Trump’s White House hirings at Fox News are just the tip of the iceberg

That didn’t last long. Just a week after his victory in the presidential election, Donald Trump is already looting Fox News’ stable of talking heads to fill out its administration.

Tom Homan, the reported “intellectual ‘father’” of family separations as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration, is leaving the network where he helped oversee mass deportations as the new president’s ‘Border Czar’. Mike Huckabee, the former Fox host and frequent network commentator, is Trump’s choice US Ambassador to Israel. And if Trump has his way, the nearly three million employees of the Defense Department will be under US surveillance Pete Hegseth, co-host of Fox & Friends Weekend.

The Fox-fueled hiring spree marks a return to form for the former president. The network dominated large parts of federal decision-making during Trump’s first presidency, when his administration was effectively absorbed into the right-wing propaganda network that propelled him to power. But as Trump returns to the White House, Fox is not as dominant within the right-wing media ecosystem as it was during the last Trump administration. The battle for the president’s attention within a larger and more fragmented MAGA media will shape the contours of governance.

Trump owed his political rise in 2016 to that right-wing media ecosystem. A long time Fox normalhe was obsessed with the network’s programming and led its demagoguery on the campaign trail, both winning over the public and upstart alt-right organs such as Steve Bannon’s Breitbart.com. He Ddominated Fox’s airtime en route to his first campaign victory, bending the network and the Republican Party before amassing a narrow majority in the Electoral College.

Once Trump was in power, Fox News became a state television channel that showered him with praise and denounced his enemies. unprecedented influence over the US government. The hours Trump spent each day consuming the network’s content and speaking privately with the stars shaped his worldview and dictated his response to various events. His hyper-aggressive, seemingly stream-of-consciousness tweets often came in response to what he saw on his television. I dubbed this phenomenon the “Trump-Fox feedback loop” and ultimately followed it for years trace almost 1,300 Trump tweets back to Fox News and its sister channel Fox Business.

Fox employees influenced hugely important policy decisions on issues like war and peace, and they turned right-wing tantrums into matters of national importance because the President of the United States happened to tune in.

It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous – or dangerous – this Fox-Trump pipeline could be. Here are five things that really happened during Trump’s first term:

• After a Fox contributor turned to the camera and urged Trump to drop his support for a bill, the president appeared to do so on Twitter, causing chaos on Capitol Hill.
• At the urging of Fox News personalities, Trump activated the longest partial government shutdown ever.
• Trump’s Secretary of Homeland Security subsequently resigned losing a power struggle with a Fox Business host.
• Trump put full power of the government behind an alleged “miracle cure” for the coronavirus that he had seen promoted on Fox News. The drug was not effective against the virus.
• Trump led a board-wide turn against diversity training after seeing a negative Fox News segment on the subject.

Since Trump left office after a failed coup, the right-wing media ecosystem has simultaneously become even more fragmented – and even more pro-Trump.

Fox was responding to a brief exodus of viewers after Trump’s defeat desperately renewed his support for him. The evening line-up of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld is all-in for the once and future president. MAGA stars love Maria Bartiromo And Jeanine Pirro maintained or increased their role at Fox, while the network destroyed its “straight news” ranks. Fox’s work protects viewers from damaging revelations about the former president or explaining them away played a crucial role on Trump’s return to power.

But the ranks of Fox competitors have also grown. Bannon’s ‘War Room’ podcast is on the in the middle of a vast field from MAGA media influencers, including other notables Charlie Kirk And Jack Posobiec. Podcasters love Joe Roganwhose show is Trump-friendly but not entirely focused on politics, have a large audience. And one diaspora of former Fox stars like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly are now competing with their former employers at their own pro-Trump outlets (all three campaigned for him in 2024).

Carlson in particular has both of his own own blood-and-soil political agenda and Trump’s ear. That would be the former Fox primetime host played a key role in both Trump’s decision to appoint Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of the former president.

Trump himself is a regular presence on the Fox airwaves and frequently promotes its content on his social media platform. It is likely that he will pluck others from the network to staff his administration. But he wields a stick next to the carrot, slam the network each time he sees its reporting as insufficiently hagiographic. And the fragmented right-wing media environment gives him plenty of opportunities as he looks for other voices to stand up and ask for advice.

A run of doom could be the result, as Fox anchors increasingly push to capture their audience – and drag a watching Trump along with them.