A Love Story Gone Sour: Trump’s New Feud With Fox News and What it Means
The Status of Trump’s Relationship with Powerful Conservative Media Outlet
By Ahmed Tabbakh
The Progressive Teen Contributor
Since the start of the 2016 Presidential Election, Donald Trump took very kindly to Fox News as a media ally and confidant. Even during the most bombastic, outrageous moments of his presidency, the news agency keeps extremely close to his side. Besides a short-lived but dramatic feud with Megyn Kelly, Mr. Trump has been very friendly to Fox News and its reporters throughout his entire term in office so far.
On Sunday, August 18, 2020, however, as Trump boarded Air Force One to return to Washington, he held an impromptu press conference in which he took questions from reporters and gave statements of his own. During this, he stated, “There’s something going on at Fox” and went on to elaborate how his long-standing ally suddenly betrayed him by, according to him, publishing “ my worst polls”. He also said that he was unsatisfied with the news network and gave the impression that Fox had somehow turned on him and now was against him. While saying this, he also complimented various reporters from Fox such as Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, and Tucker Carlson calling them “great people” while not fully elaborating on why exactly he was so upset with Fox.
Fox News in and of itself has been relatively unchanged. A quick look at their website articles and news broadcasts and it is evident that Fox, while a credible and honorable news outlet, has a pro-Trump bent and remains that way. Throughout his statements, the President heavily implies that it is the low approval ratings from Fox (of about 40%, within the realm of other national polls by similar credible agencies) that shows that “There’s something going on”.
For decades, Fox News has conducted a series of credible and honest polls which many Americans take into consideration when looking at approval ratings and the opinions of Americans on legislation and various other important and very relevant topics. The President, by stating his dissatisfaction with Fox and its poll numbers, has broken a long-standing tradition of Presidents who remain as neutral as possible towards news agencies and attempt to keep themselves as aloof as they can when it comes to showing any ties to such organizations.
Many Americans may wonder what this coming feud may mean. In short, it means that our President intently desires to control a national news outlet and have it publish good press about him regardless of the facts of his often disappointing performance as a leader. It is the same attitude of authoritarian dictators, the very kind of people our nation has proudly stood up against time and time again.
It is, naturally, entirely inappropriate and inherently un-American that a President of this nation should desire control over the press and the right to free speech, even if it is only one news agency. While Presidents such and John Adams and Woodrow Wilson have attempted control of the press before and more aggressively, the nation’s populace, as well as Congress, put a stop to it in its tracks.
In the same press conference, the President often used the pronoun “we” when referring to Fox News rather than using the expected “they”. In a very subconscious way, the President indicated a personal closeness to the news agency. In what may be called a “Freudian slip” he may have revealed what is or what was an active working relationship between himself and Fox. Naturally, this caused an increasingly violent amount of backlash from the news and people. How could a President go behind the backs of Americans and seek ties to a news agency in order to promote himself? Such an awful thought is one that, if true, could send the Presidency of Donald Trump straight into the long line of one-term Presidents of American history.
The President’s statements are, indeed, concerning. They are an indicator of his true power-grabbing intentions and his desire for control. One can only hope that the people of this country, as well as other members of government, do all they can to ensure that these simple words do not become actions, for it is often actions that speak far louder and, in this case, may hurt our nation’s core values of freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought.
