Trump's 'Fox News Cabinet' Means Ratings Bonanza for Cable Outlet
Hegseth's nomination has been mocked by those who are not on the Fox News payroll.
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U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to fill his administration with Fox News staffers and guests has coincided with the cable news channel solidifying its lead in viewership among rivals.
Among them are:
MIKE HUCKABEE: Worked as a Fox News host for six years and ended his run in 2015 to enter the presidential race. He hosted a Saturday show called “Huckabee.”
Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor and the one-time governor of Arkansas, is a pro-Israel hawk who has said there is “no such thing as the West Bank.”
Trump tapped him to be his ambassador to Israel.
PETE HEGSETH: The Fox News host and former member of the Army National Guard. He is another Christian nationalist who is a pro-Israel hawk. The evangelical Christian hosted a special on Fox News titled, “Battle in the Holy Land: Israel at War,” and posted on social media that he interviewed Netanyahu for the video…He wrote, “Israel needs our support!”
Trump tapped him to be his Defense Department head.
Philip Giraldi, the former CIA analysts, called Hegseth “perhaps the most demented of the lot is also is the individual in the most potentially threatening position.”
“Hegseth is a journalist with Fox News with one observer noting that he has never managed any organization larger than his three wives and five children prior to his upgrade to the $1 trillion budgeted 2.9 million Pentagon employees,” he posted.
SEAN DUFFY: Sean Duffy, a former Wisconsin congressman, and his wife both work at Fox News as hosts. Duffy was tapped by Trump to head the Transportation Department.
The New York Times reported that Duffy “rose to fame in the late 1990s” on the MTV reality show “The Real World: Boston.”
The Financial Times reported last week that left-leaning news outlets like CNN and MSNBC have watched their viewers vanish after the Trump election win, and today, nearly 75 percent of all Americans who watch cable news tune into the network that is solidly in the establishment Republican corner.
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The report, citing Nielsen figures, said Fox News saw a 40 percent jump in daily audience viewership since Trump was elected president. CNN saw a decline of 38 percent over the same time period and MSNBC has been bleeding viewership and is down 27 percent.
The paper said 73 percent of all cable news viewers during the coveted “primetime” hours watch Fox News, compared to 16 percent who watch MSNBC and 11 percent who watch CNN.
Trump’s administration and staffers look like a Fox News Christmas party because it seems the top criteria are loyalty to Trump and an Israel-above-all stance on foreign policy.
TRENDPOST: Fox News once ran afoul of Trump after the 2020 election and alienated a large percentage of its audience after calling the election for Trump.
It lost viewers to even more right-wing outlets like OANN and Newsmax. But Fox News seemed to make a calculated decision to bring back the Trump faithful and gave top jobs to pro-Trump anchors like Pete Hegseth, Trump’s pick to lead the Defense Department, and Jesse Watters, who took over after Tucker Carlson’s departure.
MSNBC has done some soul-searching after the election.
“Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski made a pilgrimage to meet with Trump in Mar-a-Lago. They said they wanted to hear directly from the president about what he envisions for his second term. But their visit rankled some in their audience.
The Wrap noted that “Morning Joe” has seen its worst ratings since 2021—with just 51,000 viewers in the key cable demo among adults 25-54—since the meeting in Mar-a-Lago.
Joe Walsh, a former Democratic congressman, appeared on MSNBC on Sunday to talk about U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son Hunter before leaving office.
He described the hypocrisy that many of these left-leaning outlets have when reporting on Trump.
He said the station and other Democrats once shouted that nobody is above the law in the U.S., especially regarding Trump, but he said Biden’s decision to pardon his son made clear that his son Hunter is “above the law.”
The New York Times once celebrated the firing of Carlson from Fox News as the beginning of the end of the ‘far-right’ foothold in mainstream news. (See “NEW YORK TIMES CELEBRATES TUCKER CARLSON’S FIRING, SAYS ‘FAR-RIGHT’ LOSES ‘A FOOTHOLD’ IN MAINSTREAM NEWS” 23 May 2023.)
But it seems as though the “far-right” foothold (as characterized by the NYT) is surging—especially with Elon Musk promoting the Trump administration on his X platform.
The growth of Fox News should not come as a surprise to our readers.
Fox News and Trump are a match made in Heaven. Both are completely devoted to Israel and try to capitalize on the frustrations that millions of Americans feel about illegal immigration and an establishment that has left them behind. Fox News will ride the wave of that sentiment—as long as Trump doesn’t take all of their supportive anchors.