broadcast to his nearly 64 million Twitter followers, despite consistent support from Fox's top-rated opinion programs.
In the past, the symbiosis between Fox and the Trump administration has been so close that critics have called the outlet "state TV," effectively branding it a propaganda organ. On occasion, Trump has expressed his displeasure with Fox, but more often he lashed out at news outlets such as The New York Times or CNN.
Trump's morning tweets followed Fox anchor Sandra Smith's interview of Xochitl Hinojosa, the communications director for the Democratic National Committee, in which she discussed next month's Democratic presidential debate, among other things.
In his tweets, Trump said Hinojosa had been "spewing out whatever she wanted with zero pushback" from Fox anchor Smith.
Trump also complained about commentators who appear regularly on Fox, including former Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Donna Brazile and left-leaning pundit Juan Williams, as well as Fox anchor Shepard Smith, who has been critical of Trump at times.
"HOPELESS & CLUELESS! They should go all the way LEFT and I will still find a way to Win," Trump wrote.
A Fox News spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Trump's tweets.
Guy Benson, a Fox News contributor, responded to Trump on Twitter, writing, "We don't work for you." And Brit Hume, a longtime Fox analyst and host, responded: "Fox News isn't supposed to work for you."
Trump's comments were consistent with past critiques: He has railed against any criticism uttered by commentators appearing on Fox, including by Brazile and Williams. He has also attacked its polling, claiming that it is biased in favor of Democrats.
The nexus between Fox and Trump has long been close. Starting in 2011, Fox gave Trump a regular slot on Fox & Friends, its daily morning program, in which Trump promoted his political ideas, including his discredited "birther" conspiracy theory against President Barack Obama, in preparation for his presidential campaign that began in 2015.
Several former Fox commentators and personalities, such as national security adviser John Bolton and former State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, joined Trump's administration directly from the channel. Bill Shine, a former Fox executive, was briefly Trump's communications director.
ADS AIMED AT TRUMP
Trump's relationship with Fox has also helped the channel financially.
For a few years now, farmers and others seeking to get their message to Trump have made their case, in particular, in TV aids airing on Fox News because they knew that Trump would be watching.
U.S. airlines, opposed to subsidies for foreign competitors paid by Qatar, aired ads urging the president to oppose "trade cheating."
The National Biodiesel Board aimed its ads directly at Trump, seeking his backing in a fight.
"We ran our ad on Fox television for one week and online for two because we are aware that the president watches that channel and often reacts to it," said Paul Winters, a spokesman for the board.
Oil industry advocates on the other side of the issue shot back with their own ads, with the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers purchasing time on Fox programming in Washington, D.C.
The ad featured smiling refinery workers in hard hats and said, "President Trump, only you can fix this."
At issue was whether to give refineries exemptions from requirements to buy fuels made from corn and soybeans.
The ads, many of which air only in Washington, generate income for the channel and Trump's penchant for sharing his viewing habits with regular tweets to his millions of followers helps drive viewers to Fox's shows.
Fox's political-ad spending reports filed at the Federal Communications Commission show robust spending on programs that figure in Trump's viewing.
One destination for the targeted ads is the morning program Fox & Friends. Its hosts have fielded live calls from Trump and landed interviews with the president, who in turn lauds the show to his Twitter followers.
The show has attracted at least $238,250 in political ads bought in the Washington, D.C., market this year, according to Advertising Analytics, a media intelligence firm based in Alexandria, Va.
Advertising Analytics says other Fox programs that attract political ads inserted into spots reserved for local programming in the Washington market included Tucker Carlson Tonight, The Ingraham Angle featuring Laura Ingraham, and Hannity featuring Sean Hannity -- all of which have attracted presidential tweets.
It's not new that advertisers seek to reach influential people, such as legislators and their staffs, by running ads on Sunday TV talk shows that are viewed by people interested in politics, said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
What's new is it's likely that the president will be watching a program such as Fox & Friends, Jamieson said.
U.S. airlines ran an ad on Fox News before the leader of the Middle Eastern nation of Qatar visited Trump in July. The airlines, which accuse Qatar of unfair subsidies, have formed a group called Partnership for Open & Fair Skies that includes American Airlines, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines.
Their ad in May asked Trump to crack down, opening with a clip of the president at a podium saying, "We will stand up to trade cheating."
The partnership declined to discuss details of the ad-time purchase. It sent an emailed statement from Scott Reed, its managing partner, which said, "American workers are counting on President Trump to stand up for U.S. jobs and fair competition."
In a White House meeting in July, the airlines failed to win Trump's intervention.
Fox News, like other news channels, enjoyed a ratings bump during the last presidential election cycle, and the ongoing volatile political environment continues to drive viewership of cable news. Fox has largely led cable news viewing for years, with a sizable lead across different demographics and times of day in recent years, ahead of CNN and MSNBC.
Fox & Friends has been the top-rated morning show in cable news for 214 months in a row, according to Nielsen ratings.
Information for this article was contributed by Todd Shields, Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Alan Levin, Bill Allison and Anousha Sakoui of Bloomberg News; and by Paul Farhi and John Wagner of The Washington Post.
A Section on 08/29/2019