In the beginning was the audience. And the audience was filled with Fascistic hate and prejudice, and sought always to have its beliefs confirmed.              

And then came Fox News Network, which sought to capture that audience—and, with it, huge ratings and profits. 

At the center of both Fox and its audience stood Donald Trump—first as a Presidential candidate, then as President.

In him, Right-wingers found their ideal representative: He promised to destroy all those groups they hated.

Among these: Blacks, Asians, “uppity” women, Muslims, liberals, Hispanics, Democrats. 

Donald Trump

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election—by 81,284,666 votes for former Vice President Joe Biden versus 74,224,319 for Trump-–the Right was devastated. And furious.

Unlike its defeats in past Presidential elections, this time the Right refused to accept the will of the electorate.

Trump had often “joked” about how wonderful it would be for the United States to have a “President-for-Life”—as was the case in China.

This time the Right intended to make that a reality.

Central to making that happen was the Fox News Network.

In 2022, for its seventh consecutive year, Fox News stood as the top-rated cable news network in the United States. Fox averaged 1.4 million total day viewers.

By contrast, 733,000 watched MSNBC and 568,000 watched CNN.

In prime time,  Fox came in first with an average of 2.3 million viewers in 2022.

MSNBC came in second with 1.2 million and CNN ranked third with an average of 730,000.

As for profits: Fox’s net income for the twelve months ending December 31, 2022 was $1.507B, a 4.94% increase year-over-year.

In 2015, Trump launched his campaign for President. His chances for success seemed impossible at the time—even to many mainstream Republicans.

But as he won victory after victory in Republican primaries, Fox News stuck with him. And stayed with him through the four years of his Presidency.

Fox was Trump’s favorite network. It gave him unstinting praise and sought to put a favorable spin on everything he did. As a result, Trump rarely gave interviews to CBS, NBC or ABC News.

In turn, Fox profited hugely as its audience—and advertisers—eagerly tuned in. 

So when Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, he and Fox decided they must get him back into the Oval Office.

Trump did his best—or worst—by filing about 60 lawsuits to overturn the results of the election. But none of his attorneys could prove their claims that widespread fraud had robbed him of victory. The suits were dismissed by judges or withdrawn by Trump’s own attorneys.

Fox News couldn’t file fraudulent cases on Trump’s behalf. But it could poison the public mind by claiming—endlessly and falsely—that Trump had been cheated by massive voter fraud.

Fox didn’t even wait for the final results of the 2020 election to be called before it intervened on the side of what would soon be dubbed “The Big Lie.”

On Election Night, Chris Stirewalt, the political editor of Fox News Channel. was the first to project Biden’s victory in Arizona. This turned out to be right—and brought a furious attack upon Stirewalt.

Tucker Carlson

“We worked really hard to build what we have,” Fox host Tucker Carlson texted his producer, Alex Pfeiffer. “Those fuckers are destroying our credibility. It enrages me.”

For Carlson, credibility didn’t mean ensuring integrity in news reporting. It meant telling Fox’s Right-wing audience what it wanted to hear—whether the “news” was true or not. 

Carlson added that he had spoken with fellow primetime commentators Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity minutes earlier and that they were “highly upset.”

In a January 26 Op-Ed for the Los Angeles Times, Stirewalt wrote: “Having been cosseted by self-validating coverage for so long, many Americans now consider any news that might suggest that they are in error or that their side has been defeated as an attack on them personally. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election wasn’t nearly as much aimed at the opposing party as it was at the news outlets that stated the obvious, incontrovertible fact.” 

Chris Stirewalt

Stirewalt was fired from Fox News in January, 2021.

Trump was furious about the Arizona call. After the election, he attacked Fox News and encouraged his followers to switch to Newsmax.

Which many of them did, costing Fox a big chunk of its audience.

For Fox, this was the ultimate catastrophe. The company began cracking down on its employees who had dared tell the truth on Election Night. 

One case involved White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. Her sin was fact-checking a Trump tweet accusing Dominion Voting Systems of election fraud.

Heinrich wrote that top election officials had determined “there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”

“Please get her fired,” Star host Tucker Carlson texted his fellow told host Sean Hannity: “Seriously….what the fuck? I’m actually shocked….It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.” 

Hannity replied that he had already spoken to Suzanne Scott, the network’s chief executive. The next morning, Heinrich’s tweet had been deleted.