Opinion | The looming MAGA media melee over Trump’s attention span

That didn’t take long. Just a week after his presidential election victory, Donald Trump is already raiding Fox News’ stable of talking heads to fill out his administration. 

Tom Homan, the reported “intellectual ‘father’” of family separation as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Trump’s first administration, is leaving the network where he has served as a contributor to oversee mass deportations as the incoming president’s “Border Czar.” Mike Huckabee, the former Fox host and frequent network commentator, is Trump’s pick as U.S. ambassador to Israel. And if Trump has his way, the Defense Department’s nearly 3 million employees will be overseen by “Fox & Friends Weekend” co-host Pete Hegseth.

The Fox-fueled hiring spree represents a return to form for the former president. The network dominated wide swaths of federal decision-making during Trump’s first presidency, as his administration effectively merged with the right-wing propaganda network that had propelled him to power. But as Trump returns to the White House, Fox is not as dominant within the right-wing media ecosystem as it was during the last Trump administration. The battle for the president’s attention within a larger and more fractured MAGA media will shape the contours of governance.

Trump owed his 2016 political ascent to that right-wing media ecosystem. A longtime Fox regular, he was obsessed with the network’s programming and channeled its demagoguery on the campaign trail, winning over its audience, as well as upstart alt-right organs like Steve Bannon’s Breitbart.com. He dominated Fox’s airtime on the way to his primary campaign win, bending the network and the GOP to his will before garnering a narrow Electoral College majority.

Once Trump was in office, Fox News became a state TV outlet that lavished him with praise and denounced his foes, and in doing so it gained unprecedented influence over the U.S. government. The hours Trump spent each day consuming the network’s content and speaking privately with its stars shaped his worldview and dictated his reaction to various events. His hyperaggressive, seemingly stream-of-consciousness tweets often came in response to what he was seeing on his television. I dubbed this phenomenon the “Trump-Fox feedback loop” and tracked it for years, ultimately tracing nearly 1,300 Trump tweets back to Fox News and its sister channel, Fox Business.

Fox’s employees affected wildly important policy decisions on matters of war and peace, and they turned right-wing tantrums into matters of national importance because the president of the United States happened to be tuning in.

It’s impossible to overstate how ridiculous — or dangerous — this Fox-Trump pipeline could be. Here are five things that really happened during Trump’s first term:

• After a Fox contributor turned to the camera and urged Trump to renounce his support for a bill, the president appeared to do so on Twitter, causing chaos on Capitol Hill.
• At the urging of Fox News personalities, Trump triggered the longest-ever partial government shutdown.
• Trump’s homeland security secretary resigned after losing a power struggle with a Fox Business host.
• Trump put the full force of government behind a purported coronavirus “miracle cure” he had seen touted on Fox News. The drug was ineffective against the virus.
• Trump led an administration-wide turn against diversity training after watching a negative Fox News segment on the subject.

Since Trump left office on the heels of a failed coup, the right-wing media ecosystem has become simultaneously more splintered — and even more pro-Trump.

Fox responded to a brief viewer exodus after Trump’s defeat by desperately renewing its support for him. Its evening lineup of Laura Ingraham, Jesse Watters, Sean Hannity and Greg Gutfeld is all in for the once and future president. MAGA stars like Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro maintained or increased their roles at Fox, while the network devastated its “straight news” ranks. Fox’s work shielding viewers from damaging revelations about the former president or explaining them away played a crucial role in Trump’s return to power.

But the ranks of Fox competitors have swelled, as well. Bannon’s “War Room” podcast is at the center of a sprawling field of MAGA media influencers, with other notables including Charlie Kirk and Jack Posobiec. Podcasters like Joe Rogan, whose show is Trump-friendly but not wholly focused on politics, have huge audiences. And a diaspora of former Fox stars like Tucker Carlson, Ben Shapiro and Megyn Kelly now compete with their former employer at their own pro-Trump outlets (all three campaigned for him in 2024).

Carlson in particular has both his own blood-and-soil political agenda and Trump’s ear. The former Fox prime-time host reportedly played a key role in both Trump’s decision to name Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s endorsement of the former president.

Trump himself maintains a frequent presence on Fox’s airwaves and regularly promotes its content on his social media platform. It’s likely that he’ll pluck others from the network to staff his administration. But he wields a stick alongside the carrot, slamming the network any time he perceives its coverage as insufficiently hagiographic. And the fractured right-wing media environment gives him plenty of options if he seeks other voices to raise up and ask for advice.

A doom loop may be the result, as Fox hosts tack further and further right to hold on to their audiences — and pull a watching Trump along with them.