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Fox News is under a siege of its own making from Trump
The network is confronting the wrath of the viewer it amplified as Trump lashes out and encourages his base to change the channel.
By Jake Lahut
What happens when a news network indulges a superfan who can call into his favorite shows any time, live tweet its programming most mornings and, in some cases, find affirmation for his wildest conspiracy theories?
The answer has been unfolding ever since election week, when President Donald Trump went ballistic after the Fox News Decision Desk called the race for President-elect Joe Biden.
Trump, who referred to himself as the network’s “golden goose,” has since been encouraging his followers to seek alternatives to Fox News, namely Newsmax and One America News Network.
Much has been written about the ensuing tensions at Fox, where daytime news anchors and reporters in the field push back on the president’s outlandish and unsubstantiated theories of voter fraud, only for primetime opinion hosts to not only entertain them, but scold the rest of the news media for not hearing Trump out.
More recently, even Tucker Carlson, one of Trump’s most ardent defenders, became the subject of an intense backlash for simply pointing out one of the president’s attorneys could not produce any…
