Following the disappointing Republican performance in the November 2022 midterm elections, Fox News and the broader Murdoch media empire initiated a coordinated distancing from Donald Trump, blaming the former president for candidate losses in key battleground states. This marked the beginning of what media analysts dubbed the ‘Fox-Trump divorce,’ a strategic pivot designed to elevate alternative conservative figures like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis while phasing Trump out of primetime coverage. The structural shift revealed the fragile mechanics of conservative media, exposing a deep rift between the network’s corporate leadership and its fiercely loyal audience.
For six years, the relationship had been symbiotic. Donald Trump provided unparalleled ratings. Fox News provided unparalleled reach. The arrangement transformed American political communication. It bypassed traditional press briefings. It turned evening opinion shows into direct lines to the Oval Office. But by late 2022, the calculus changed. The network looked at the electoral scoreboard. The corporate board looked at mounting legal liabilities. The decision was made at the highest levels of News Corp and Fox Corporation.
The divorce was never officially announced. It was executed in print, in programming choices, and in prime-time silences.
The Night the Wave Broke
November 8, 2022, was supposed to be a reckoning. Polling aggregates predicted a massive Republican sweep. Historical trends favored the party out of power. Inflation was high. Presidential approval ratings were low. The environment was primed for a historic realignment.
The results delivered a shock to the conservative ecosystem. The red wave never materialized. Instead, the Republican party barely secured a slim majority in the House of Representatives and failed to capture the Senate. The losses were not randomly distributed. They were concentrated among a specific type of candidate.
Donald Trump had spent the primary season playing kingmaker. He endorsed candidates based largely on their loyalty to his political brand and their willingness to challenge the results of the 2020 election. In the general election, these candidates faltered. In Pennsylvania, celebrity physician Dr. Mehmet Oz lost a highly winnable Senate seat to John Fetterman. In Georgia, former football star Herschel Walker underperformed the state’s Republican governor and ultimately lost to Senator Raphael Warnock. In Arizona, venture capitalist Blake Masters lost to Senator Mark Kelly, while former television anchor Kari Lake lost the gubernatorial race to Katie Hobbs. In Nevada, Adam Laxalt fell short against Senator Catherine Cortez Masto.
The pattern was undeniable. In competitive battleground states, Trump-endorsed candidates repelled independent and moderate voters. They ran behind generic Republican benchmarks. They cost the party control of the upper chamber.
Inside the Fox News headquarters at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, the narrative shifted overnight. The post-election coverage quickly moved away from allegations of voting irregularities. The focus turned entirely to candidate quality. The implication was clear. The kingmaker had chosen poorly.
The Murdoch Empire Pivots
Rupert Murdoch does not operate through subtle hints. When the 91-year-old media mogul decides to change direction, the entire fleet turns at once. The morning after the midterm elections, the shift was visible across every property in the Murdoch portfolio.
The print properties struck first. They provided the intellectual cover for the broadcast network to follow.
Trumpty Dumpty and the Editorial Board
On November 9, 2022, the New York Post, historically Trump’s favorite hometown tabloid, published a cover featuring Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. The headline read: “DeFUTURE.” DeSantis had just won reelection in Florida by a staggering 19 points, flipping historically Democratic counties like Miami-Dade. He represented the competent, disciplined version of populist conservatism that the Murdoch family preferred.
The next day, the New York Post went further. The November 10 cover featured a caricature of Donald Trump sitting on a brick wall. The headline read: “Trumpty Dumpty.” The subheadline was brutal: “Don (who couldn’t build a wall) had a great fall, can all the GOP’s men put the party back together again?”
The Wall Street Journal editorial board, the intellectual anchor of the Murdoch empire, delivered a more formal indictment. They published a scathing editorial titled “Trump Is the Republican Party’s Biggest Loser.” The piece methodically detailed how Trump’s interventions had cost the party winnable races in 2018, 2020, 2021, and now 2022. The editorial board declared that Trump had a “perfect record of electoral defeat” since his initial victory in 2016.
This was not a rogue editor speaking out of turn. This was a coordinated corporate directive. The Murdoch family was signaling to donors, operatives, and voters that it was time to move on.
The Broadcast Strategy: Starving the Oxygen
While the newspapers launched direct attacks, Fox News employed a different tactic. They used the power of omission. For a television personality who thrives on attention, being ignored is the ultimate punishment.
In the weeks following the midterms, Trump’s presence on Fox News plummeted. When he announced his 2024 presidential campaign from his Mar-a-Lago estate on November 15, 2022, Fox News did not carry the full speech live. They cut away. Sean Hannity, historically one of Trump’s most reliable allies, offered tepid praise but quickly pivoted to panel discussions. Other hosts openly questioned the timing of the announcement.
Instead, the network flooded the zone with Ron DeSantis. Fox News cameras covered DeSantis’s press conferences. Fox News hosts praised his legislative victories in Florida. The network essentially functioned as an exploratory committee for the Florida governor’s unannounced presidential bid. The strategy was clear: build up a viable alternative before Trump could clear the primary field.
For months, Trump was subjected to a soft ban. He was rarely interviewed on the network. His rallies were no longer broadcast in their entirety. When his name was mentioned, it was often accompanied by polling data showing him losing hypothetical matchups to Joe Biden or trailing DeSantis in early primary states.
The Dominion Lawsuit Shadow
The political divorce was happening publicly. A legal disaster was unfolding privately. The timeline of the Fox-Trump split cannot be understood without the looming shadow of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit.
Dominion sued Fox News for $1.6 billion, alleging the network knowingly broadcast false claims about their voting machines following the 2020 election. As the case moved through discovery in late 2022 and early 2023, devastating internal communications were made public.
The text messages and emails revealed a massive chasm between what Fox News executives and hosts said on the air and what they believed in private. The internal communications showed a network leadership terrified of losing its audience to right-wing competitors like Newsmax and One America News Network (OAN). They showed hosts openly mocking the election fraud claims pushed by Trump’s legal team.
Most damaging to the Fox-Trump relationship were the private texts from Tucker Carlson, the network’s highest-rated host. On January 4, 2021, Carlson texted a colleague about Trump: “We are very, very close to being able to ignore Trump most nights. I truly can’t wait.” He added, “I hate him passionately.”
Rupert Murdoch’s own deposition was equally revealing. Under oath, Murdoch admitted that several Fox News hosts had endorsed false claims about the election. He expressed regret that he had not intervened more forcefully to stop the broadcasts.
On April 18, 2023, just moments before opening arguments were scheduled to begin, Fox News settled the lawsuit for an astonishing $787.5 million. It was the largest publicly known defamation settlement in US history involving a media company. The financial hit was massive. The reputational damage was permanent. The lawsuit solidified the corporate desire to distance the network from Trump’s chaotic orbit.
The Ratings Reality Check
Media empires run on a simple metric. Viewership dictates advertising revenue. Advertising revenue dictates survival. The Murdoch plan to pivot away from Trump ran into a massive, immovable obstacle: the Fox News audience.
Conservative viewers noticed the shift. They recognized the soft ban. They saw the relentless promotion of Ron DeSantis. And they rebelled.
Throughout early 2023, Trump aggressively attacked Fox News on his Truth Social platform. He accused the network of pushing a “globalist” agenda. He urged his followers to change the channel. The audience listened. Ratings for key primetime shows began to soften. Competitors like Newsmax saw temporary spikes in viewership whenever Trump directed his ire at Fox.
The situation escalated on April 24, 2023, when Fox News abruptly fired Tucker Carlson. The exact reasons for his termination remain heavily debated, involving the Dominion fallout, a separate hostile work environment lawsuit, and insubordination toward network executives. But to the audience, the firing of the network’s most prominent populist voice was seen as another betrayal. Fox News lost roughly half of its 8:00 PM audience in the weeks following Carlson’s departure.
The network found itself trapped in a media paradox. They wanted to move past Donald Trump to protect their corporate liability and win general elections. But they could not survive without the viewers who demanded Donald Trump.
A Marriage of Convenience, Not Conviction
By the summer of 2023, the divorce proceedings were quietly halted. The Ron DeSantis campaign, despite the heavy initial investment from conservative media, struggled to gain traction. DeSantis proved to be a stiff retail politician. His poll numbers dropped. Meanwhile, a series of historic criminal indictments against Trump had an unexpected effect. Instead of sinking his campaign, the indictments rallied the Republican base around him.
Trump’s lead in the primary polls expanded from single digits to overwhelming majorities. He became the inevitable nominee. Fox News had to face reality. You cannot run a conservative news network while ignoring the undisputed leader of the conservative movement.
The soft ban was lifted. Trump returned to the network for town halls and interviews. Sean Hannity resumed his role as a friendly sounding board. The critical editorials in the Wall Street Journal continued, but the broadcast network surrendered to the ratings demand.
The relationship, however, was fundamentally altered. The blind loyalty of 2016 was gone. The trust was broken. Fox News executives knew Trump would attack them the moment they offered mild criticism. Trump knew Fox News executives would discard him the moment it became financially advantageous. It was no longer a partnership based on shared ideology. It was a cold, calculated transaction.
The 2022 midterms exposed the machinery behind the curtain. It showed how a media empire attempts to manufacture consent, and how a populist base can reject that manufacturing. The network tried to break the bond. The audience forced them back together.
Executives calculated. Hosts pivoted. Viewers rebelled.
Symbiosis.
