President Trump is acting badly. He is being supported by enablers in his government, and by allies who fear him and/or want to take advantage of him. And hes being supported by Rupert Murdochs Fox News.
So what else is new?
The stakes. Theres a very small chance that Trump could actually disrupt a peaceful transfer of power with his baseless claims of election fraud. He will, more likely, permanently damage Americas ability to hold elections by undermining much of the countrys faith in them.
Its time for Fox to dispense with its bad-faith, bifurcated approach to the truth it has used for years, which allows its most popular stars to peddle lies to its audience, under the guise that theyre merely offering their opinions.
That wont happen, of course.
Foxs well-documentedsymbiosis with Trump, where its top talent Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, the Fox and Friends crew act as Trumps on-and-off air advisers and cheering squad. (Even this week, as Trump floats a trial balloon that hell ditch Fox and take his audience to a much smaller media operation, like Newsmax, or start his own rival network, his complaints on Twitter are about Foxs news operation, not his TV pals.)
Murdoch, who enjoys conservative politics but truly loves power, has an endgame in mind: By mid-January, Joe Biden will be president, and Fox News will be the disloyal opposition, a position where it thrives.
What were seeing now is a warm-up act. In one part of the Fox universe, Trump and his team are making as-of-yet-unfounded allegations of election fraud or Trump and his team are fighting election fraud, but everyone else is against them, and it may not work out.
Either way, well get to the same point next year, where Fox News is very comfortable attacking the Democratic president who some viewers will believe doesnt have the right to be in office.
As NPR media correspondent David Folkenflik reminded me in our chat this week on Recode Media, thats a trope Fox News has used since its founding in 1996. It pushed the message that Barack Obama was (supposedly) an illegitimate president because he (supposedly) wasnt born in the United States (not coincidentally, the main proponent behind this theory was … Donald Trump).
But in Foxland, Bill Clinton was also an illegitimate president because he won his election with the help of Ross Perot, who ran as a third-party candidate and drew away votes that should have gone to George H.W. Bush.
So maybe Trump really will stop showing up on Fox and praising its talent on Twitter. Maybe he really will head to a would-be-rival TV network with minuscule ratings, or try to launch his own online service. Most likely, I think, hell end up as a recurring guest on Fox News, where he can doing what he does best rant daily, without having to do anything else and Murdoch can keep Trumps fans on his network. Either way, when Trump leaves the White House, Fox News will spend the next four years laying into his successor.
But in the meantime, Murdoch is once again trying to have it both ways: His news operation the one Trump tweets angrily about has told its viewers that Trump lost the election, and that his complaints about voter fraud are made-up. But in the morning, and at night, its a different story.

• Last Friday, for instance, Hannity brought on Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel for a segment in which they both suggested that voter fraud was quite plausible. That was not a coincidence: According to a GOP memo Folkenflik viewed, the two sides worked out with great specificity the intended flow of the shows lengthy opening segment including its guests, articles and subjects and the primary points Hannity would make.
• On Tuesday night, Ingraham hosted someone who said they were a poll worker in Nevada (her guests face and voice were disguised) who claimed to have seen some kind of Biden-Harris ballot chicanery.

This is where we’re at right now.
Laura Ingraham brings on an unidentified “whistleblower” — with hidden face and altered voice — to claim that folks literally from a Biden-Harris bus were altering ballots in Nevada. pic.twitter.com/b8xGe8KXSb
Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) November 11, 2020

• And on Wednesday night, Carlson explained that the mainstream media is refusing to look into plausible vote fraud allegations (Trumps campaign tweeted this one out; Trump retweeted it):

The liberal media says voter fraud doesn’t happen. They’re lying.
Someone used the identities of dead people to vote in the presidential election. Here’s the proof. pic.twitter.com/iFLWvfUvIE
Trump War Room – Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TrumpWarRoom) November 12, 2020
Hannity, Carlson, and Ingraham do their own version of the Fox News two-step: They dont come out and say outright that Trump is a victim of massive voter fraud that cost him the election while simultaneously defeating Democratic House and Senate candidates. But they argue that its plausible. They feed the fire with oxygen.
Fox isnt the only one playing this game. Much of the Republican Party, from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on down, engages in a similar version: Either flat-out suggest that Trumps claims are legitimate, or at least argue that he should be able to make those claims, and then see what happens.
Its easy for anyone who wants to look to see whats really happening. Theres the objective truth hammered away by the likes of the New York Times, which ran Election Officials Nationwide Find No Fraud as its banner print headline on Wednesday.
Republicans are eager to tell reporters the same thing, but wont attach their names to their statements. On background, they announce that theyre simply humoring Trump, or treating him, toddler-like, as someone who needs to be gently prodded into accepting his loss. Some Republicans are telling CNNs Jake Tapper that this is all part of walking President Trump through this process emotionally. Or, alternately, they say that Trump is in on the joke: A top White House aide tells NBCs Peter Alexander that Trump realizes his claims are theater.
This is all par for the course for the last four years, and beyond: If you consume a steady diet of Fox News and nothing but, you see the world very differently than the rest of us, even when it comes to life-and-death issues like the Covid-19 pandemic. (It may also matter which Fox host you like more: A study this spring concluded that Fox viewers who watched more of Hannity, who consistently downplayed the coronavirus in the spring, were more likely to contract Covid-19 than Fox viewers who watched more of Carlson, who was the rare Fox opinion host who warned viewers about the pandemic early on.)
And maybe this is the time well get lucky, and the viewers of the countrys most popular news channel will eventually come around to the idea that Joe Biden is a legitimate president. As of this week, at least 80 percent of the country and 60 percent of Republicans say Biden won, per a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
On the other hand: Four years ago, just weeks after the presidential election, a 28-year-old man with a semi-automatic assault rifle walked into a pizza place and fired his gun because he was trying to shine some light on claims that Democrats ran a pedophile ring. At the time, Pizzagate was a dark conspiracy that lived mostly online; Tucker Carlson wasnt doing segments on Hillary Clintons link to sex traffickers. (It hasnt gone away, either: Pizzagate has now merged with QAnon, an all-encompassing conspiracy theory that is just as extreme, but has become mainstream enough that it is sending adherents to Congress.)
Now, Fox News is dancing with a conspiracy theory that could be equally upsetting to an angry, suggestible audience. The best case scenario is that Fox merely convinces its audience that voting is rigged, and against them. And its viewers are content to just watch Fox, seething.
But thats a terrible range of outcomes. We shouldnt expect better from Foxs leaders. But we should definitely ask them to do better.
Will you help keep Vox free for all?
Millions of people rely on Vox to understand how the policy decisions made in Washington, from health care to unemployment to housing, could impact their lives. Our work is well-sourced, research-driven, and in-depth. And that kind of work takes resources. Even after the economy recovers, advertising alone will never be enough to support it. If you have already made a contribution to Vox, thank you. If you havent, help us keep our journalism free for everyone by making a financial contribution today, from as little as $3.