Trump’s inner circle claims that the American conservative news network Fox News has banned the former US president from appearing on the network.
According to Semafor, Fox News regularly features other Republican supporters to talk about the upcoming presidential election.
Trump’s once close relationship with his go-to media outlet has soured. The former president’s last weekday appearance on Fox News was in September with host Sean Hannity, and that was back when he announced his presidential bid in November.
Trump claimed in that interview that a president could declassify materials “by thinking about it.”
While Trump’s opponents for the 2024 Republican nomination, such as former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, are regulars on the network.
According to Media Matters’ internal database of cable news appearances, even the relatively low-profile right-wing activist and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who just last week threw his hat into the ring, has appeared four times on Fox.
One Trump official told Semafor that as the campaign heats up in the coming months, Trump intends to make an effort to secure interviews with Fox News.
“Everyone knows that there’s this’soft ban’ or’silent ban,'” a second unnamed source “close to Trump” told the news startup. It’s indicative of how the Murdochs feel about Trump right now, whether you call it a quiet ban, soft ban, or something else.
A third Trump aide claimed to have learned about the “soft ban” from Fox News employees.
Due to the Murdochs’ stated desire to “move on” from Trump, it is generally accepted that Trump will not be interviewed. “Fox is demonstrating that by not inviting him on,” a Republican operative familiar with Trump’s campaign said.
A former president’s staff has discovered that the ban is not as strictly enforced on Fox News’ website, where Trump is frequently featured in exclusive articles.
It’s not just Fox News that Murdoch owns that has been outspoken in its opposition to Trump. For instance, the New York Post’s page-26 headline read: “Florida Man Makes Announcement” when reporting on Trump’s announcement at year’s end.
Fox’s newfound antipathy for Trump has surfaced in the midst of a $1.6 billion lawsuit against the network from voting machine manufacturer Dominion.
In March and November of 2021, Dominion filed a lawsuit against Fox News Networks and Fox Corp. in Delaware Superior Court, claiming that the cable network spread false claims that Dominion voting machines were used to rig the 2020 election against Trump, a Republican who lost to Democratic rival and current US President Joe Biden.
Fox Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch “endorsed” the idea that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen, he testified under oath in a court filing last Monday, as reported by the New York Times.
For his part, Trump has spoken out against his former media ally. He went on a tirade this week on his social media platform Truth Social, accusing Murdoch himself of spreading “fake news,” after it was revealed that the Fox chief had testified in a deposition that he had never believed the stolen election lie.
According to Trump’s letter, Murdoch and his fellow “Maga-hating, globalist Rinos” (Republicans in name only) should leave the news business immediately if they still insist that the 2020 presidential election was not rigged and stolen, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Numerous high-ranking government officials, including Trump’s former US attorney general Bill Barr, have stated emphatically that there is no proof that the election was rigged.
