It’s no secret that Donald Trump and Fox News aren’t exactly on the best of terms.
In fact the former President has effectively been banned from the network’s airwaves but Donald Trump just countered his ban from Fox News.
And Trump did it with this chess move.
2024 Trump Campaign surrogates are reportedly getting a cold shoulder at Fox News
Democrats’ media allies at major TV networks have gone to great lengths to purge their airwaves of anyone who even remotely supports former President Donald Trump.
As Puck’s Tara Palmeri recently noted, one of the struggles Trump’s 2024 campaign has faced is in booking appearances on network news outlets for campaign surrogates as they have “blacklisted” Trump supporters.
“The truth is that the Trump campaign could use more surrogates, many of whom were blacklisted from the news networks after the 2020 campaign,” Palmeri recently wrote in her “The Best and Brightest” newsletter.
The Puck reporter claimed that Democrats’ media allies don’t want to platform so-called “election deniers,” even though they continue to drool over Democrats who contested the 2016 election in the same manner Republicans did in 2020.
“In general, there’s an aversion by the mainstream players to platforming election deniers—an issue that played out most memorably, last week, with NBC’s whirlwind hiring and firing of [disgraced former RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney] McDaniel,” Palmeri continued.
Instead, “CNN’s roster of Republican contributors mostly hail from the pre-Trump days,” Palmeri explained, while “MSNBC talent rely on reporter interactions with Trump supporters to tap into the id of the 74 million people who voted for him four years ago.”
But it’s not just Democrats’ media allies at networks like CNN and MSNBC who are banning Trump and his supporters from their airwaves – a clear violation of section 315 of the Communications Act of 1934, which forbids networks from censoring candidates and requires them to provide all candidates in a race equal air time.
Palmeri added, “Even Fox [News] is hesitant to allow the real MAGA dingbats in front of the camera after settling the Dominion lawsuit (and with Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion defamation claim still moving toward a trial).”
Fox News founder Rupert Murdoch has spent years fostering resentment towards Trump and his supporters – also known as those who make it possible for Fox News to remain on-air.
He blamed Republicans’ horrendous performance in the 2022 Midterms solely on Trump and the candidates he endorsed, and proceeded to keep him completely off Fox News’ airwaves for months.
Executives extend Trump ban that went into effect after 2022 Midterms
And according to Palmeri, Fox News has followed MSNBC’s and CNN’s lead by extending its ban on Trump to those who support him as well, making it difficult for the Trump campaign to book surrogates on the network.
But the Puck reporter also noted that Trump recently pulled a brilliant move to get around that ban – he’s bringing his 2016 campaign manager and former White House advisor Kellyanne Conway back onto his campaign team.
“Conway still has Trump’s ear and serves as a rare high-level surrogate on Fox News,” Palmeri reported.
With Conway back in the fold, Trump once again has a campaign surrogate who is welcomed on Fox News, and can therefore, go around the ban to spread the campaign’s message to its base.
Trump himself has been somewhat circumventing Murdoch’s ban on his live appearances by conducting a few pre-recorded interviews and even a town hall that were later broadcast on the network – apparently, so long as they know he doesn’t say anything that could affect the Dominion lawsuit and others, he’s able to appear on the network.
Of course, in the end, the way Democrats and the establishment’s media allies have censored Trump and his supporters is an all-out assault on free speech, and the exact opposite of their stated goal of “protecting democracy.”
But considering the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans are tuning out of so-called “mainstream” media anyway, it’s certainly not having the desired effect.
Political Animal News will keep you up-to-date on any new developments in this ongoing story.