The following is a lightly edited transcript of the September 18 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here.
Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Fox News suddenly finds itself in a very strange situation. A new Fox poll just landed that contains absolutely awful news for Trump and Republicans. And a number of very bad stories for Trump have broken of late.
That’s a big problem for a network that has the word “news” in its title, yet also can’t keep its audience if it tells the truth about Trump. So Fox has taken to largely ignoring a lot of these very big bad stories. And this has us wondering what’ll happen to the whole institutional superstructure that’s arisen around our homegrown MAGA fascist movement if Trump soon passes from the scene.
So we’re talking to our go-to person on Fox, Matt Gertz of Media Matters. Matt, thanks for coming on.
Matt Gertz: Good to be back.
Sargent: So things are going south for Trump on lots of fronts—Iran, the Supreme Court thwarting his plot to steal the election via vote by mail, racist GOP candidates outing themselves, and so forth. Fox has been quiet on a lot of these topics. You’ve coined this idea of “negative space” in Fox coverage. Tell us what that is.
Gertz: So I’ve spent a lot of time over the years thinking and writing about the stories that Fox News talks about, their particular obsessions, their tendency to puff up Donald Trump, their attacks on all of his enemies. But what I’ve been spending more time on lately is thinking about what I call the “negative space”—the stories that do not exist on Fox News, but are of a great deal of interest to people not only who don’t listen to Fox News, but who might be of interest if Fox were to level with their audience about what’s happening in the world. There’s been a series of these, in particular since the summer began, where there’s been an obvious interest in providing coverage, if this were in fact a news network, but Fox has been unable.
Sargent: You were pretty early on in noticing that Fox simply stopped talking about Iran, after functioning as really a twenty-four-seven propaganda outlet for the invasion. Walk us through what they’re doing on all these stories.
Gertz: Sure. Iran is a really clear case of this. Fox to a large extent helped get the country into this war in the first place. There was a great deal of very enthusiastic coverage from people like Sean Hannity and Mark Levin back in February, urging the president to go to war with Iran. There’s been reporting from behind the scenes that he was actually talking about some of these segments in the White House. We saw him use those segments on his social media platforms, trying to drive attention to them. I’ve talked for years about this feedback loop between Fox and Trump, and I think this was its most consequential test.
But a funny thing happened. The quick and easy war that all of these Fox stars were telling Donald Trump was on the table just didn’t materialize the way they expected it to. Somehow they were the only ones in American public life who were unaware that the counterattack for Iran is to close the Strait of Hormuz and shut down global trade in energy. And so when that happened, the network had a problem. And they just stopped talking about it altogether.
We tracked mentions of Iran on five of the most popular Fox News shows, the evening programs that the president watches that are so influential on the Republican Party. And we found that mentions of Iran fell 78 percent from June to August. They were down to, like, two mentions per episode, more or less. And this is just a huge decline across all the programs at the same time. They were suddenly no longer talking about an ongoing war that is currently sending the price of gasoline and diesel skyrocketing.
Sargent: I want to dwell a little bit on what Fox News means to Trump. So early on, when Fox is egging Trump on, Trump starts the invasion, Fox covers it glowingly. They’re pumping all this imagery of things going boom, boom, and making Trump look very strong—pumping this right into his veins, right? He’s watching Fox News from the White House and he’s seeing his war get praised on Fox. He’s seeing things blow up, he’s seeing his power kind of sprawled across the world.
And then all of a sudden, when the thing starts going south for Trump in exactly the way that everybody said it would, they suddenly go quiet? Like, what does he think when he sees that? Does he notice it?
Gertz: I’m not sure that he notices the negative space in the same way. And I think that’s really key to Fox’s operation here. They know that if they do coverage that is negative about the administration, he will notice that. He will become irate about that, in fact.
Sargent: On these other stories, you’re finding the same thing, correct? So on this racist candidate that everybody’s been talking about—
Gertz: And we have to specify which racist candidate, I think.
Sargent: This is—OK, you do that.
Gertz: So this is Bo French, who is the candidate for Texas Railroad Commission. And he over the weekend published a social media post. It’s a picture of students celebrating a Texas Longhorns touchdown. They’re hugging each other, they’re very happy. Many of them are not white. And Bo French’s response to this is: “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
The problem is that there are brown people attending the University of Texas. And he feels that it is necessary to say this. Even in Texas, this is not acceptable.
To be slightly fair about this, the George W. Bush strain of the GOP in Texas itself was certainly trying to bring Mexican Americans and South Asian Americans into the Republican Party. And so this sort of absolutely naked bigotry was enough for Karl Rove to say, “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches, and not only in Texas...it’s raw, uncut bigotry.” And he sort of goes on to say that this is a huge problem for the Republican Party and they need to fight it.
This is a message that is important for the Fox News audience to hear, right? Like, there is a fight within the Republican Party about what it means to be a conservative. It is now being articulated by someone who not only has sterling credentials in Republican politics, but who has worked for Fox News for 18 years now as their, like, top political analyst. He wrote this in The Wall Street Journal, which is another publication owned by Rupert Murdoch, like Fox News. And this got covered on CNN, it got covered on MS Now. It was not mentioned, this Karl Rove column, on Fox News, where he works. And in fact, Bo French has not been mentioned this entire week. It is the sort of story that is just not part of their discussion, because they don’t have a way to frame this to make it actually about how Democrats are bad.
Sargent: So Matt, it seems like Fox is in meltdown kind of across the board, in the sense that they’re just going quiet on a number of fronts. Can you just briefly sum that up?
Gertz: Yeah. I mean, I think Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding being partially paid for by a Russian oligarch is a story that they’re not talking about at all. I think in general, the rise in gas prices and diesel prices in particular—they spent one minute covering the rise in diesel prices over a recent seven-day period. You know, there is no interest from people at the network in covering some of these various health crises that have popped up, the measles, the cyclospora situation. These just kind of recede into the background at Fox.
Sargent: So this Fox poll lands this week, and it’s just terrible for Trump. Some numbers: nearly two-thirds, 63 percent of voters, say the Trump administration’s made the economy worse. Trump’s approval on inflation, an abysmal 24 percent. Dems leading by seven in the generic ballot matchup, 51 to 44. Dem enthusiasm off the charts, with 64 percent of Dems extremely interested in the elections to 53 percent of Republicans, and Dems holding these lopsided leads among those who are certain to vote.
Matt, I think that a lot of Dems and liberals aren’t really aware that the Fox poll is actually a very good survey. And for them to find this means they’re probably right. Your thoughts on all that?
Gertz: Yeah, I mean, it’s such a good survey that Trump repeatedly over the years has said that Fox should fire its pollsters, has even suggested that they should be investigated for some sort of election subversion [for] manufacturing fake numbers—the same way he claims that all other pollsters manufacture fake numbers. So he puts them in the same category.
And so I think what we end up seeing is a very interesting dance that breaks out on Fox News when one of these polls hits. They try to find some numbers that they can talk about while not annoying or sending Trump into a full rage. And so, you know, the coverage that kind of happens over the day, I think, really illustrates this concept of negative space.
So here’s an example. I went through all the coverage, and you know, I can’t be absolutely sure, but I’m fairly confident that they did not mention Trump’s job approval number—the, like, normal headline number that under most circumstances is the one that journalists put focus on the most. I don’t think they mentioned his job approval number since this poll dropped.
Sargent: Yes. And Matt, you mean on the network, right?
Gertz: Yeah, on the network. I don’t think they mentioned it on air. Maybe they did once or twice and I missed it, but, like, it’s certainly not the focus of their coverage at all.
Instead, much of the coverage is around how people are responding to the Trump economy. And these are also bad numbers, obviously, for the Trump administration. But those they can finesse a little bit more, largely by doing the thing that is always a good sign that you know that you’re losing, which is arguing with the public about what they should feel.
I keep seeing over the course of the day people saying—as Stephen Moore did on Fox and Friends this morning—it’s crazy for people to think that Democrats are better on inflation, but they do. What that’s saying is, we at Fox have failed to make an argument that is sticking with most of the public. Most people disagree with what you at home are hearing day in and day out on this network. And so I think, again, this is a signal that they are floundering. They’re running out of arguments that they think they can make, and they’re running out of time before the election.
Sargent: Well, Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who does the Fox poll with a Democrat, said this: “Time is running out for the administration and its supporters to convince voters that things are improving.” So I guess he agrees with you.
On your point about how it’s very hard for Fox figures to say that Democrats are doing well or doing better than Republicans on issues, I want to flag some other data. Like, as you mentioned, Dems are leading the GOP on inflation. It’s actually 55 to 40, 15 points. On foreign policy, it’s Dems 53 to 43. The parties are even tied on immigration, which is just stunning.
Matt, that’s got to be really, really hard for Fox figures to process. Their entire existence is devoted to kind of running propaganda about Democrats. Can you talk about that role that they play, and how they process something like this, which shows that voters are just looking at the Democratic Party and seeing mainstream Democrats, not crazy socialists? What’s going on there?
Gertz: Yeah. What Fox has been trying to do—their play since the summer has been to point to individual cases where Democratic socialists have won Democratic primaries, mainly in deep blue congressional districts, say that they are socialists, socialism is basically the same as communism, all Democrats are now responsible for the communism. And if Democrats win back the House and the Senate, then you will probably be murdered in your home and all of your possessions will be taken away—I’m exaggerating slightly, but that’s pretty close to your basic Sean Hannity gloss on this election.
Now, an interesting number that came out in this Fox poll, and one that they’ve been talking about quite a bit today, is that they asked respondents, does the way capitalism works in the U.S. give people like you a fair shot? And the numbers were yes, 39 percent, no, 57 percent.
Sargent: Ooh boy, that’s going to be tough for them.
Gertz: It is. And they’ve been trying to grapple with this over the course of the day. And what I keep seeing people say is, like, the public doesn’t understand, and what they think is capitalism that is bad is actually socialism that is bad—that it is the government spending that has caused the inflation. They’re saying that capitalism isn’t responsible for the affordability problem, that it’s socialism that’s responsible. And if you don’t like what’s happening, it’s because you’re against socialism, not capitalism. Again, this is an arguing with the public that I think suggests that they just do not have a way to grasp how unpopular Donald Trump has become, and how unpopular the Republican Party and everything that touches him has become.
Sargent: I think you can actually see this tension when you listen to someone like Fox’s Brit Hume talk about this poll. Let’s listen—here he’s talking about Trump’s impact on the economy:
Bret Hume: Fully 63 percent say it’s made it worse, and that is 11 percentage points higher than the number of people who thought that last year. That is not a number that the president can be very content with. And if you look at what people are saying about what is a major problem for their family—62 percent said grocery prices, 61 percent said gasoline prices. Those are both things that are up. This business with prices is just killing this administration and the president’s party.
Matt, that’s a very senior Fox person really lowering the hammer on Trump. He does sugarcoat it with a bunch of praise for Trump, but it’s still pretty blunt talk coming from Fox. Is something changing over there? Like, it seems like there’s real tension inside Fox about how to handle Trump’s collapse.
Gertz: Well, Brit Hume is someone who has been with the network for decades and decades. He was the host of Special Report before Bret Baier took it over. He’s been their sort of senior correspondent ever since Baier became the anchor of that program. And so he has more leeway than basically anyone else does at the network to say whatever he wants. He doesn’t have his own show, so he doesn’t have ratings of his own to worry about.
And so as someone who wants the Republican Party to succeed, he can level with the audience in a way that basically no one else is. I think his comment that the business with prices is just killing this administration and the president’s party is blunter than anyone else has been on the network about that problem.
Sargent: I think you can see in all this a little glimpse of the future. I think if Dems win this election decisively, we’re not really prepared for just how shrunken and shriveled and brought low a figure Trump is going to start to look like. I also think Trump might see a lot of the institutional support from MAGA, even in places like Fox, start to move away from him pretty decisively.
I think Fox recognizes that Donald Trump is this sort of binding figure for MAGA and Republicanism that really is sort of a once-in-a-generation figure. Maybe George Bush sort of played that role for a while. Ronald Reagan certainly did. Trump is not exactly like them. He’s sort of more overtly fascist, I guess. But he is this kind of cult-like unifying figure that comes along only once every few decades for these people. And I think the Fox people really recognized his unique power in that way. When that power really starts to ebb, what happens at an institution like Fox News? Who do they start gravitating toward? What do they do?
Gertz: I think it’s a scramble. I think it’s going to be a huge mess over there, between people who want to move on from Trump, people who are Trump loyalists who refuse to. I think we’re going to see a split between people who are supportive of JD Vance, between people who want Marco Rubio to be the Republican nominee. We’re seeing that now on Fox and Friends in particular, where they really do not like JD Vance and really do like Rubio, and clearly want him to create a real primary. And so how all that shakes out, I don’t know. It’s going to be messy. But I think who ends up on top is really hard to predict.
Sargent: Yeah. And all this cognitive dissonance we’re seeing right now, I think, is really a preview of that extreme chaos—which hopefully we will see, because that will mean Democrats won the elections. Matt Gertz, really great to talk to you, as always. Thanks for coming on.
Gertz: Always a pleasure.