Trump blamed Fox News for Republican losses even as network’s hosts went easy on him

Analysis Trump blamed Fox News for Republican losses even as network’s hosts went easy on him Jeremy Barr in Washington Fox News pundits hardly criticized the US president in midterms coverage but Trump was still quick to cast blame

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In the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s midterm elections, Donald Trump made clear that he would place some blame on his favorite cable channel , Fox News, if his party did poorly.

Even before races really started to be called, Trump hit the network in multiple Truth Social posts, criticizing Fox for featuring Democratic pundit Jessica Tarlov ; attacking Fox’s polls as “always the worst”; mocking some recent softness in the network’s year-over-year ratings trends and accusing Fox of being “AGAINST” him. Just before midnight, Trump directly placed blame on Fox News for the Republican party’s failure to hold the US House and Senate, writing that “FoxNews bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse.”

In a surreal moment, Trump then called into Fox’s election coverage around midnight and directly criticized the network’s polls as “terrible,” telling the network’s employees: “You ought to get yourself a good pollster, because your pollsters are the worst.” Fox News anchor Bret Baier pushed back gently, pointing out that “tonight, actually, the results are pretty close to what the Fox polls showed.” (Trump also made a dig about Baier – or Fox writ large –not supporting him “when it wasn’t fashionable”.)

But while Trump was extremely critical of Fox News throughout the day and night, during more than six and a half hours of election night coverage viewed by the Guardian, commentators on the network seemed to take pains to not directly tie the party’s losses to Trump, and there were no suggestions that the party should back away from him.

Instead, several commentators on the channel turned the focus on voters for being “impatient” and wanting “instant gratification”, as host Jesse Watters put it just after 8pm. Many commentators said the president’s party historically performs poorly in the midterm elections. There were many attacks on Democrats , with conservative commentators in agreement that the party would overstay their welcome from voters and misinterpret their victory as a mandate, paving the way for Republican wins in 2028.

The only significant criticisms of the president focused on the White House’s messaging strategy and his decision to go to war in Iran.

“In some sense, Mr Trump was too successful in the first year and didn’t sell it enough in the second year,” said Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business Network host who served as Trump’s Director of the National Economic Council during his first administration.