Donald Trump is not only skipping Wednesday night’s Republican presidential primary debate on Fox News — he plans to counterprogram the event via an interview with the network’s former star Tucker Carlson. The sit-down is intended to air at the same time as the debate on X, the social media platform formally known as Twitter.
Trump’s decision to undermine Fox’s big night with the help of its castoff host is a public humiliation for a network that has relentlessly propagandized on his behalf. Fox’s response to the affront could not be more different from how it handled a similar situation in 2016, when it issued multiple statements lambasting the candidate as a coward. The network’s muted reaction shows its executives realize that they have to grit their teeth and take it.
The network’s muted reaction shows its executives realize that they have to grit their teeth and take it.
Fox’s team worked hard to secure Trump’s attendance on Wednesday, both behind the scenes and on the air. But after all that effort, the network’s reaction to his rejection has been subdued.
Fox spokesperson Irena Briganti told The New York Times only that the network “looks forward to hosting the first debate of the Republican presidential primary season offering viewers an unmatched opportunity to learn more about the candidates’ positions on a variety of issues which is essential to the electoral process.” On “Fox and Friends” Monday morning, the show’s co-hosts seemed disappointed but offered little criticism of the former president; while Steve Doocy suggested that Trump might be hurting himself by giving President Joe Biden a rationale to skip general election debates, Brian Kilmeade dismissed that out of hand.
Again, this submissiveness differs dramatically from how the network handled Trump’s decision to skip a primary debate when he first ran for president. On Jan. 23, 2016, Trump groused that the network’s Megyn Kelly was “biased” and should not be permitted to moderate the next primary debate, to be broadcast by Fox five days later. Trump and Fox had feuded over Kelly dating to her moderation of its August 2015 debate, during which she asked him about his history of sexist comments; he subsequently responded with misogynistic remarks about Kelly herself.
Fox initially responded to Trump’s criticism with a mild statement in which Briganti denied any “conflict of interest” by Kelly. But as Trump bore down and suggested he might not attend the debate if Kelly were not removed, the network’s statements turned fiery.
On Jan. 25, 2016, an unnamed spokesman told Politico, “Sooner or later Donald Trump, even if he’s president, is going to have to learn that he doesn’t get to pick the journalists — we’re very surprised he’s willing to show that much fear about being questioned by Megyn Kelly.”
The next day, after Trump polled his Twitter followers about whether he should show up for the debate, the network offered an even more pointed comment. “We learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president — a nefarious source tells us that Trump has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings,” the statement read.
Trump’s influence over Fox’s audience has only intensified.
At a news conference later that day, Trump responded that he would “probably” skip the debate, and criticized the “games Roger Ailes is playing,” referring to the longtime Fox News chief. After his campaign confirmed that he would not attend, Fox issued another blistering statement condemning Trump’s “ultimatums” and accusing his campaign of “terrorizations against our employees.”
Fox’s on-air talent pummeled Trump for saying he’d skip the debate. Kelly accused him of attempting to “control the media,” while contributor Marc Thiessen said he “looks like a big baby,” and asked “how can Donald Trump defeat ISIS if he can’t handle a few tough questions from Fox News?”
“It goes against the narrative that he’s tough, takes on old commerce and doesn’t want any preconditions,” offered Kilmeade. “To me this goes against the toughness persona that he’s put forward.”
But Fox lost that fight. Trump romped to the Republican nomination, untroubled by skipping its debate. And in the years since, Trump’s influence over Fox’s audience has only intensified. Legal filings in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation suit against Fox show how the network’s stars and executives panicked when Trump criticized its coverage immediately after the 2020 election and its viewers responded by dropping it for even Trumpier competitors like Newsmax. Fox responded by promoting Trumpian voter fraud claims they knew were false, leading to a record $787.5 million settlement with the election technology company. Despite that, Fox hosts have since helped bind the GOP ever closer to the former president amid his four criminal indictments, through zealous support and constant refrains that the legal attacks on Trump are actually attacks on their viewers. But Fox’s efforts are never enough to satisfy Trump. He rejects the fig leaves the network uses to claim that it is more than a propaganda outlet — its Decision Desk that decided against him, its professionalized polling operation that sometimes offers results that displease him, its a “news side” that occasionally reports on stories that make him look bad, and its high-profile primary debates. And his criticism remains dangerous for Fox because, as its owner, Rupert Murdoch, once acknowledged, Trump has the power to damage Fox’s ratings by sending its viewers elsewhere. In 2010, the conservative writer David Frum said, “Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we’re discovering we work for Fox and that the balance has been completely reversed. We discovered that we work for Fox.” That was true for years, but the balance has flipped once more. Fox executives originally thought that Trump worked for them. Now they’ve realized that they work for Trump.
Matt Gertz
Matt Gertz is a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a progressive research center that monitors the U.S. media. His work focuses on the relationship between Fox News and the Republican Party, media ethics and news coverage of politics and elections. 
