The last place concerned with President Donald Trump’s attacks against Fox News is, well, Fox News.
While media coverage of Trump’s attacks against his go-to cable news network ramped up last month, the reaction to the President’s outbursts within the Fox News headquarters were largely met with apathy, according to a Monday report in The Atlantic.
“You’d think there’d be some drama, but there’s been no channel-wide initiative or anything to address the attacks,” one staffer anonymously told The Atlantic. “There’s honestly been no acknowledgement of them.”
According to The Atlantic, the collective shrug among Fox News staffers has much to do with executives having the leverage in their relationship with Trump. Even as the President continues to lob attacks at his go-to network, Fox News knows its power in speaking directly to Trump’s base — a core constituency that he must keep intact to win re-election.
The Atlantic noted the decentralized approach — each show acting as an “island” of sorts, as a Fox News staffer put it — of Fox News CEO Suzanne Scott, Roger Ailes’ successor, as a reason for the shift in dynamic within the cable news network.
“I don’t get the sense from talking to Suzanne that she’s at all concerned about it. She just seemed to shrug,” one person who had spoken recently with Scott told The Atlantic, referring to Trump’s attacks. “They’re not scared of [rival right-wing news outlet] One America News. They know there’s nowhere else for their audience to go.”
Last month, several Fox News analysts reminded Trump that they don’t work for him after he complained that the right-wing network “isn’t working for us anymore.” Trump had been growing increasingly agitated with the network for its polling, which showed him having low electability against top 2020 Democrats.
Read The Atlantic’s report here.
