Josh Marshall provides the ugly details on Talking Points Memo.
We were told it was a fight Trump could never win – a picked battle with the most trust institution in conservative America: Fox News. The numbers made it clear. Trump was done. It was only a matter of time.
And yet here we have it: Fox’s unconditional surrender. Fox Capo Roger Ailes was forced to choose between star anchor Megyn Kelly and Trump. And he made his choice: Beg Trump for forgiveness, mend fences and welcome Trump back into the fold.
We’d seen hints of this in Trump’s claim that Ailes had called him to promise he’d get fair treatment from Fox going forward. A claim Ailes later confirmed. But now Gabriel Sherman, chronicler of all things Fox has the inside details. And like everything else that could possibly be spawned by the unholy union of Roger Ailes and Donald Trump, it’s ugly.
According to Sherman, Ailes didn’t just call Trump to get the relationship back on track. He apparently called Trump “multiple” times “begging” Trump to declare the Trump v Fox war over, which he eventually did. He offered him a full hour on Kelly’s show. Trump refused. Any other show. Trump said he’d think about it. Anything for a cessation of hostilities. But as Sherman points out, “that process has meant that Fox has had to mute its defense of Kelly, who is now watching uneasily as the Fox audience turns on her: According to one high-level source, Kelly has told Fox producers that she’s been getting death threats from Trump supporters.”
So there you have it, the fabled Fox v. Trump War lasted all of six days, just as long as the Six Day War and perhaps even more of a decisive victory for Trump.
Cross-posted from The Sensible Center
http://thesensiblecentercom.blogspot.com/2015/08/fox-news-surrenders-to-trump.html
UPDATE: Some reaction:
—The Daily Beast’s Michael Tomasky:
Indeed Roger Ailes recognized all this when he decided to make nice with Trump on Monday. In the first instance Ailes did it because Trump has leverage, and The Donald’s threat not to go on his air meant a heavy hit in the ratings department. Ailes was also certainly feeling the blowback from his core audience–the kinds of tweets I alluded to above. And beyond all that, somewhere deeper down, Ailes knows that Fox made Trump, politically, and that the two are made for each other.
The Republican Party and Fox permitted and encouraged Trumpian vitriol for years. All that talk over the years about birth certificates and Kenya and terrorist fist-jabs (remember that one?!) and the moocher class and the scary brown people and all the rest of it…all of it created a need for a Trump, and for other Trump-like candidates, to flourish. Now it threatens to overtake them. If they’re wondering who created Trumpism, I have someplace they can look. The mirror.
Who knows what’s going on here? Josh Marshall is interpreting this as a total surrender by Fox News, rebutting the post-debate talk that Trump had finally met his match in the news network conservatives trust more than God and His Prophets. It could be that Fox was frightened by the durability of Trump’s support, or was warned by its Republican Establishment friends that they were in danger of pushing him out of the party into an indie run that could be fatal to the GOP in 2016. Or maybe the whole thing’s been a rigged-up show business spectacle like the smack-talking of athletes before a big game.
My guess is that Trump and Fox News realized they needed each other for (respectively) hype and ratings, and that last week’s dust-up didn’t resolve anything, so why not be friends until a definitive duel can be arranged? Thus the air kisses and the “truce.” But don’t be surprised if we soon see teasers for Trump vs. Kelly: The Rematch.
I think the chances that Ailes hasn’t said of a woman employee who complained about something that she’s “on the rag” to be somewhere around 1 in one trillion.
Knock on wood we have Gabriel Sherman of New York magazine, who covers Fox in a manner similar to how the British historian Edward Gibbon meticulously detailed the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Sherman indicates that there’s been a lot of internal post-debate anxiety at Fox, with people nervous that Trump could somehow hurt the network with core viewers. (New York) On Sunday, Trump pulled a morning grand slam by calling into NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN but not “Fox News Sunday,” which doesn’t do phoners with presidential candidates, per a Fox spokesperson. A speed-dial maniac, Trump makes network “talent” bookers look superfluous.
Bingo, Ailes has now called Trump to say he’d be treated “fairly” at Fox and Trump instantly tweeted that Ailes had called him. (TV Newser) Ratings uber alles, as my late German dad might have said. Trump quickly was scheduled for Tuesday’s “Fox & Friends,” as well as CNN morning shows. (Adweek) Kelly addressed the fracas on “The Kelly File,” defending her query as “tough but fair.” (Fox News) Meanwhile, Trump called into Fox Tuesday as promised for a pretty puffy quickie in which he said nothing of seeming consequence. As for how Trump was assisted by tons of early coverage but now doesn’t seem hurt much at all by criticism from across the ideological spectrum, that’s a tale of media impotence
Good news, everybody: Fox News chairman Roger Ailes and top-shelf bottle of pure distilled Republican essence Donald Trump have made up. Ailes called Trump on Monday to clear the air, and the net result is that Donald Trump has decided he will continue to grace Ailes’s various so-called news shows with his presence, despite being asked rude and not-at-all-classy questions in the Fox-hosted debate..
This is good news for both parties, because money. The first debate was the most-watched primary debate in history; Trump’s presidential run is, for Ailes, a money-making machine. And despite Trump’s bluster he can’t afford to unilaterally boycott the network with the hands-down largest audience of dumb and conspiracy-minded Americans, the exact sort of low-information, always-angry voters Trump seeks as his base. If it weren’t for the idiot box none of those people would even know who Donald Trump was.
Says Red State’s Leon Wolf, “Does it bother anyone else that the head of a cable news network assured a Pres. candidate that his network would change its coverage?” If you believe Sherman, Kelly has told Fox execs that she’s getting death threats from Trump fans and is warily watching her ratings this week to see if there’s any boycott effect happening. I’d be surprised, but if we’re obsessing over polls to try to glean the public’s reaction to the debate, we should be obsessing over her Nielsen numbers this week too. As for Ailes, I guess we’ll know if Sherman’s right that Fox is back on Team Trump by the tenor of the coverage going forward. The fact that Fox, including Kelly herself, has largely steered clear of covering Trump’s “blood” remark about her is circumstantial evidence that they are, for now. But it’s a long campaign.
