President Trump’s growing feud with Fox News continues after he took issue with the cable news network airing speeches and campaign appearances by his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.
Early in his presidency, Trump often praised Fox, which was widely viewed as a media ally of the president. But now, Trump says the network airing former President Barack Obama’s and Biden’s speeches for the Democrat’s presidential bid is unacceptable and that there’s no one to blame but new leadership.
“Fox puts [Obama] on all the time, and they put Sleepy Joe on all the time,” Trump told reporters on Tuesday. “What they should do is they should show the pictures of Sleepy Joe yesterday, when he rushed to Pennsylvania because he saw that I had 25,000 people at each event … he rushed to Pennsylvania and he did a statement and he got lost in a fog. They should show that. Or they should show the picture where he called me George. He thought I was George, and I guess he was talking about George Bush, but he thought I was George. And they should show that. Fox is very disappointing … this would not have happened with Roger Ailes. I can tell you that.”
Ailes ran Fox as chairman and CEO until he resigned in 2016 after sexual assault allegations were made against him by over 20 women, including prominent anchors at the network. After Ailes’s death in 2017, media mogul Rupert Murdoch took over as chairman of Fox, along with the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, all owned by News Corp.
Over the last year, Trump has sparred frequently with his once go-to cable network, criticizing anchors and reporters who have engaged in what he deems as unfavorable coverage of him.
Earlier this month, Trump told Fox personality Sean Hannity that the network is a “much different place” than what it used to be and particularly disparaged Fox News Sunday moderator Chris Wallace and John Roberts, a White House correspondent.
Trump called for the firing of Fox’s longtime national security correspondent, Jennifer Griffin, after she corroborated part of a report by the Atlantic that said that Trump used foul language to describe veterans.
Trump echoed his sentiment about the network covering Obama and Biden in a tweet after the network aired the former president’s drive-in rally in Orlando, Florida, on Tuesday afternoon. Obama has been upping his campaigning efforts on behalf of his former vice president in the home stretch of the campaign cycle.
Now @FoxNews is playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn’t believe he won. Also, I PREPAID many Millions of Dollars in Taxes.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 27, 2020
“Now @FoxNews is playing Obama’s no crowd, fake speech for Biden, a man he could barely endorse because he couldn’t believe he won. Also, I PREPAID many Millions of Dollars in Taxes,” Trump said.
Fox News remains the most watched cable network and reached historic viewership in its showing of the first presidential debate in September, which had almost 18 million people tuning in.
Tucker Carlson, one of the network’s most popular hosts, also kept his record as the most watched cable news host, even when advertisers dropped his show over their opposition to comments he made about social issues and race.
In October, Tucker Carlson Tonight, which airs during the 8 p.m. EDT hour, averaged 5,359,000 viewers nightly, including 1,003,000 in the key 25-54 age demographic that marketers covet, according to Nielsen Media Ratings. While the total ratings made cable news history, he also became the first prime-time host to reach 1 million viewers in the 25-54 demo since September 2008.
