How Fox News and President Trump Lost Control to Their Base | NYT Exclusive

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“Promises made. Promises kept.”
This is the night Fox crossed the line
between where the network ends
and President Trump begins.
And I’m going to tell you how we got here.
“America, you have the power.
Tomorrow, you can shock the world again.”
“Hello everyone. We are out here live on Facebook
at President Trump’s rally in Cape Girardeau.”
This is not just any rally.
It’s the night before a historic midterm election.
Control of Congress, the future of Trump’s presidency,
it’s all on the line.
Missouri is a key battleground.
And team Trump is pulling out all the stops
to fire up the base.
This is the birthplace,
the hometown of Rush Limbaugh.
There’s no more sacred ground in conservative media.
“What an honor. This is so exciting!
I have been watching Trump rallies” —
Lo and behold, word goes out,
Sean Hannity will be among the presenters.
Well, that would be astonishing.
Mind you, this is the top person
in all of cable news — Fox News’s PR department,
their phones are ringing off the hook.
Sean Hannity is supposed to be like an opinion columnist.
Fox allows him to take great liberty,
but he still has to, at least, abide
by some measure of news standards.
Talent for a news organization should not
be openly campaigning with a candidate.
It erases any line between the news organization
and the campaign.
Hannity completely denies it, tweets out:
“I will not be on stage campaigning with the president.”
He says he’s just covering the final rally for his show.
“Sean Hannity, come on up, Sean Hannity.”
That one small step for Sean Hannity
would be a giant step for the network that
pledged to make the news “fair and balanced.”
So, how did we get to this moment?
It all started with an Australian media mogul
who wanted to take on the world.
Rupert Murdoch, from the minute he steps ashore
in the United States in the ’70s,
is all about upending the elitist news environment.
He wants to blow up the entire media system here.
“With a publishing empire
in New York alone, that includes The Post,
New York Magazine, Village Voice.”
Murdoch’s expanding his empire in the United States
just as a new right-wing radio star enters the scene.
“Rush Limbaugh, talent on loan from God.”
Rush Limbaugh is a national hit — he is huge.
“That’s more like it!”
Limbaugh is a game changer
for the conservative base.
But what Limbaugh doesn’t have is the gravitas
of a news operation.
Murdoch sees a big opportunity and he
finds the perfect accomplice.
“I’m here with Roger Ailes,
who has been called the Ernest Hemingway
of campaign advisers.”
Roger Ailes was in the Nixon White House.
He knows Watergate happens because The Washington Post,
this beacon of credibility, this mainstream news
organization, takes down a president.
Ailes and Murdoch want
that kind of power.
They start in 1996.
The two men make their pitch to the base.
“So, what will our Fox News be?
It will be different
and it will be fair,
because it has to be.
Because a very large audience is begging it to be.”
“On the record. Fair and balanced.”
There was a brilliance to it.
We are fair and balanced because the others aren’t.
This makes us different.
It’s a bullhorn, not a dog whistle, to those people who
have felt left out by the news conversation.
This is for me.
For a long time,
they’re struggling to get any notice.
And then, they get a gift:
the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
It’s a salacious story tailor-made for Fox.
“Get ready with your clicker to turn your volume up.”
It gripped the base and starts to solidify their audience.
“The president’s on trial.
Our team will keep you informed.”
And everything flows from there.
“On the ground in Lower Manhattan.”
“Strike happened shortly after dark.”
They established their news division.
“Are American policies too strict or not strict enough?”
And that news division gave heft
to their commentariat.
— “Since the April deadly shooting”
“They’re gonna go after the guns.”
“Yes.”
Ailes also newsified his commentators.
“Those who want reparations for slavery are misguided.”
“Should people who illegally sneak into this country
be given a free ride?”
Sean Hannity, he’s not just in a studio in a Lacoste shirt
talking to a microphone.
It’s a news desk.
It has flashing headlines.
It’s got all the accoutrements of news.
“We can get you to jump in and listen to Hillary.”
For many years, it was fair and balanced.
“So, let me go back to the single mother issue here.”
Hannity would square off against a liberal named
Alan Colmes.
“They hate the nuclear family.”
“Liberals hate the nuclear family?”
“Let him, let her finish her point.”
“Yeah, would you stop interrupting?
I’m trying to make a point here.”
“I lost my head.”
But let’s face it,
he got his butt kicked on almost every debate.
It was fair and balanced on the surface.
But there was a lot more at play underneath it that tilted
the scales to the right.
It’s the secret of their success.
“This is a Fox News alert.”
We’re a news organization like anybody else.
And we’re going to tell you those other news
organizations are wrong.
They’re lying to you.
“These people are not journalists.
These are not news channels.
What you just saw is nothing but left-wing propaganda.”
“This was a retweet” — “All right, whatever it is.”
“And it came from sources” — “I told you whatever it is,
you shouldn’t tweet, ever!”
One thing you have to do if you
want to run for president as a Republican,
it is believed you must visit
Rupert Murdoch at the Fox headquarters
in Midtown Manhattan.
You have to inform him of your plans.
So, Trump informs Rupert that he is running for president.
And Rupert is eating soup.
And as we hear this story,
he doesn’t even look up from his soup.
Rupert is not ready to buy into the idea of a Trump
presidential run, let alone, a Trump presidency.
Ailes has the same reaction.
And the sentiment comes through loud and clear.
Trump’s getting pounded on Fox.
“Loser?”
“Loser is Trump, who seems to think
this campaign is about him.”
“It is simply bad anti-terror policy
to overreact and prohibit Muslims, even if you could,
which you can’t!”
“I find him offensive.”
“I don't think you’re a first-time offender making
a personal crack at a woman.”
“I just think that belief in Trump is misplaced.”
It would drive Trump crazy.
And he would call Ailes and yell and it gets to the point
where Trump’s own staff has to try to keep him away
from the television.
And then there’s the bitter proxy war with Megyn Kelly.
It begins on the national debate stage.
“You’ve called women you don’t like fat pigs, dogs.”
Trump is furious.
“You know, you could see there was blood coming out
of her eyes, blood coming out of her, wherever.”
“This afternoon, Fox chief Roger Ailes demanding
Trump apologize for his latest Twitter tirade
against host Megyn Kelly.”
What it settles into is this really interesting
power struggle,
because Ailes doesn’t take orders from candidates.
“Before we get to the issues,
let’s address the elephant not in the room tonight.”
Trump doesn’t take orders from anybody.
“Donald Trump has chosen not to attend this evening’s
presidential debate.”
They both need each other.
Trump needs the Fox audience.
Fox needs Trump’s ratings.
So, there’s just this battle for control of effectively,
really the party.
“Donald Trump is the front-runner.”
Thirty seven percent to Kasich’s 34.”
“Trump is leading in Idaho.”
“All my money on Trump.”
Fox might have been hard on Trump, but it didn’t matter.
The base loves him.
It’s looking like Trump’s probably
on his way to becoming the Republican nominee.
“We rarely see black chips here at this table.”
Trump isn’t a Murdoch kind of guy in terms of temperament,
in terms of policy.
But Murdoch and Ailes have to make a choice:
Get behind Trump or risk losing
their base and their ratings.
“This is the great wall of Trump, I guess? I don’t know.”
In March 2016, Murdoch
sends a signal: He’s ready to get behind Trump.
He tweets out the Republican Party
would be quote, mad not to unify.
Over the course of several weeks,
you see the different parts of the Murdoch empire
get behind Trump.
“So, big news today is Donald Trump has agreed
to sit down with yours truly.”
The big moment comes when Megyn Kelly goes
to Trump Tower to make peace.
Trump visits Ailes for lunch
at the Fox headquarters and that’s another
breaking of the bread — the truce is complete.
“Roger Ailes, the architect of the Fox News Network” —
But a few months later, literally as Trump’s
cinching the nomination,
Ailes is ousted over sexual harassment allegations.
“Rupert Murdoch, who hired Ailes” —
Murdoch takes the helm.
He’s back in the newsroom.
He’s part of the action.
It’s just a wild, fun ride.
Through most of the summer,
everyone, including Trump, still
thinks that Clinton’s probably going
to win.
Rupert Murdoch and Rupert Murdoch’s sons,
James and Lachlan, all believe the true future
of the network is with a Megyn Kelly.
Someone who can be Trump critical —
“Mr. Trump is off base” —
and can appeal to sort of moderate centrist,
suburban Republican women and ideally, some independents.
They need to grow.
“Hillary Clinton has called Donald Trump
to concede the race.”
Trump winning starts to change this calculus dramatically.
And we start to see a shift in Fox’s primetime lineup.
“Donald Trump’s son” — Greta Van Susteren? Gone.
“He’s right here to go on the record.”
“I have decided to pursue a new challenge.”
Megyn Kelly, she lands a big job at NBC.
Gone. Bill O’Reilly’s also forced out
over sexual harassment allegations.
Suddenly, their primetime is far more pro-Trump
than it ever was under Ailes.
The new faces?
The hard-right commentator Tucker Carlson.
“Admit the world's poor they tell us, even if it
makes our own country poorer,
and dirtier and more divided.”
And the conservative radio star Laura Ingraham.
“A conservative Republican like Donald Trump
to remind us what it was all about, freedom.”
“What the mainstream media will never
tell you.”
Anchoring it all is Sean Hannity.
Ailes used to tell me that Hannity’s show was segmented,
that its appeal was limited to a shrinking hardcore base.
But it turned out this wrong.
“That I would be the bridge between two generations
of the Fox News channel.
This is the next generation.”
Trump is ratings gold.
His rise to power
turned Hannity into Fox’s biggest star.
And the affection was mutual.
“One of the reasons I’m supporting Donald Trump this year
is number one, he’s going to” —
Weeks after Ailes was forced out,
Hannity actually appeared in a video for the Trump campaign.
There was a stern reprimand from Fox,
but it was an early sign that
times were changing.
With a freewheeling Murdoch
now running the show and Trump in the White House,
“fair and balanced” gets lost in the ratings chase.
The network actually drops the slogan eventually —
there’s virtually
no limit on how far Hannity can go.
“As I have been warning,
Mueller is out to get the President,
and it appears at any cost.
Here’s what happened.”
Fox and Trump are now both vying for the base’s affection,
but the base overwhelmingly only wants
Trump and Trump cheerleading.
“We’ve been talking about for about a week now,
blanketed in red, white and blue” —
The feedback loop is just amazing.
It becomes an echo chamber.
If you ever see daylight between them,
it’s because one of them isn’t properly
giving the base what it wants to see.
“Do not fall for it, Mr. President.”
“We’re already on the right track, Mr. President.”
“Mr. President,
I understand the pressure that you
are under from every side.
But the wall at our southern border
is a promise that you made, ran on, got elected on
and must keep.”
“From Cape Girardeau, Mo.,
it is our election eve edition.”
Which brings us back to the rally in Missouri,
on the eve of the midterms.
Remember, Hannity claimed he would just be covering the rally
for his show.
“Let me describe the scene here if I can for everybody.
They’re, like, firing out hats and T-shirts.
I mean, this is, literally, like a rock concert.”
To Fox News it should be a political event.
It’s not a rock concert.
“There never has been anybody like him.
I was speaking to Sean Hannity backstage.
Do we love Sean, by the way?”
But the problem is,
Sean Hannity is in the band and he’s about to go up
there and play lead guitar.
Here we go — being on stage is just a whole other level
of involvement.
It’s breaking down that last little bit of independence
that Fox says it expects from even its opinion hosts.
“By the way, all those people in the back
are fake news.”
It has always been part
of Fox’s m.o. to attack the rest of the media as biased.
But doing it from a stage with the press
in the building, including his own Fox colleagues —
he’s pointing at them, among others, saying “fake news.”
That was a big deal.
This moment is a joint play to the base.
Now, they’re the real leader of the party.
“So, anyway.
You’re right. U.S.A.”
After much uproar,
Fox says they don’t condone anyone taking the stage.
So, they don’t name the people who took the stage
and that’s all.
The tepid response is a reflection
of where Fox stands right now.
It still has real news and real journalists.
So, they need to signal they’re not officially
approving what Hannity did, but they will only go so far.
The opinion hosts are still the ones
plugging into the Trump base, drawing the ratings
and leading the attack against the so-called fake news.
“By the way their ratings dropped through the floor last night” —
With a new Murdoch taking the reins at Fox News,
there’s speculation this dynamic might change.
But today, Trump and the network
are as friendly as ever.
“And our friends,
Tucker, Sean, Laura — through the roof last night.”
With 2020 coming into view,
and both Trump and Fox working to feed the base,
how much closer can they get?